Read this timeline slowly, because the City is counting on you not to.
- Sunday, June 28 — the Vancouver Aquatic Centre's final day open to the public. The City closes it, citing preparation for demolition and, when pressed in court, public safety.
- Monday, June 29 — the very next day, the facility is opened for a private group. Not a lobby reception. People in the water. Children in the water. Lifeguards on duty. We have documented it.
- Tuesday, June 30 — the building is used privately again, for a second gathering.
So let's make sure we have this straight. A building the City spent a full day in the Supreme Court of British Columbia describing as too dangerous to keep open for the public was, within twenty-four hours of closing to that public, filled with a private group and their kids for an evening swim. And then used again the night after that.
Too dangerous for you. Open for them.
If the building is genuinely unsafe, it does not become safe because the swimmers signed a private rental agreement. And if it was safe enough to rent out for a children's swim on Monday, it was safe enough to stay open for the public on Monday — and the entire basis for closing it collapses.
The Park Board Is Not Powerless — and Its Own Chair Just Said So
You will hear, from both the City and the Park Board, a familiar refrain: this isn't ours to fix. The City says the design and the facility are the Park Board's call. The Park Board says it doesn't control the money. A $170-million decision to override the voters floats in the space between them, owned by no one. We've documented that deflection for over a year. This week it curdled into something worse — the suggestion that the Park Board's hands are simply tied, that there is nothing it can do.
That is not true, and the law says so plainly.
Under section 488 of the Vancouver Charter, the Park Board has exclusive jurisdiction and control over the parkland and facilities it governs. That control expressly includes deciding how the facility is used, setting and approving its rentals, and — in the Charter's own words — the removal or demolition of any existing improvements. The use of the building, the rental of the building, the demolition of the building: all of it sits inside the Park Board's jurisdiction, not outside it.
Which brings us back to this week. The Park Board approves rentals of its facilities. So when the VAC was rented to a private group on Monday, that was the Park Board exercising exactly the authority it claims it does not have. You cannot be powerless over a building and rent it out in the same breath.
And there is one more piece the public deserves to see. On June 29, the Chair of the Park Board wrote formally to the Mayor and Council to insist on the Board's exclusive, statutory jurisdiction over park land — objecting that City Council and staff have been making decisions and public announcements about capital projects on park land that the Board never approved, and stating that the Board will not surrender or dilute that jurisdiction.
Sit with the contradiction. The Board asserts, in writing, to Council, that it holds exclusive jurisdiction over these lands and facilities — while the message to the public is that it is powerless to act. Both cannot be true. Either the jurisdiction exists, in which case the Board can use it, or it doesn't, in which case the letter to Council is empty. The Board does not get to claim the authority and disclaim the responsibility at the same time.
That June 29 letter also confirms, from the Board's own hand, what our investigation showed months ago: that the direction on this project was driven by City staff and presented to the elected Board, rather than decided by it. That was always the heart of this case. Now the Board itself is complaining about the very thing.
The authority to act is not missing. What has been and continues to be missing, is the will.
The Safety Story Never Had an Engineer Behind It
When the City argued danger in court, it produced no structural engineering report concluding the building is unsafe. Not one. Its affidavits came from City staff who are not structural engineers.
The only engineering evidence actually before the Court pointed the other way — and the City commissioned all of it. The Ausenco report (February 2023) found remediating the concrete "feasible and practical." A structural engineer from GS Sayers assessed the structure in November 2025 and found no structural cause for alarm in what he examined. Notably, the City — which had this report, dated November 6, 2025 — still produced no engineering opinion of its own concluding the building is unsafe. The one real-world issue — small pieces of concrete that can spall from the ceiling — was already handled: the City spent roughly $40,000 installing safety netting above the pool following the November closure to catch any debris, the standard engineering fix, now firmly in place.
All the while, this "dangerous" building sat open for months, full of families, swim clubs, and hundreds of children at a time. No city on earth runs an unsafe public pool full of kids for months; the liability would be catastrophic. The building stayed open because the building is standing — and this week's private rentals prove the City and the Park Board both know it.
They told a judge the building was too dangerous for the public — then handed the keys to a private group days later. That is not a safety related closure. It never was. It seems we've caught them in a significant lie.
Why We Believe the Ruling Was Wrong
We lost the injunction on June 23. We were always clear it was the long shot. But we believe, with respect, that the decision rested on a version of the facts and the law that does not hold up — and our counsel has now formally written to the City to advise that we are considering an appeal.
Three points, in plain English:
The safety finding rested on unqualified evidence. The decision accepted that the building must close for safety — but the claims of danger came from a City affiant who is not a structural engineer, treating surface and façade problems like spalling as though they were a threat to the building's integrity. That is a technical opinion on the one question that decided the motion, offered by someone without the technical qualifications to give it. The only actual engineering in the record — commissioned by the City itself — pointed the other way.
"Irreparable harm" is a factor to weigh, not a locked gate. An injunction is a flexible, interrelated assessment — not three separate tests you must each pass or lose. Set the bar high enough and almost no ordinary member of the public could ever clear it. That is not what the law requires.
You cannot "just sue for damages later" — there is no such lawsuit. This is a judicial review of a government decision, not a claim for money. There is no legal mechanism by which the public sues the City for being denied access to their own pool. And even if there were, the "damages" would be paid out of the public purse — taxpayers compensating themselves. Compensation that circles from the public back to the public is illusory. When the reasoning against us said the harm could be fixed with money afterward, it pointed at a door that opens onto a wall.
An Election Is Coming
This has become an issue in the coming municipal election, and it should be. Every candidate for mayor and council, and every Park Board commissioner, will now have to decide — on the public record — whether a borrowing authority approved by voters can be quietly repurposed to deliver something voters were never asked to fund. Warm words about the pool are easy. Votes and motions are the record that counts. Voters will be watching who does what, not who says what. Action. Not words.
This Is Why We Need You
We are asking for help, plainly, because the moment calls for it.
An appeal is real work and real money. It is the difference between letting a false safety story stand because it worked once, and forcing it to answer in a higher court. The City has an unlimited legal budget funded by your taxes. We have you.
If this week made you angry — a pool closed to the public for "safety" on Sunday and rented out for a private children's swim on Monday, while the bodies responsible point fingers at each other — then channel that. Chip in to fund the appeal.
For journalists: We're happy to walk you through the closure timeline, the private-use documentation, the Park Board's June 29 jurisdiction letter, the injunction decision, and the engineering reports already in the record — including the ones the City commissioned itself. Click here to email us. Counsel is not available for comment.
Last Updated: July 1st, 2026
With thanks,
Jon Girard Managing Director, PROTECTING OUR VANCOUVER AQUATIC CENTRE SOCIETY
PROTECTING OUR VANCOUVER AQUATIC CENTRE SOCIETY (S0083228) is a registered non-profit organization dedicated to democratic accountability and voter rights. The judicial review (Case No. S-263492) has been brought pursuant to the Judicial Review Procedure Act.
