Vancouver Mayor Ken Sim made unsubstantiated claims about councillor distributing drugs
CBC
It has emerged that Vancouver Mayor Ken Sim accused a political opponent of distributing illegal drugs without evidence — weeks before a fellow councillor made similar claims that he later retracted.
Sim had praised Coun. Lenny Zhou, who is with Sim's ABC Vancouver party, for apologizing and retracting comments he made last week about his political opponents in a video posted to social media platform WeChat.
But it turns out that Sim himself made similar comments earlier this month, during a press briefing, before Zhou's comments accusing his opponents of being drug users were broadcast.
In the comments, Sim accuses COPE party Coun. Sean Orr of distributing illegal drugs on Christmas Day — something Orr has denied.
"You know, we have a councillor, Sean Orr, just this Christmas, who was handing out illegal drugs on Christmas Day to people on the streets," Sim says in the media briefing on Feb. 6.
"So, if you like getting free illegal drugs, you probably don't like me or ABC because we fight against that."
The video briefing was provided to CBC News by CityNews/OMNI.
In an interview with CBC's On The Coast on Wednesday — before it emerged Sim had made similar comments to Zhou's — Orr said he had never distributed drugs.
"The main point is that [Zhou] said several non-ABC councillors handed out drugs. It's not true," Orr said.
The COPE councillor added that he supported harm reduction efforts to deal with B.C.'s toxic drug crisis, but didn't specifically mention handing out drugs as something he supports.
In a statement on Thursday, COPE said that Sim's comments were a clear violation of the city's code of conduct, and may constitute defamation.
"On Christmas Day, Sean Orr was visiting family for the holidays on the Sunshine Coast," the municipal party said.
Orr says in the statement the job of a mayor "should be to bring people together, not divide people with disinformation and lies.”
After a regularly-scheduled city council meeting on Thursday, Sim left council chambers without addressing media, with a staffer telling CBC News that he was late to a board meeting.
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