Dan Fumano: Many Vancouver taxpayers applaud ABC Vancouver’s attempt to shrink the municipal payroll — but it’s reasonable for them to want to know how much they’re paying for this surge in severance payouts.
![VANCOUVER, BC - November 5, 2025 - City Hall in Vancouver, BC, November 5, 2025. (Arlen Redekop / Postmedia staff photo) (Story by Dan Fumano) [PNG Merlin Archive]](https://i0.wp.com/smartcdn.gprod.postmedia.digital/vancouversun/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/0110-col-fumano-union-1.jpg?resize=801%2C601&ssl=1)
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The City of Vancouver paid out severance to what might be a record number of non-union employees last year, but the municipality is refusing to say how much those payouts cost taxpayers, despite the fact it has released this information in past years.
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Carson Binda, the Canadian Taxpayers Federation’s B.C. director, said the ABC-majority city council’s efforts to shrink the bloated civic bureaucracy are overdue, but a “good move” for the city. But, he says, there’s no legitimate reason to prevent taxpayers from knowing how much these cuts are costing.
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“It certainly seems like the City of Vancouver is trying to hide these dollar figures and that’s unacceptable,” Binda said. “The city can and should be releasing that information proactively.”
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Every B.C. municipality is required by law to publicly report the number of severance agreements it enters into each year, among other financial details, in its annual statement of financial information. However, cities aren’t required to release the total dollar figure for those severance agreements — but they can choose to do so.
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Last year, city hall promptly provided the aggregate dollar figure to The Globe and Mail upon request, reporting just over $2 million in severance paid to 34 non-union employees over 2023 and 2024. In the 2010s, when Vision Vancouver had a majority on council, the city went further still, publicly releasing individual severance payouts for former employees.
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B.C.’s second most populous city, Surrey, also shared dollar figures last year with The Globe (16 severance agreements over 2023 and 2024 totalling almost $2.5 million). Surrey also provided the 2025 total to Postmedia News this month upon request ($1.8 million for six severance agreements).
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This year in Vancouver, it’s a different story.
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In April, Vancouver’s statement of financial information revealed the city entered 79 severance agreements last year with non-union workers. That’s as many as the previous seven years combined, and almost nine times the annual average of the previous 22 years, as far back as the records go on the city’s website.
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Postmedia asked the city in late April for the total dollar figure for last year’s 79 severance agreements. Initially, the city said it wouldn’t disclose any severance information beyond what’s required by law, “to respect the confidentiality of impacted employees.”
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Our email correspondence continued over the next few weeks. I wrote that I failed to see how ex-employees’ confidentiality could be affected by releasing aggregate totals, as Vancouver and other cities previously disclosed, and the city replied: “While similar information may have been provided previously, that disclosure was outside the city’s standard process and does not reflect our current approach to reviewing and releasing this type of information.”
