Since August 2025, our organization, Protecting Our Vancouver Aquatic Centre Society, has submitted 120 Freedom of Information requests to the City of Vancouver seeking basic transparency on a $170 million taxpayer-funded project. To date, we have received results for exactly one request. This is not bureaucratic inefficiency — this is systematic obstruction of the public's right to know.

The FOI Nightmare: A Process Designed to Fail

Under British Columbia's Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act (FIPPA), public bodies have 30 business days to respond to FOI requests. Extensions are permitted under specific circumstances outlined in Section 10 of the Act, but only for an additional 30 days unless the Commissioner grants permission for longer delays. The Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner has repeatedly criticized government bodies for exceeding these timelines, with BC's Privacy Commissioner documenting over 4,000 cases where the provincial government unlawfully extended response times without legal authority.

The City of Vancouver's handling of our requests has transformed a legal obligation into a deliberate strategy of delay, denial, and manufactured obstacles. Our experience reveals a pattern: we submit meticulously detailed requests, face weeks of silence, then receive responses demanding exorbitant fees or invoking spurious exemptions — anything to avoid disclosure.

Case Study: FOI 2025-519 — The RFP That Proverbially Revealed Everything, While Simultaneously Revealing Nothing At All (After Four Months of Obstruction)

Our most revealing experience involves FOI request 2025-519, submitted on August 5, 2025, seeking the Request for Proposal (RFP), and associated documents for the "Infrastructure Design Consultant" services contract awarded to Acton Ostry Architects on September 13, 2023. This RFP forms the contractual foundation of the entire aquatic centre redesign — its details and language become legally binding once awarded unless modified by change orders. In addition, this request sought the details of the comparative feasibility study referenced in the RFEOI (in which the awarded firm was contractually required to provide 3 distinct options exploring renewal, expansion, and complete rebuild of the facility).

The Timeline of Obstruction:

August 5, 2025: We submit FOI 2025-519 requesting the RFP for Infrastructure Design Consultant services and feasibility study. That same day, we receive confirmation number 2025-519.

September 8, 2025 (34 days later): The City responds — not with the requested documents, but with a fee estimate of $675 to "attempt to locate" the files, with the ominous caveat that "the actual cost may be higher or lower".

This fee structure deserves scrutiny. While the BC provincial government charges a $10 application fee for general FOI requests, the City of Vancouver has not yet implemented such a per-request fee — though we note that City Council's upcoming meeting on December 9th, 2025 includes a motion that may formalize such a policy. Under FIPPA, processing fees for search time, document preparation, and copying may be charged, but must be considered for waiver if the request involves matters of public interest. A $170 million generational taxpayer-funded project facing unprecedented opposition unquestionably meets the public interest threshold.

September 19, 2025: We request a fee exemption based on public interest grounds.

September 24, 2025: We follow up requesting a status update.

September 25, 2025: FOI Director Cobi Falconer responds that the office has agreed to proceed with "points one and two" of our request without a fee — a seemingly one-time exemption, as no future requests would receive similar treatment.

October 1, 2025: We respond: "We look forward to receiving those documents".

October 3, 2025: We send additional correspondence noting that "It is already 2 months (45 business days) since this first request was made, and we have received nothing. Other FOI requests (for example, the 2023 RFP FOI submitted by an unknown individual) was dealt with and despatched in 5 business days, but ours weren't addressed for weeks". To clarify: the 2023 RFP request (FOI 2023-642) received its official response within 5 business days — though not the actual records, as the request was denied on other grounds. Nevertheless, this stands in stark contrast to the weeks of silence we experienced. More telling still is the historical record: publicly available documents show that in 2018, under FOI request 2018-213 concerning a development permit application (unrelated to the VAC), the City provided a complete response with all responsive records attached in approximately 8 days — request submitted April 12, 2018; response with records received April 20, 2018. The City has demonstrated it can respond efficiently when it chooses to do so.

October 17, 2025 (just 3 days before the deadline): We receive a letter from FOI Director Cobi Falconer invoking Section 10(1)(b) and 10(1)(c) of FIPPA to extend the response deadline by an additional 30 business days to December 2, 2025.

The full justification provided by Director Falconer reads: "Our thirty (30) business days' time limit expires on October 20, 2025; however, due to the large number of records that need to be searched, retrieved and processed, as well as additional consultation, we are unable to meet this deadline. Consequently, under sections 10(1)(b) and 10(1)(c) of the Act we are extending the time for responding to your request by thirty (30) business days to December 2, 2025 as meeting the original time limit would unreasonably interfere with our operations. We will, of course, try to respond as quickly as possible within this timeframe. Sections 10(1)(b) and 10(1)(c) read as follows: 10 (1) The head of a public body may extend the time for responding to a request for up to 30 days if one or more of the following apply: (b) a large number of records are requested or must be searched and meeting the time limit would unreasonably interfere with the operations of the public body; (c) more time is needed to consult with a third party or other public body before the head can decide whether or not to give the applicant access to a requested record".

This raises immediate questions: Why would "third party consultation" be required for an RFP that, by all accounts, should follow the same structure and wording as the (known) RFEOI? Why would consultation be necessary to "decide whether or not to give the applicant access" to documents forming the basis of a public procurement process for a taxpayer-funded contract? And why, after nearly three months, was it only three days before the agreed deadline that we learned of potential access restrictions, or the ability to completely withhold or object to release in its entirety?

The December 1st Termination: Systematic Obstruction on Full Display

December 1, 2025, 2:20 PM (one day before results were due): The City sends an email cancelling FOI request 2025-519 and several others. The previously agreed, fee-waived FOI was terminated due to a mis-understood assumption about our litigation process.

Neither our organization nor our legal counsel ever gave consent, nor were contacted, for these FOI requests to be closed. We have always operated under the fundamental principle that as private citizens, we retain the right to pursue parallel paths: public FOI requests independent of any legal proceedings.

The timing is no coincidence. This cancellation arrived exactly one day before the December 2, 2025 deadline — after the request had already been delayed for nearly four months.

The 2023 Precedent: A Pattern of Deliberate Delay

This exact RFP was requested before — by unknown individuals on October 17, 2023, under file number 2023-642, just one month after the contract was awarded to Acton Ostry on September 13, 2023.

The City's response, signed by FOI Director Cobi Falconer, stated: "The department involved in the record collections for this request has advised us that the procurement has not yet concluded. Records cannot be provided until the contract is signed. In order to ensure we can meet the required statutory deadlines, please re-submit your request for the above records in 60 business days, as per section 20 of the Act". It's odd that the contract was still apparently not signed more than a month following its award, no?

This response warrants careful examination. Section 20(1)(b) of FIPPA permits public bodies to refuse disclosure of information "that, within 60 days after the applicant's request is received, is to be published or released to the public". However, Section 20(3) is explicit: "If the information referred to in subsection (1)(b) is not published or released to the public within 60 days after the applicant's request is received, the head of the public body must disclose the information to the applicant on, or within 30 days of, that date".

In other words, FIPPA requires automatic disclosure after 60 days if the information is not publicly released. The City's instruction to "re-submit your request in 60 business days" directly contradicts the statutory requirement. The law mandates automatic disclosure — not re-application.

Based on our research, no subsequent request was filed 60 days later. This means these procurement documents should have been automatically disclosed over two years ago in December 2023, without any additional request required.

The City's misrepresentation of Section 20 requirements appears designed to discourage requesters and create the false impression that disclosure is discretionary rather than mandatory after the 60-day period.

What Are They Hiding?

The obsessive protection of these particular documents raises a critical question: What is so damaging in this RFP that the City has now obstructed its release twice — once in 2023, and again in 2025?

We now know from documents we did obtain — the pre-RFP Request for Expression of Interest (RFEOI) — that Acton Ostry Architects were explicitly contracted to deliver a comparative feasibility study assessing three distinct renewal options:

1. Expanding the footprint of the existing facility to 135,000 square feet
2. Major renovations with retention of existing major structural elements
3. Complete replacement of the facility

Yet at the February 24, 2025 Park Board meeting, these same architects presented only one option — a scaled-down 25-meter pool constrained to the existing footprint — while claiming expansion was "not feasible". They delivered none of the contracted comparative analysis.

The RFP would reveal whether this failure to deliver contracted services was authorized by the City or represents a unilateral breach of contract. It would show whether cost comparisons between 50-meter and 25-meter options were ever conducted (spoiler: our FOI response in 2025-558 confirms for Class B estimates they were not). And it would document what specific deliverables the City agreed to pay $13.1 million to receive — potentially exposing violations of the City's own procurement policy ADMIN-008, which requires re-procurement when material scope changes occur. Taxpayers may now be overpaying — potentially in the millions — for both architectural services and construction management services based on contracts procured for a 135,000 square foot facility as confirmed in the RFEOI and Construction Manager bid documents, while receiving a facility reduced by 44% to the existing 75,000 square foot footprint.

But the RFP documents are not all that FOI 2025-519 requested. Our request also sought the feasibility study itself — the actual comparative analysis that Acton Ostry was contractually required to deliver assessing the three renewal options. If this study exists and contains the evidence-based comparison of expansion, major renovation, and complete replacement that the RFEOI mandated, its suppression would constitute proof that commissioners were deliberately denied the information necessary to make an informed decision. If the study was never completed — despite being the core deliverable for a $13.1 million contract — it would expose that taxpayers paid for work that was never performed, and that the entire procurement was a sham designed to rubber-stamp a predetermined outcome. Either scenario explains why the City is so desperate to prevent disclosure. The feasibility study would either prove commissioners were lied to by omission, or prove the architects failed to deliver contracted services while the City paid them anyway.

Given our comprehensive knowledge of the project — including the Ausenco engineering study confirming renovation was "feasible and practical," the TetraTech geotechnical investigation validating expansion soil conditions, and the January 2024 Construction Manager procurement stating the facility "will expand to approximately 135,000 square feet" — every piece of information we obtain fits perfectly into the timeline matrix, revealing a self-telling narrative of systematic deception.

On their own, individual documents might seem benign. But combined with our database of evidence spanning years, each new piece confirms what we have always thought to be true, while simply awaiting the few missing pieces of objective data to confirm its factual authenticity and the ultimate test of fit in our puzzle of data as it were.

We believe the City has always counted on requesters not having the context to understand what individual documents reveal. Our advantage is that we do have that context — and every FOI response, no matter how delayed, confirms the pattern.

The Broader Pattern: 120 Requests, One Result

FOI 2025-519 is not an isolated case — it is representative of the City's systematic approach to our 120 requests:

(a) We identify areas where FOI could uncover missing objective details — geotechnical studies, site surveys, RFEOIs, RFPs, contract details, feasibility studies, internal communications, cost estimates.

(b) We submit detailed requests via email with specific descriptions and date ranges.

(c) We are supposed to receive acknowledgment with a unique file number (e.g., FOI-2025-678) within one week.

(d) The FOI office has 30 business days under FIPPA to provide a response — though this does not mean results, only a response.

(e) After taking the full available time, we receive one of the following:

• Fee demands: Estimates requiring payment to "attempt to locate" files (not guaranteeing receipt), including one estimate exceeding $2,000.
• Third-party business interest claims: Invocation of FIPPA Section 21 claiming records "cannot be released" due to "business interests of a third party" — incorrectly applied, as in FOI 2025-558 regarding the maximum building footprint, which was only released after our lawyer intervened.
• Cancellations: Unilateral termination of requests without consent, as with 2025-519.

This is not a functioning FOI system. This is administrative warfare designed to exhaust resources, delay accountability, and protect officials from scrutiny.

The Irony: Awards vs. Reality

While the City obstructs basic transparency, the architectural community celebrates the project. The Canadian Architect magazine recently awarded the Vancouver Aquatic Centre design a 2025 Award of Excellence, with juror Alison Brooks proclaiming: "This project is so epic. If you didn't have a swimming pool there, it could be a cathedral. It's reaching for a sort of sublime, and I think it's good for Canadian architecture to do that".

The jury praised the design's "generosity, ambitious hybrid construction, and quiet material palette," its "new relationship between Vancouver's diverse communities, its Indigenous Peoples and its waterfront histories," and its goal to become "North America's first Passive House aquatic centre".

Yet this glowing narrative exists in complete disconnect from the truth beneath the surface:

• A process "shrouded in complete secrecy" with "lack of consultation with all user groups/stakeholders".
• A deliberate and unexplained departure from the ascending confidence of a committed 135,000 square foot expansion — from "contemplated" in January 2023, to the definitive "will expand" in January 2024, to the baseless "not feasible" claim in February 2025 — all without technical justification.
• Apparent procurement contract violations where architects contracted to deliver comparative analysis of three options delivered only one, while failing to disclose validated technical studies.
• Engagement with Musqueam Indian Band, Squamish Nation, and Tsleil-Waututh Nation — explicitly required in Schedule 1 of the RFEOI as "Engagement with Musqueam Indian Band, Squamish Nation and Tsleil-Waututh Nation (MST), user groups and key stakeholders to inform preferred program option" — was treated as an optional recommendation rather than a binding requirement.
• Public consultation characterized as "primarily to inform" rather than genuinely solicit input.
• Deliberate withholding of information the public has been trying to obtain for over two years.

Canadian Architect describes the facility as "better in every way" than the original, "interweaving Indigenous themes in a manner that could not be accomplished within the existing building". The mass timber construction "references Coast Salish plank houses," we are told.

But how can a project signal "a new relationship" with Indigenous Peoples and communities when the very consultation process mandated in the procurement contract was disregarded? How can it represent "generosity" when it eliminates the 50-meter pool that 77% of plebiscite voters approved in 2022, replacing it with a 25-meter recreational facility at 65% higher cost? How does one speak of "a new relationship" built on the foundation of broken contractual promises to consult "user groups and key stakeholders"? How can architectural "innovation" justify the systematic suppression of technical evidence confirming alternatives were viable? And how can any building claim to honour community values when the community itself was deliberately excluded from the process that shaped it?

The disconnect between the award jury's aspirational rhetoric and the documented reality of suppressed evidence, violated consultation requirements, and systematic public exclusion could not be more stark.

What Happens Next

We continue to fight. Our judicial review petition, filed in BC Supreme Court on August 18, 2025, challenges the corrupted process that led to this decision. We are continuing to work with our legal team at Bojm, Funt & Gibbons to file an amended petition incorporating the mounting evidence of FOI obstruction, suppressed technical studies, and material misrepresentation to decision-makers. We have also filed a complaint with the BC Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner regarding several of our fee-demanded FOI requests to date, and will pursue complaints with additional governing bodies as necessary. Furthermore, we will involve our legal counsel to challenge the inappropriately terminated FOI requests and secure the disclosure to which we are legally entitled.

Of additional particular concern is what we have discovered in the public record: on July 22, 2024, the Park Board approved a motion for "in camera meetings" (latin for "in chambers", "private") — closed to the public — under Section 165.2(1) of the Vancouver Charter. The approved justifications for secrecy include paragraph (j): "information that is prohibited, or information that if it were presented in a document would be prohibited, from disclosure under section 21 (disclosure harmful to business interests of a third party) of the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act". This is the same Section 21 provision the City initially invoked to deny our FOI request 2025-558 for the maximum building footprint documents — until our lawyer's intervention forced release. It raises troubling questions about what discussions have occurred behind closed doors, shielded from public scrutiny under the guise of "third party business interests," regarding a project that is entirely taxpayer-funded on public land.

The public has a right to transparency. Taxpayers have a right to accountability. And voters have a right to expect that their democratic decisions will be honored rather than systematically undermined through administrative secrecy.

This FOI nightmare is not a bug in the system — it is the system working exactly as designed: to protect officials from scrutiny, consultants from accountability, and predetermined outcomes from democratic interference.

But we will not stop. The truth, as they say, shall set you free — even if the City charges $675 and takes four months to try to prevent it.

We will continue this fight in the courts and the public square until Vancouver gets the transparent, evidence-based governance its citizens deserve, and the 50m pool it deserves. The evidence is overwhelming. The obstruction is documented. And the fight for transparency continues.

This investigation is ongoing. Follow our website, and subscribe to our newsletter for updates as new information becomes available through FOI responses, legal proceedings, and public records requests.

Last Updated: December 8, 2025
Next Update: Following submission of amended judicial review petition