Ken Sim talks public safety, housing policy in first TV interview as Vancouver mayor-elect

Vancouver-mayor elect Ken Sim held his first news conference Monday and struggled to answer questions about the details of his public safety plan. He spoke exclusively with CTV News shortly after in his first television interview since his election win.

Watch the full interview here, and read some excerpts of that conversation below.

ON HIS FIRST MEDIA EVENT

Reporter: “First big news conference as Vancouver mayor, how do you think that went?”

Sim: “Well it was the first news conference…no, it was a lot of fun actually, it was actually pretty exciting to get out and talk to media and tell our story again and let people know that we’re working incredibly hard.”

ON HIS PLEDGE TO HIRE 100 NURSES, 100 COPS

Reporter: “That was a big campaign promise, I’m going to ask you again - where are the nurses coming from?”

Sim: “So these are recruiting issues. What I want to say is the City of Vancouver made it very loud and clear they wanted change. They elected me as mayor and a majority on council, park and school board and they saw that in our platform. So, they want it – we’ll make it happen. We know that there are nurses out there that have left the institutional or the hospital system that would leap at this opportunity.”

Reporter: “The City of Vancouver doesn’t hire nurses, they come from Vancouver Coastal Health or they come from the province so who are the partner agencies that you’re talking to?”

Sim: “A lot of people are getting caught up in semantics. What we are going to do is hire 100 police officers and 100 mental health nurses. What form that takes? That will be fleshed out.”

Reporter: “This was a very core promise of your election campaign, don’t you think the plan should be a little more fleshed out than this?

Sim: “We’re literally into day two after the election – and on day one we met with our transition team.”

Reporter: “You had a 94-point plan and this key one isn’t exactly fleshed out. Can people trust that all the other promises are concrete and have been thought through?”

Sim: These plans have been well thought out and it’s coming from conversations that we’ve had throughout the city, not just with residents but with the police department, health providers, nurses. We’ve actually polled a bunch of nurses so we feel very confident that we will make significant headway on the hiring of 100 police officers and 100 mental health nurses. You will see more details of the plan in the upcoming weeks. We are in day two but we’ve been working on this for quite a while.”

ON THE BUDGET 

Reporter: “You’ve said funding for the new hires would come from 'non-core' spending. But the big question is – is that going to come from an increase in taxes?

Sim: “We need to go through all the financials when we’re in office, when we have line-by-line detail, and we will take a very methodical approach to that. If there are legitimate services that make a difference, we will be the first ones to support them. But I think it’s healthy to ask if there are items that have nothing to do with service levels whatsoever. Now, we can start prioritizing.”

ON THE 'NOT SEXY' ASPECTS OF HOUSING POLICY

Reporter: “Some of the commentary has been that your party in particular didn’t have a substantial housing platform, we’ve talked a lot about reducing permit wait times, was that theonly focus for housing for ABC?”

Sim: “There are a lot of great things going on in our cit. There’s rezoning applications, there’s the Broadway Plan, there’s Jericho lands, there’s Sen̓áḵw – there are all these things that are already happening. The one thing that is missing is that it’s taking forever to get a permit. We can have all these great things going on but if you have to wait six to12 years to get a permit to build a condo building it’s a complete waste of time. We are focussing on, what some would say, the ‘not sexy stuff.’ But it’s the best way to affect change and build housing faster.”

ON UNITING THE CITY

Reporter: “Can you talk about what your plan is to unite the city again?”

Sim: “It feels like our city has been divided for a while now and at the end of the day, I just want people to know that they have a voice, their voices are being heard. As mayor of Vancouver I’m not going to be mayor for half the city and our councillors and park board and school board, our elected officials, they feel the same way.”

Reporter: “If you could talk to voters who voted not only for you but voted against you, what would you say to them right now?”

Sim: “To the people that voted for us, a really big thank you. We don’t take your vote lightly, it’s an incredible responsibility that we fulfill our promises. For the people that didn’t support us this time, it’s up to us to earn their trust. And as mayor of Vancouver, and all of our elected officials, we are going to represent the entire city – not just half of it. We look forward to helping reclaim Vancouver’s claim of being the best city on the planet again, together.”