Bob Mackin
The Conservative candidate in Burnaby North-Seymour was banned from running as a municipal candidate in B.C. after Vancouver’s 2022 civic election.
Mauro Francis was one of the eight Progress Vancouver candidates disqualified from appearing on local elections ballots, B.C.-wide, until after 2026 for breaking the Local Elections Campaign Financing Act.
Mauro Francis (right) and Pierre Poilievre (Francis/X)
Progress Vancouver missed the deadline to file campaign finance reports in early 2023. When the party finally provided its returns, Elections BC found numerous violations,including an illegal loan of $50,000, donations from outside B.C. and missing or incomplete names and addresses of donors.
Francis did not respond for comment.
Progress Vancouver leader and mayoral candidate Mark Marissen is a longtime Liberal strategist whose former wife, but ongoing political ally, is ex-B.C. Premier Christy Clark.
Francis defected to Progress Vancouver in August 2022 after the NPA’s John Coupar withdrew as that party’s mayoral candidate.
Francis garnered just 6,556 votes — 31,000 under the threshold for one of the 10 city council seats — in the October 2022 election. Marissen finished a distant fourth, almost 80,000 votes behind mayoral winner Ken Sim.
In the April 28 federal election, Francis is running against Michael Charrois of the NDP, Jesse Fulton of the People’s Party of Canada and Liberal Beech.
Beech was the Liberal government’s Minister of Citizens’ Services from July 2023 until Mark Carney became Prime Minister in March 2025.
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