In 2022, Mayor Ken Sim promised to cut permit wait times from over eight months down to three weeks. Here's what happened.
Improving
Permit wait times are trending down since the promise was made, though the three-week target is still out of reach for most projects.
1The story
The promiseCut business permit wait times from over eight months to a maximum of three weeks.— ABC Vancouver's 2022 campaign platform
In plain terms: the typical building permit went from 90 days of waiting (2017–2022) to 79 days (2023–2026) — down 11 days. The share of permits cleared inside three weeks went from 9% to 21%. So the promise is working where it was aimed, but big buildings still take many months and 'three weeks' remains the exception rather than the rule.
2The evidence
↓ 11 days
typical permit (90 → 79 days)
+12 pts
approved within 3 weeks (9% → 21%)
Typical (median) wait time, by year
Lower is better. Green bars are the years after Mayor Sim took office.
Sim took office Nov 2022 — compare green years to blue ones.
Share approved within 3 weeks
The percentage of all permits cleared inside 21 days — the platform's "three weeks" goal.
3The fine print
How we calculated this
We pulled every building permit the City of Vancouver has published (over 51,000 records) and looked at how many days each took from application to approval. We use the median (the middle value) so a handful of very slow high-rise projects don't drag the 'typical' number up. We split the data at Mayor Sim's election in late 2022. 'Within 3 weeks' means approved inside 21 calendar days. This is our own analysis of public records, not an official city statistic.
City of Vancouver open data — Issued Building Permits · as of 2026-09-01 · Vancouver Promise Tracker — an independent look at whether local leaders deliver on their word.