Creating an ‘Office of the Auditor General for the City of Vancouver’: Decision Day Nov 4. Please support it!

On October 15, CityHallWatch celebrated ten years of watching and reporting on civic affairs in the City of Vancouver. Based on our decade of experience we would like to raise this item as one of the most important single topics of the decade.

We give our wholehearted support for this proposal for the establishment of the “Office of the Auditor General for the City of Vancouver.”

If you do just one act of civic involvement this year, we encourage you to write or speak to City Council, its standing committee meeting starting 9:30 a.m. on Wednesday, November 4, 2020. Please click here for links to the agenda, report, and instructions on how to write or speak to Council.

If you support it, you will be in good company. The Coalition of Vancouver Neighbourhoods has written Council to show its strong support. 

This recommendations of this report need to be passed. The office needs to be funded. Its powers should not be watered down. It needs to operate independently and not be influenced or controlled by City staff. The initiative was initially spearheaded by Councillor Colleen Hardwick and eventually supported unanimously by City Council. Now is the time for Council to decide by two-thirds vote to create the office.

The October 22 report by the “Municipal Auditor General Informal Working Group,” which includes Councillors Colleen Hardwick, Rebecca Bligh, Adriane Carr, Lisa Dominato, Pete Fry and Sarah Kirby-Yung is comprehensive. Its recommendations to Council are to enact a bylaw, create an Auditor General Committee and appoint its members, create a recruitment committee, and direct staff to set up the required infrastructure and arrangements. The report appendices include a draft bylaw, terms of reference of the two noted committees, and especially, a detailed research paper by the Canadian Audit and Accountability Foundation (CAAF) entitled “Establishing an Independent Auditor General for the City of Vancouver.”  

Media have covered this topic. This one provides a decent background and mentions some staff pushback: “Council’s push to open auditor general’s office in Vancouver rankles city manager” (Mike Howell, Vancouver is Awesome, 2-Nov-2020). 

Rather than writing more here, we encourage anyone who wishes to know more to have a look at the actual report. Having watched City Hall for ten years, we are confident an Office of the Auditor General will pay for itself many times over, and by its very existence improve the efficiency and operations of our municipal government in its ultimate purpose of serving the interests of the citizens of this city.

Please take action right away before November 4 and let Mayor and Council know you support it. Future residents of this city will thank you!

Help THIS City Council be the one that makes the smart move to create the Office of the Auditor General.

Vancouver City Council, 2018 to 2022

For more information, here is a link to the Canadian Audit and Accountability Foundation (CAAF) and its report “Establishing an Independent Auditor General for the City of Vancouver.”  

https://www.caaf-fcar.ca/en/news/3700-vancouver-ag-report