Bob Mackin
John Dyble disappeared.
From the board of the money-losing Crown corporation that runs B.C. Place Stadium and the Vancouver Convention Centre, that is.
Christy Clark’s ex-deputy John Dyble quit PavCo before Horgan’s swearing-in (ImageChef)
Dyble was Christy Clark’s $323,000-a-year deputy minister and cabinet secretary for five of her six years as premier.
The professional engineer with a master’s degree retired in spring 2016, only to be appointed in fall 2016 to the B.C. Pavilion Corporation’s board of directors.
That gig pays a $7,500 annual retainer plus $500 for attending each board and committee meeting.
PavCo chair Stuart McLaughlin ignored theBreaker’s requests for comment after theBreaker noticed that Dyble’s name and biography had been deleted from the PavCo website in July.
The stadium’s spokesman, Duncan Blomfield, finally responded Aug. 17 to confirm that Dyble resigned July 7, but, “as a matter of policy, PavCo does not comment on personnel matters.”
Meghan McRae, the spokeswoman for NDP tourism, arts and culture minister Lisa Beare, said by email: “I don’t have any information regarding the reason for his resignation.”
July 7 was 11 days before the NDP’s John Horgan was sworn-in as premier to replace Clark and the BC Liberals, who lost a no confidence vote to the NDP/Green alliance on June 29.
Dyble’s days were numbered anyway. The 27-year civil servant held senior posts in the transportation, forestry, health and tourism ministries and worked under Clark during the health firings and ethnic outreach scandals.
His quickie, two-week internal report on the so-called Quick Wins scandal found staff broke rules by doing party campaign work on public time, but the report was otherwise deemed a whitewash by NDP critics. Dyble cleverly delayed the release of 8,000 pages of email until after the 2013 election. Those documents sparked an RCMP investigation in 2013 and breach of trust charges in 2016 against ex-BC Liberal aide Brian Bonney.
Ombudsperson Jay Chalke wrote, in his report on the 2012 health firings, that “Premier Clark did not recall ever being briefed about the decision to terminate the employees. Mr. Dyble denied he put any pressure on [Graham] Whitmarsh to make the dismissal decisions, and this is consistent with the evidence of Deputy Minister Lynda Tarras, then-head of the Public Service Agency, and Mr. Whitmarsh.”
When the report was released on April 6, however, Clark said she “did ask a lot of questions at the time. As I said before, the assurances that we all received were that these were absolutely justified and the right thing to do.”
Last Oct. 24, Clark, and minister responsible Todd Stone, added Dyble, BC Liberal advertising strategist Jatinder Rai, Surrey business improvement association head Elizabeth Model and Kamloops hotelier Ron Mundi to the PavCo board. They replaced consultant Stephanie Sharp and Don Zurowski, a local politician in Prince George and BC Liberal supporter.
theBreaker was unable to reach Dyble for comment.
UPDATE (Sept. 12): theBreaker received a copy of Dyble’s resignation letter to then-minister Todd Stone. In keeping with the Clark Clique’s oral government tradition, the letter offers no hint of Dyble’s reason for quitting. “I have discussed my resignation with Stuart [McLaughlin],” Dyble wrote.
BRD-2017-72835 Dyble Resignation by BobMackin on Scribd
