Vancouver again ordered to release addresses behind rental-housing study

Vancouver was again ordered to disclose the property addresses used in a rental-housing policy study after an information adjudicator reconsidered the dispute following a court ruling and found the city had not proved the financial harms needed to keep them confidential.

In City of Vancouver, Order F26-53, 2026 BCIPC 66, issued June 23, 2026, adjudicator Rene Kimmett directed the city to provide all the information in the responsive records, including the addresses. The decision concerns access to research used in housing policy, not approval of a development or a finding that a property has a particular market value.

Addresses behind published modelling

The dispute arose from the city’s 2019 review of incentives for purpose-built rental housing. Vancouver retained Coriolis Consulting Corp. to assess existing policies and possible changes.

Coriolis modelled how different development scenarios could affect estimated profit margins and supportable land values. It used actual sites as representative examples, then generalized the findings to the district level. The modelling relied on publicly available information, and the property owners were unaware it was being done.

Three memoranda summarizing the work became public through reports to council. Supporting exhibits contained charts comparing scenarios, sites and financial estimates. By the time of the inquiry, most of that material had been disclosed. The remaining dispute concerned site addresses on four pages.

The city relied on exceptions in the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act for harm to public bodies’ financial or economic interests and harm to third-party business interests.

A court ordered a second look

Kimmett had ordered disclosure in an earlier decision. Vancouver obtained judicial review in the B.C. Supreme Court, which set that order aside in Vancouver (City) v. British Columbia (Information and Privacy Commissioner), 2026 BCSC 881, and returned the matter for reconsideration.

The court identified two problems. One concerned the difference between the reliability of the consultant’s work and city staff’s confidence in using it without knowing the underlying addresses. The other concerned confidential financial information about the property owners. The court required the adjudicator to complete the analysis of the alleged harms, rather than directing a final disclosure or withholding result.

On reconsideration, Kimmett used the parties’ existing submissions and evidence.

Loss of confidence did not establish financial harm

The city said Coriolis would stop supplying site addresses if they had to be disclosed publicly. Without them, staff would be less able to scrutinize the modelling used to set rental incentives. Incentives set too low might discourage rental construction; incentives set too high could require more negotiations with developers and additional staff resources.

Kimmett accepted both the importance of the modelling and Coriolis’s evidence that it would stop providing addresses. But she found the city had not established a sufficiently concrete connection between disclosure and the financial or economic harm protected by the statute.

The city had not adequately explained how reduced rental development would harm its own finances or provided enough detail about the magnitude of added staffing and resource costs. Not every additional public expense meets the statutory threshold.

The adjudicator also considered the city’s ability to retain a different consultant. Its evidence acknowledged that alternatives existed, although none had Coriolis’s long history with Vancouver. The asserted transition costs were insufficiently explained, and a claim that another consultant would provide inferior modelling was speculative.

Confidential information still required proof of harm

For the third-party exception, Kimmett accepted the court’s conclusion that disclosure would reveal financial information about the owners and that the information had been supplied in confidence. Those findings did not resolve the final requirement: whether disclosure could reasonably be expected to cause one of the specified harms.

The city argued that similar information would no longer be supplied. Kimmett found that Coriolis’s position did not establish what other consultants would do. There was no evidence that alternative providers would refuse to supply addresses, and the prospect of paid consulting work could encourage them to do so.

She also rejected the claim of undue financial loss or gain to owners. The evidence about effects on development, land prices and possible sales was too vague or speculative. The exhibits were several years old, identified as discussion drafts and based on assumptions about hypothetical development. The city’s own evidence indicated that sophisticated developers conduct their own research and financial modelling before purchasing sites.

Kimmett ordered disclosure and required the city to send the commissioner’s office a copy of the records and covering letter provided to the requester. The order set an August 6, 2026 compliance deadline. It did not determine whether any of the studied properties should be developed or validate the estimates as current valuations.