Bob Mackin
More turmoil inside Vancouver’s oldest civic party.
The president of the Non-Partisan Association says he overruled a motion to block the candidacy of a board hopeful.
In an interview with theBreaker.news, Mark Angus said Jane Frost’s name is appearing on the ballot for the Nov. 25 vote “in the best interest of the organization.”
Candidate for NPA board Jane Frost (LinkedIn)
A motion by director Eli Konorti, who has since resigned, was seconded by treasurer David Mawhinney and passed by a slim majority. It called for Frost’s removal from the ballot.
Frost is a former federal government negotiator involved in the B.C. Treaty Commission process. She leads the so-called “Group of Seven” seeking to take over the board of the party which backs five members of Vancouver city council, the biggest bloc on the 2018-elected council. Some board members complained Frost had gained access to inside information only accessible to the board.
Angus did not get into the details of the complaints against Frost, other than to say “there was some concern by some members that she may have gotten a foot up in going out and contacting different people that should be running. We looked at it. She did not have a membership list.”
Angus received a legal opinion on Nov. 15 from lawyer and former NPA president Paul Barbeau, who called the motion defective. Barbeau’s letter to Angus, obtained by theBreaker.news, advised that the NPA board “give serious consideration to retracting the said motion and expunging it from the record.”
Barbeau wrote that Frost met the requirements for nomination to the board and no formal or informal investigation or inquiry process was initiated or completed.
“No independent assessment has occurred, regarding what (if any) NPA property may have been used by the individual who is the subject of the motion,” wrote Barbeau, the NPA president from 2004 to 2007 and the current president of the BC Liberal Party.
In an internal party email, Angus wrote that Frost may have broken protocol, but did not break any rules. He called the opposition to Frost’s candidacy an overreaction that would “cause nothing but grief for the NPA.”
“If you care about the city and the NPA, show some true leadership and damn the torpedoes, full bore ahead and let’s get this AGM done and move forward,” Angus wrote.
NPA 2018 mayoral candidate Ken Sim (Mackin)
Frost is involved in the so-called Group of Seven bloc, with other board candidates Stephen Molnar, David Pasin, Virginia Richards, Marie Rogers, Alaura Ross and Corey Sue. All seven were endorsed in a Nov. 21 email to party members email from Ken Sim, who lost the 2018 mayoral election by 957 votes to Kennedy Stewart.
Frost has not responded immediately for comment. Konorti has not commented.
Meanwhile, personal injury lawyer Wes Mussio is also among the contestants for the NPA board and his love of hockey is the main reason.
Mussio has law offices in Vancouver and Nanaimo, where he owns the B.C. Hockey League’s Nanaimo Clippers. While the Clippers are staying put in the Hub City, Mussio is hopeful to bring another junior A BCHL or junior B Pacific Junior Hockey League to Vancouver to fill the void left by the Langley-based Vancouver Giants.
“There are very limited opportunities to play high caliber hockey for boys/men between age 16 and 20 in Vancouver,” Mussio said. “Our children of Vancouver have to go elsewhere to play hockey even during school age due to this gap.”
Mussio was on the Cedar Party city council ticket in 2014, but withdrew because leader Glen Chernen demoted himself to the city council ballot and endorsed independent Bob Kasting for mayor. Kasting later endorsed NPA leader Kirk LaPointe.
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