Vancouver Mayor Ken Sim amends defamation response as trial date is set

Vancouver Mayor Ken Sim speaks during an announcement about a fan zone during the FIFA World Cup, in Vancouver, on Wednesday, March 4, 2026. Sim has apologized after falsely accusing Councillor Sean Orr of "handing out illegal drugs on Christmas Day to people on the streets," during a briefing for Chinese-speaking media in February. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl Dyck

VANCOUVER — Vancouver Mayor Ken Sim has changed the way he’s depicting a media briefing where he told reporters a councillor “handed out illegal drugs” on Christmas Day in 2025, with an amended legal filing in the defamation case against Sim calling it a “non-public and closed event.”

Sim, who does not deny making the remarks about Coun. Sean Orr, had previously called the event at City Hall an “interview.”

Court documents say Sim’s defamation trial is scheduled to begin in Vancouver on Jan. 31, 2028.

Orr filed the lawsuit in March, alleging Sim defamed him at the event with Chinese-speaking reporters in February.

Sim later apologized for the remarks and acknowledged they were untrue, while his legal filings deny that his remarks harmed Orr’s reputation.

The mayor, who is campaigning for re-election next month, says in an amended response to the lawsuit filed in July that Orr has “launched political attacks” against him and been critical of law enforcement.

The amended response says Sim’s comment about Orr was only published in English after a video was “delivered” to English-language media.

The Canadian Press attended the event and made an audio recording of Sim’s remarks in English, which were translated into Mandarin by Coun. Lenny Zhou, who was also present.

Lawyer David Church, who is representing Sim in the case, declined to comment and Orr’s lawyer was unavailable for comment on Monday but confirmed the trial date has been set.

Sim’s amended response to the lawsuit does not specify the origin of the statement about Orr, but it says that at the time drug possession in small amounts for personal use was “not illegal in British Columbia and had not been illegal for close to three years.”

Sim also says that when his statements were reported in the media, they were generally characterized as “untrue, or inaccurate, thereby resulting in virtually no period during which the statements were taken by a reasonable viewer, or consumer of media, to be true.”

This report by Darryl Greer, The Canadian Press, was first published Sept. 14, 2026