‘Big expensive idea with no funding’: Vancouver park board chair questions mayor’s free swimming lesson pitch

Mayor Ken Sim's motion on bringing in free swimming lessons passed unanimously, but the chair of the park board says critical questions remain unanswered.

Free swimming lessons could be coming to Vancouver, although the chair of the park board says crucial questions about cost, capacity and timing remain unanswered.

Mayor Ken Sim’s motion asking staff and the park board to come up with a plan passed unanimously at city council—as Sim channeled Joe Fortes, the local lifeguard credited with saving at least 29 lives last century.

“Early-stage swimming instruction such as floating, treading water and basic propulsion provides the greatest reduction in drowning risk,” Sim said as he read his proposed motion to council before it passed unanimously on Wednesday.

The plan calls for the free lessons to be prioritized for kids aged three to 12.

“We’re thrilled to see this proposal come forward, and we welcome city leaders as allies in education and safety,” said Lenea Grace with the Lifesaving Society of BC and Yukon while addressing councillors at the meeting.

But the move comes after a period of sustained tension between city council and the elected park board, which Sim has been trying to abolish.

Board Chair Tom Digby has suggested the plan is not within council’s jurisdiction, and questions where the money will come from.

“Presenting a big expensive idea with no funding for it, I’ll let the voters come to their own conclusion about whether that’s an election ploy,” Digby told CTV News. “We will present the mayor with a suggested budget for this and we’ll see if he’s willing to step up to fund it, and I look forward to that discussion.”

Details on cost still need to be worked out, according to members of Sim’s ABC majority on council.

“We certainly don’t have the costing yet,” Coun. Lisa Dominato said. “That’ll be part of the work that’s undertaken. And then again, we’ll go into budget deliberation processes at the end of this year for the next year, so don’t have those numbers yet.”

Then there are also questions about who will teach these children and where, with access to swim lessons already a major issue.

“If we do provide swimming lessons for 4,000 young people, which would be a great gift for free, there’s still 8,000 children on our waiting list,” Digby said. “If people hear that there’s free swimming lessons, there’s going to be 20,000 people on our waiting list.”

The motion went beyond swimming lessons and also proposed coming up with per-capita pool targets, and finding ways to create more capacity through options like expanding pool hours.