Tell the Decision Makers: Halt the VAC Demolition Until It's Investigated and Voters Have Their Say.
The Supreme Court of British Columbia has reserved its decision on whether voter-approved borrowing for the renewal of a 50-metre facility can be used to remove it — yet the City is pressing ahead toward demolition. Days after telling a judge the building was too unsafe to keep open, the City rented it out for a private children's swim. Meanwhile, the process that killed the 50-metre pool was driven by staff behind closed doors, with key contracts that appear to have sidestepped the City's own procurement rules. Use this tool to email Park Board, Council, and senior staff and demand: halt the demolition, demand transparency, and defer this generational decision until it has been independently investigated and Vancouver's voters have spoken in the October municipal election.
Email the Park Board and decision makers below
[Subject: The Auditor General First, the Wrecking Ball Never — Pause the VAC]
To Vancouver Park Board Commissioners, Mayor and City Council, and City of Vancouver officials,
I am writing to demand that you halt the demolition of the Vancouver Aquatic Centre (VAC) and defer any irreversible action on this project until two things have happened: the serious, unresolved questions about how this decision was made have been independently investigated, and the people of Vancouver have had their say in this October's municipal election.
To those seeking election or re-election this October: your constituents are watching what you do now, not what you say on the campaign trail. A vote to pause is a vote for democratic accountability, evidence-based decision-making, and the integrity of the ballot.
Demolition is the one step that cannot be undone. Right now, it is the wrong step, for three reasons the record makes plain.
The court has not ruled. A judicial review of whether borrowing authority approved by Vancouver voters for the renewal of a 50-metre aquatic facility can lawfully be used to remove it instead is currently before the Supreme Court of British Columbia, with the decision reserved. Demolishing the building while the court is still deciding the legality of the project would destroy the very thing in dispute and pre-empt the court's judgment. No responsible public body tears down a contested public asset while judgment is pending.
The safety justification has collapsed. The City told the court the building had to close because it was unsafe — yet within twenty-four hours of closing it to the public on June 28, the facility was opened for private groups, with children in the water, on June 29 and again on June 30. A building cannot be too dangerous for the public and safe enough for a private rental on consecutive days. The City has produced no structural engineering report concluding the building is unsafe; the only engineering evidence in the record — commissioned by the City itself — found remediation “feasible and practical.” If the closure rationale does not survive contact with the City's own conduct, the rush to demolish does not either.
The process is under a cloud that has never been cleared. Internal emails obtained in litigation show senior City staff — not the elected Park Board — predetermined the 25-metre outcome, directed architects to stop work on 50-metre and expansion options, and scripted the messaging given to Council. These are not the conditions under which a generational, irreversible decision should be executed.
I therefore call on you to take the following actions:
- Immediately halt all demolition and site-preparation work at the Vancouver Aquatic Centre. Under section 488 of the Vancouver Charter, the Park Board has exclusive jurisdiction over the facilities it governs — expressly including the removal or demolition of existing improvements. The authority to stop this demolition exists. What is required is the will to use it. Demolition must not proceed while the courts, and the public, still have unanswered questions.
- Introduce and pass a motion to defer this project until the process has been independently investigated — through the Office of the Auditor General and pending the outcome of the litigation before the BC Supreme Court — and demand full transparency from your own administration. That means answering serious procurement questions the public has never had explained: how a second, materially different contract for this project was awarded without ever going to open procurement, contrary to the material-scope threshold in the City's own ADMIN-008 procurement policy; and why the construction contract appears to have been approved in camera, leaving a Request for Expressions of Interest (RFEOI) — not a Request for Proposals (RFP) — as the only public record. Elected officials cannot claim to be stewarding this decision while the evidence of how it was made stays locked away.
- Defer any irreversible decision on the Vancouver Aquatic Centre until after the October 2026 municipal election. This is a generational choice about a facility voters were asked to renew, not remove. An outgoing Council and Board should not lock in the demolition of a contested public asset in the final weeks of their term — weeks before residents render their verdict at the ballot box. Let the incoming elected officials, accountable to a fresh mandate, decide with the court's ruling and an honest evidentiary record in front of them.
This is no longer only a dispute about the size of a pool. It is about whether a voter-approved mandate can be quietly repurposed, whether a public-safety claim can be made to a judge and contradicted the very next day, and whether residents can trust how decisions about their public infrastructure are made. Demolition would foreclose every one of those questions before they are answered.
Stop the demolition. Open the record. Let the voters decide.
Sincerely,
Concerned Taxpayer and Community Member