Tuesday, September 1, 2026

Vancouver City Hall: The $6 Million Question

Part 1 of 12 — Following the Paper Trail

$6 million.

That is the figure Vancouver taxpayers are now learning was spent on severance agreements with City employees during 2025.

According to reporting by The Vancouver Sun, documents obtained through a Freedom of Information request show that the City paid approximately $6 million in severance agreements last year — reportedly more than the combined total of the previous several years and likely a single-year record.

That is a very large number.

But before we start pointing fingers, let's stop and ask some basic questions.

Who received the money?

Why were the agreements made?

How many employees were involved?

How much went to senior officials?

How much went to ordinary non-union employees?

And perhaps most importantly:

What does the public actually have a right to know about money being paid by the City of Vancouver?

Those are the questions this series is going to investigate.

First, let's be fair.

Severance isn't inherently suspicious.

People leave organizations for all kinds of reasons. Employment agreements can include severance provisions. There can be reorganizations, negotiated departures, retirements, dismissals, settlements and other circumstances where payments are entirely legitimate.

So $6 million does not automatically mean something improper happened.

That's not what we're saying.

The issue is the extraordinary size of the total, combined with the difficulty of determining who left, what positions they held, and why some of those departures occurred.

That's where transparency becomes important.

The timing matters.

During this same general period, Vancouver saw a number of high-profile departures from senior City positions.

Among them were:

City Manager Paul Mochrie
City Clerk Katrina Leckovic
Deputy City Clerk Tina Penney
Chief Building Official Saul Schwebs
Chief Procurement Officer Alexander Ralph

Some departures were announced publicly.

Some were described only in general terms as personnel matters or agreements.

And the public doesn't necessarily have access to the information needed to connect individual departures with individual severance payments.

That doesn't mean those payments were improper.

It means we can't easily see the complete picture.

And that is precisely why transparency matters.

What happened to QuickFind?

There's another piece of this story that initially sounds more sinister than it may actually be.

Vancouver's old QuickFind employee directory disappeared from the City's website in June 2024.

QuickFind had been around since the 1990s.

Let's be realistic: a system created in the 1990s was eventually going to become outdated. Information changes. Employees move. Departments are reorganized. Links break.

So the disappearance itself isn't proof of anything.

In fact, replacing an antiquated directory could be entirely reasonable.

But here's the question I think Vancouver residents are entitled to ask:

Why wasn't it replaced with a modern public directory?

Instead, journalists and members of the public have had greater difficulty tracking who works for the City, what positions they hold and when senior personnel change.

The City has also received Freedom of Information requests concerning the removal of QuickFind.

And that changes the conversation.

This isn't about defending a 30-year-old website.

It's about whether modern government should provide modern ways for the public to understand who is responsible for running the government.

The $6 million isn't the conclusion.

It's the beginning.

We don't know, from the headline number alone, whether anything improper happened.

We don't know whether the payments were concentrated among a handful of senior executives or spread across many employees.

We don't know how many agreements were routine contractual obligations.

We don't know how many resulted from negotiated departures.

And we shouldn't pretend that we do.

But we do know the number is unusually large.

We do know Vancouver has experienced significant turnover among senior officials.

We do know public access to the City's longstanding employee directory disappeared.

And we do know that obtaining information through FOI can take considerable time and effort.

Those facts deserve examination.

So let's follow the money.

Over the course of this series, we're going to look at the documents rather than simply repeat political claims.

We'll examine:

What the City says.

What the documents show.

What independent auditors have found.

What councillors have said.

What journalists have uncovered.

And, equally important:

What we still don't know.

Because there is a difference between asking difficult questions and making accusations.

We intend to stay on that line.

And here's where you come in.

If you live in Vancouver, this is your government.

If you pay property taxes, use City services, own or rent a home, run a business, walk through a City park, use public infrastructure or simply care about what happens to this city — these issues affect you.

So don't just take our word for it.

Read the source documents.

Check the Council minutes.

Look at the FOI releases.

Read the Auditor General's reports.

Ask your councillor questions.

And if you find something we've missed, please tell us.

If you disagree with our interpretation, tell us that too.

We are not asking anyone to arrive at the same conclusion we do.

We're asking people to look.

Because democracy doesn't work very well when citizens only see the information someone else has decided they need to see.

We are witnesses.

And we're going to keep looking.

Part 2: Goodbye, QuickFind — What happens when the public loses its window into City Hall?

Disclaimer: This series is intended to examine publicly available information, media reporting, City documents and Freedom of Information records. The questions raised are not allegations of wrongdoing. Severance payments can be entirely legitimate, and the presence of a payment does not, by itself, imply misconduct. Where information is incomplete or unavailable, we will say so. Readers are encouraged to review the original source documents and draw their own conclusions.

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