AMIR: The real problem with Kits Pool isn't what Mayor Sim says it is

This week, Vancouver’s only public saltwater swimming pool, Kitsilano Pool, became a municipal election issue.

On Monday, Mayor Ken Sim demanded that the Vancouver Park Board “open the damn pool”, criticizing the pool’s current reservation system and timed public swim sessions.

(Kits Pool is already open daily, with public swim sessions open to both reservations and drop-ins, as well as dedicated morning length swims.)

The Mayor’s reductive rhetoric set off an afternoon of political theatre, with Kits Pool serving as both the backdrop and the battleground. Park Board Commissioner Brennan Bastyovanszky – wearing only a speedo and running shoes after a drop-in swim at the pool – joined Park Board Chair Tom Digby to respond with their own press conference.

Digby accused Mayor Sim of being “the first mayor in 140 years that has failed to meet ever, even once with the elected Park Board.”

“Maybe because of that… he got some of his information wrong.”

As Digby spoke, a lone heckler chanted “Free Kits Pool!”

The entire affair, ironically, felt like something out of Parks and Recreation.

 Yet, underneath the absurdity is a calculated political narrative. By deliberately framing Kits Pool as a managerial problem, Mayor Sim accuses the Park Board of “pulling a fast one” on Vancouverites with its online reservation system. This accusation coincided with Sim’s announcement that his party, ABC Vancouver, will field Park Board candidates in the upcoming 2026 municipal election.

(ABC Vancouver won a majority of Park Board seats in 2022, but lost that majority when three commissioners, including Bastyovanszky, resigned from the party to sit as independents in December 2023.)

Ultimately, it is a political distraction that relies on false premises about how Kits Pool actually operates, while ignoring the elephant in the pool.

Mayor Sim argues that Park Board deliberately limits public access to Kits Pool through a “complex reservation system” and “closures” left over from “COVID-era restrictions”. But that ahistorical characterization collapses years of operational planning into a cheap talking point.

In fact, many of Kits Pool’s current operating policies were adopted to address public dissatisfaction that predated the pandemic.

As early as 2018, Park Board’s Outdoor Aquatic Services was examining longstanding operational challenges at Kits Pool. On hot summer days, the first-come first-served model produced long lineups for entry, which created health and safety concerns, including heat-related medical incidents and (at times, violent) conflict between patrons. Early arrivals often occupied the pool for extended periods, limiting access for others. The overall uncertainty over whether visitors would even get into the pool became a major factor for the Park Board to improve Kits Pool’s operations.

That historical background is important, but largely absent from the theatrics of the Kits Pool debate. 

While the Covid-19 pandemic accelerated the implementation of the reservation system, timed swim sessions, and enhanced cleaning protocols, the improvements to the overall operations were retained to address pre-pandemic concerns. Today, much of that context has been displaced in the Mayor’s narrative that the current system is a collection of “outdated restrictions that no longer make any sense”. 

Mayor Sim incorrectly claims that “to go swimming in the pool today, you have to make a reservation,” implying that reservations are mandatory. “We’re calling on the elected Park Board to restore drop-in access at Kits Pools.”

“Vancouverites shouldn’t have to plan weeks in advance or compete online for the chance to enjoy a public pool.”

But, in reality, reservations are optional. They guarantee entry to a public swim session. And registration for Kits Pool reservations opens three days in advance, not “weeks”. 

Moreover, drop-in visitors can still access the pool without a reservation, subject to available capacity, just as they did before.

In 2025, drop-in visitors were turned away during just two public swim sessions because of capacity. That is a far better result than the first-come first-served model where lengthy queues kept visitors waiting indefinitely in the summer heat without any guarantee that they would get into the pool at all.

The timed swim sessions have been similarly misunderstood. They are not “closures” that restrict public access to the pool, as Mayor Sim has characterized them. They provide scheduled periods for cleaning, maintenance, and the safe transition between groups of swimmers, which helps manage overall demand throughout the day. 

But even if Kits Pool reverted back to the first-come first-served model that Mayor Ken Sim has romanticized, it would not address the elephant in the pool: “Kitsilano Pool has reached the end of its functional life”.

The irony, of course, is that the City of Vancouver, including Mayor Ken Sim, already knows this.

Originally constructed in 1931 and rebuilt in 1978, Kits Pool sits entirely within a designated floodplain and wave hazard zone, with its pool deck two metres below the City’s current flood construction standard. Decades of exposure to salt water and severe storms, along with an aging mechanical system, have made Kits Pool an increasingly expensive and challenging facility to operate.

“It’s basically crumbling into the ocean,” according to Park Board Chair Tom Digby.

Following a king tide storm in 2022, the costs to keep Kits Pool operational spiked from routine seasonal preparations to multi-million dollar annual emergency repairs to patch a facility that is already at the end of its functional life.

The City’s own feasibility study outlined three stark options for Kits Pool.

A $40 million investment to protect the pool would extend its life by about 15 years. A $90 million renovation would extend the pool’s life by 30 years. Or, the City could replace Kits Pool entirely for $300 million with a brand-new facility that would last 75 years.

But instead of confronting the elephant in the pool that continues to leak, the Mayor weaponizes misinformation to wage a political fight over online pool reservations.

Reservations are the culture-war issue, but infrastructure is the real governing issue.

And Vancouver deserves a serious debate about how much it is willing to invest to preserve one of its most iconic public spaces for another generation.

Instead, voter attention is being misdirected to how a pool should operate when the actual challenge is ensuring that there is even still a pool left to operate.

Mo Amir is the host of “This is VANCOLOUR”, British Columbia’s bonafide culture and politics TV talk show, now in its sixth season on CHEK-TV, Thursdays at 9pm. He is also a prolific political commentator across several outlets.