Bob Mackin
The Conservative campaign is downplaying a provincial fine levied against a candidate’s municipal party.
On April 2, Elections BC announced a $5,400 penalty for Richmond Community Coalition Association (RCCA). Chak Au, a Richmond city councillor who is running in Richmond Centre-Marpole in the April 28 election, was RCC’s top vote-getter in the 2022 election.
Pierre Poilievre and Chak Au (right).
At a July 2022 fundraising event, authorized principal official Thomas Leung accepted $10,800 for the RCC school board campaign from donor Yuan Li. RCC financial agent Scott Jaroszuk was not at the event.
“The finding was not against Chak Au personally,” said a statement sent by Sam Lilly of the Conservative campaign. “Elections BC notes ‘RCC has been cooperative with our investigation’ and ‘RCC cooperatively brought themselves into compliance.’”
RCC co-operated with the investigation and Jaroszuk provided proof of return of the prohibited donations to Li, as required under the law.
“It became apparent that contributions originally attributed to Hui Lin, Zo Hong, Hua Wang, Isaac Pang, Jacqueline Pang, Edmond Lau, Ivan Pang, Anthony Cheung and Jian Jun Zhang, all came from cheques provided by Yuan Li from Yuan Li’s bank account,” said the Elections BC investigation letter.
RCC ran four candidates for school board (Alice Wong, Rod Belleza, Linda Zhen Li and Rachel Ling) and three for city council (Au, Sheldon Starrett and Rahim Othman). Au topped the 2022 city council polls with 16,515 votes. Wong and Belleza were elected to school board. Linda Li unsuccessfully ran in the 2024 provincial election for the NDP in Richmond-Bridgeport.
“Accepting prohibited contributions gives an elector organization an advantage in that they did not need to seek contributions from an eligible source, saving them time during a busy campaign,” said the Elections BC investigation letter.
Au did not respond immediately for comment.
Meanwhile, in West Vancouver, Mayor Mark Sager’s financial agent and former law firm partner, Ron Nairne, was fined $500 for accepting a prohibited contribution.
Specifically, a $1,087.50 discount from John Moonen and Associates Ltd. Nairne was cooperative and it was a first offence.
In January, the B.C. Prosecution Service said that special prosecutor John Gordon decided not to file criminal charges against Sager or Nairne because he believed there was no substantial likelihood of conviction. They were investigated for potentially fraudulent, post-election expenses: the purchase of $14,622.52 of furniture and $11,755 for a communications firm.
theBreaker.news reported that Sager attended a fundraiser for Mark Carney’s Liberal leadership campaign, where the cost to attend was between $0 and $1,750.
Sager said he “paid nothing” to attend the Feb. 12 event, hosted by real estate marketer Bob Rennie. Sager said he was invited by Duncan Wlodarczak, the Liberal Party of Canada in B.C.’s president and chief of staff with Onni, the real estate developer behind West Vancouver’s Evelyn master-planned community.
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