Recently-acquired internal emails obtained through a discovery agreement with the City of Vancouver confirm what Vancouver Aquatic Centre users have long suspected: senior City staff — not elected officials — decided to kill the 50-metre pool, then told mayor and council exactly what to say about it.

The records centre on Deputy City Manager, Armin Amrolia, whose own words make clear that she and a small circle of senior managers were the ones calling the shots on a $175-million public infrastructure project — while Park Board commissioners, the only elected officials with jurisdiction over parks and recreation in Vancouver, were kept in the dark until staff were ready to "socialize" decisions that had already been made.

Staff Made the Decision. Then They Told Council What to Say.

On March 20, 2024, City staffer Michelle Schouls, Director of Facilities Planning, emailed Amrolia with a detailed update on the VAC project. Schouls confirmed that consultants were exploring five distinct options for the renewal — including options that retained competition swimming and diving, expanded the footprint, and reused the existing structure. Three of those options included a competition-standard pool. The schedule, Schouls wrote, was to have these options ready "in late summer for senior management make a decision on the best option to bring to Council in early fall."

Read that again: senior management makes the decision. Council gets told.

Two days later, on March 22, 2024, Amrolia replied and blew up the entire project scope. "In discussion with Steve J and Paul," she wrote — referring to Park Board General Manager Steve Jackson and then-City Manager Paul Mochrie — "we would like you and your team/consultants to scope out an option that looks at a smaller (non competition pool), no dive tank and incorporating the main elements of a leisure experience on the current foot print."

This was not a suggestion. It was a directive — issued by a City employee to architects who had been hired to explore multiple options, including renovation, expansion, and replacement. With a single email, Amrolia overrode the project charter, the community consultation, and the contractual scope of work that required evaluation of three distinct paths forward.

Schouls understood the implications immediately. She responded: "I have instructed the team to stop work on everything in light of senior management discussions of changing the program focus to leisure primarily and no competition facilities."

The consultants were exploring five options. Senior management intervened. All work stopped. And the 50-metre pool was dead — decided not by elected commissioners, but by staff, behind closed doors.

"The Option WE End Up Going With"

Four days later, on March 26, 2024, the internal emails show Amrolia updating various City staff — not Park Board commissioners — on where things stood. Her language is telling:

We need to get some clarity and traction on what could become the Option we end up going with.

Not "the option the Park Board selects." Not "the option commissioners approve." The option we end up going with.

In another email the same day, Amrolia wrote to then-City Manager Paul Mochrie:

If we can agree, this is the option we should focus on and to that end, will wait to hear from Steve J.

She was waiting to hear from Steve Jackson — not from the seven elected Park Board commissioners who have exclusive jurisdiction over parks and recreation under the Vancouver Charter. She and Mochrie would decide. Jackson would confirm. Commissioners would be "socialized" later.

Amrolia even acknowledged the democratic problem in her own words, listing among the "hurdles we will need to manage" the task of "socializing this with Council, Nations and the Community." Public consultation was not a step in the decision-making process. It was an obstacle to be managed after the decision was already made.

And in a follow-up email that same day, Amrolia told another group of staff: "we have likely landed on the design going forward."

What They Threw Away

To understand the scale of what Amrolia's directive discarded, consider what existed at the time:

• The Ausenco rehabilitation report (February 2023) had already concluded that "retaining and remediating key existing concrete elements is feasible and practical" — meaning the existing 50-metre pool could be saved for another 50 years at a fraction of the cost of demolition and rebuild.

• The City's own RFEOI procurement documents required the winning architectural firm to deliver a comparative feasibility study of three distinct options: expanding the footprint, major renovation with structural retention, and complete replacement. Amrolia's email effectively cancelled two of those three contractual requirements.

• The VanSplash Aquatics Strategy, the product of three years of public engagement involving more than 7,000 residents and a 19-member advisory group, called for the VAC to be replaced with a "large, multi-purpose facility" serving competition, diving, wellness, and community needs. A 50-metre competition pool was a consensus priority.

• The 2022 plebiscite, approved by 77% of voters, authorized $103 million in borrowing for "replacement, renewal, or rehabilitation" of the Vancouver Aquatic Centre — a facility built around a 50-metre pool.

None of this mattered to the senior managers who "landed on the design." And none of it was presented to Park Board commissioners when they were eventually asked to rubber-stamp the result.

Then They Scripted the Talking Points

Once the 25-metre direction was locked in behind closed doors, Amrolia turned to controlling the public narrative. On January 8, 2025, she sent a "CONFIDENTIAL" email directly to Mayor and Council titled "Key Messages – Vancouver Aquatic Centre Renewal."

The email does not update elected officials. It tells them what to say:

Given the potential for media interest, we propose you use the following key messages should you be approached by the media with questions or refer them to our media inbox.

The "key messages" describe the downgraded facility as "an exciting new chapter" and a "balanced, multi-functional facility." Councillors were told to say: "The City acknowledges the significant change from the current 50-metre pool and is committed to optimizing the renewed facility to offer a range of aquatic activities."

At no point were councillors told that the 50-metre option had been killed by staff directive ten months earlier. At no point were they told that independent engineers had confirmed the existing structure could be remediated. At no point were they told that their own procurement documents had committed to a 135,000-square-foot facility that “will expand” — with a 50‑metre competition pool listed as the top program priority and the leisure pool deferred to a later phase — a commitment that was quietly abandoned without explanation.

The Park Board Problem

Under the Vancouver Charter, the Park Board has exclusive jurisdiction and control over parks and recreation. The only Park Board employees are its seven elected commissioners. Every other person working on parks and recreation in Vancouver — including Steve Jackson, the General Manager — is a City of Vancouver employee who reports up through the City Manager's office.

This creates a structural vulnerability that Amrolia's emails expose in stark terms. The people with the authority to make decisions about the Vancouver Aquatic Centre are the commissioners. But the people actually making the decisions — choosing the pool size, directing the architects, stopping work on options, "landing on the design" — were City staff who answer to the City Manager, not to the Park Board.

When Amrolia wrote that she would "wait to hear from Steve J," she was not deferring to the Park Board. She was coordinating with a fellow City employee (Park Board General Manager, Steve Jackson) about what to recommend to elected officials who would only see the result, never the process that produced it.

Park Board commissioners voted in February 2025 on what staff presented to them: two options, both 25-metre pools, neither including the simple remediation documented by Ausenco, neither containing a 50-metre pool. The vote was not a decision. It was a ratification of a decision that had already been made in Amrolia's March 2024 emails.

The Auditor General Has Already Warned About This

Vancouver Auditor General Mike Macdonell's recent performance audit found that City staff routinely acted without properly informing Council and failed to provide relevant information to decision-makers. In his public commentary, Macdonell was blunt:

Requirements for Council approval are not perfunctory – they are an important control requirement, and it is inappropriate for management in any way to supplant its judgement for that of Council.

City Council's own strategic priorities commit to "Good government" that "responsibly steward[s] the public funds with which we are entrusted" and to making "service, infrastructure and policy decisions" that put residents' well-being "front and centre."

When senior staff kill options, direct architects, land on designs, and then hand councillors a script, they are not stewarding public funds. They are supplanting elected judgement with their own — exactly what the Auditor General warned against.

What Happens Next

In response to mounting evidence that staff misled the Park Board, Commissioner Scott Jensen has introduced a motion for the March 9, 2026 meeting to refer the Vancouver Aquatic Centre renewal process to the Auditor General for investigation.

Commissioners who care about their own authority — and about the voters who elected them — still have a narrow window to act. At a minimum, they should pause any irreversible demolition activity until the Auditor General has reviewed the full record and commissioners have seen the options that staff chose to eliminate without their knowledge.

The emails published today are just the beginning. In the coming weeks, Protecting Our Vancouver Aquatic Centre Society will release additional records from the hundreds of documents now in our possession — including confidential board briefing memos, cost analysis records, and further evidence of how a $175-million project was steered to a predetermined outcome while the public and their elected representatives were kept out of the room.

For journalists: We are available for interviews and can provide additional documentation supporting these findings. Click here to email us.

For legal observers: We welcome analysis of the procedural issues identified in this investigation and the potential legal remedies available.

Last Updated: March 2nd, 2026

Next Update: In the coming days as we continue to release discovery documents in this new series.

This is the first in a series of articles based on records obtained through a discovery agreement with the City of Vancouver in connection with ongoing Supreme Court proceedings.