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Bob Mackin

Despite a new policy discouraging business with U.S. suppliers, Toronto city hall could buy $10.7 million of FIFA World Cup 26 tickets, suites and lounges from a New York company run by Donald Trump’s former manager and part-owned by Trump’s Secretary of Education.

Toronto’s FIFA World Cup 2026 Subcommittee recommended on March 18 that city council buy the hospitality packages. City council is expected to decide March 26.

A staff report said MLSE, the owner of Toronto FC and operator of BMO Field, is the contracted commercial sales agent for the program. But the name of FIFA’s official hospitality provider, On Location Events LLC, was not mentioned in the report or at the subcommittee meeting.

TKO’s Ari Emanuel (second from right) with UFC’s Dana White and WWE’s Vince McMahon outside the New York Stock Exchange on Sept. 12, 2023 (NYSE/IG)

Toronto city hall confirmed to theBreaker.news that “it is securing the assets” from On Location.

“The vendor was not named in the report because it was not material to the recommendations before committee,” senior communications advisor Elise von Scheel said by email.

Vancouver city hall, which does not conduct World Cup business in open meetings, is “still evaluating that opportunity” to buy packages from On Location, said Natasha Qereshniku of Vancouver’s World Cup secretariat.

In February, TKO Group Holdings Inc. completed the acquisition of On Location, bringing it under the same corporate umbrella as UFC and WWE, two companies that count Trump as a fan. In December, Trump’s Secretary of Education Linda McMahon, reported owning more than $50 million in TKO shares and receiving between $1 million and $5 million in dividends.

TKO CEO Ari Emanuel represented Trump when he hosted The Apprentice on NBC.

At the Endeavor Group in 2015, Emanuel bought the Miss Universe Organization from Trump. In 2021 and 2022, Elon Musk was a member of Endeavor’s board of directors.

A pamphlet attached to FIFA host city contracts details the “rights and assets” available to host committees, including the opportunity to buy up to 1.5% of the available tickets for each match at the host city’s stadium.

“These tickets can be used to assist fundraising efforts and included as part of a host city supporter package,” said the FIFA pamphlet.

FIFA also provides host committees with 175 to 250 complimentary VIP tickets at each match the city hosts. Host cities are also eligible for a small amount of tickets at matches they don’t host — including four to the final. Those tickets are not available for public purchase and cannot be resold.

Seven matches are scheduled for Vancouver and six in Toronto during the June and July 2026 tournament. Eleven U.S. cities and three in Mexico are also hosts.

On March 7, Trump welcomed FIFA president Gianni Infantino to the Oval Office and announced a Department of Homeland Security-led task force.

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Bob Mackin Despite a new policy discouraging business

Bob Mackin

On the eve of its opening, the Vancouver Auto Show made international news by ejecting Tesla for fear that its display would be targeted by anti-Elon Musk/anti-Donald Trump protesters.

The New Car Dealers Association continued to make headlines on opening day, March 19, when auto industry lobbyists told reporters that the B.C. NDP government needs to delay its electric vehicle mandate. They did so at an event whose marquee sponsors include BC Hydro and the Ministry of Environment’s CleanBC program.

The NDP amended the 2019 Zero-Emissions Vehicles (ZEV) Act in 2023 to require ZEVs to make up 26% of sales of cars, light trucks and minivans by 2026, 90% by 2030 and 100% by 2035.

“There are clear headwinds to ongoing zero emission vehicle adoption, which include the restriction or elimination of purchase incentives, which we’ve seen here in B.C. and federally,” said Lucas Malinowski, director of federal affairs for the Global Automakers of Canada. “We have economic uncertainty with trade tariffs and not enough infrastructure is being built out to give consumers confidence that they can take and reliably charge their EVs anywhere.”

Brian Kingston, CEO of the Canadian Vehicle Manufacturers’ Association, said if U.S. tariffs do not go ahead, B.C. could, at best, reach 57% EV sales by 2030.

“This is well short of the mandated target of 90%,” Kingston said. “If EV sales do not increase at the rates that the government has mandated, the only way for automakers to comply is through restrictions of the sale of internal combustion engine vehicles in this province, or paying penalties of up to $20,000 per vehicle sold. The result of this, for British Columbians, is higher vehicle prices and limited vehicle choice.”

Kingston said new vehicle sales would flatline and cause job losses.

The Vancouver Auto Show runs through March 23 at Vancouver Convention Centre West.

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Bob Mackin On the eve of its opening,

Bob Mackin

Vancouver Mayor Ken Sim invested in and helped promote a real estate crowdfunding company that ran afoul of regulators.

B.C. Securities Commission (BCSC) announced March 17 that Addy Technology Inc. had paid a $100,000 fine for trading without being registered. The company, which bills itself as Canada’s largest real estate investing platform, offered fractional shares in properties and developments for as low as $1.

“Between 2018 and 2025, Addy traded in approximately $26 million of securities of various issuers, with the average amount invested being $700 per investor,” said the BCSC announcement. “Addy charged investor membership fees for early access to certain properties and additional features on its platform, and charged software licensing fees to issuers and exempt market dealers (EMDs) for their use of its platform.”

BCSC said Addy unsuccessfully claimed it was exempt because of crowdfunding and that it used registered dealers to facilitate trades. BCSC said the company co-operated with the investigation and has applied for registration as a dealer.

Sim listed Addy in his statement of disclosure for 2024 and 2025. However, it does not show how many Addy shares Sim holds or the value of those shares.

On Sept. 19, 2023, Sim was the featured guest speaker at Addy’s “fireside chat” event in the Vancouver Lawn and Tennis Club with the company’s co-founder Stephen Jagger.

“We’re lucky to have a whole bunch of our issuers and dealers in the room, and the event was quite the success,” Jagger said on a recap video.

“Full disclosure, I think I’m an investor in Addy as well, right?” Sim said after Jagger introduced him. “So, yeah, so I want to get it out there. I, actually, this isn’t a plug for you, but I am an investor, and I actually think it’s incredible what you’re doing.”

Nobody from the Office of the Mayor has responded for comment. Addy’s head of operations, Kolina Kretzschmar, said the $100,000 settlement and application for registration as an EMD “reflects our ongoing commitment to working within the regulatory framework while continuing to innovate.”

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Bob Mackin Vancouver Mayor Ken Sim invested in

For the week of March 16, 2025:

Canada has its 24th Prime Minister.

On March 14, Mark Carney took the oath of office and unveiled his Ontario-centric, 24-minister cabinet. It was five days after the Liberal Party leadership coronation. It was also one day after Justin Trudeau said farewell via 30-second social media video. 

Mark Carney’s buzzword is building. Is he building a new government or building an election campaign with leftovers from the Trudeau era? 

To answer that question and more is guest Mario Canseco of Research Co. 

Plus Pacific Rim and Pacific Northwest headlines and a special St. Patrick’s Day edition of the Virtual Nanaimo Bar. 

CLICK BELOW to listen or go to TuneIn, Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

Have you missed an edition of theBreaker.news Podcast? Go to the archive.

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For the week of March 16, 2025: Canada

Bob Mackin

A man claims he was scammed out of $26 million worth of his Bitcoin by a woman claiming to be a cryptocurrency expert living in Vancouver.

In a Feb. 6 B.C. Supreme Court ruling, released March 13, Justice Bruce Elwood said that Lixiao Wang hired private investigator Gregory Tweed to help him trace cryptocurrency transactions that flowed to Binance Holdings Ltd. and Coinbase Global Inc.

Wang said he made 13 transfers totalling more than $26 million to an account on the weeexproit.com website after he was contacted in early 2024 on WhatsApp by Qin Xin.

Wang attempted to withdraw funds but found his account locked. weeexproit.com staff told him his account had been locked after cyberattacks and offered to perform a security audit if he deposited $6 million.

“Mr. Wang became suspicious and did not comply with this demand,” Eldwood said. “He has since been unable to access his account and unable to recover his funds.”

Wang applied to the court for and received production and preservation orders for information about the identities of the account holders who received the transactions and for the cryptocurrency and fiat funds held by the account holders to be preserved.

At the time of the two-day hearing, Wang had not served the petition and he did not allege wrondgoing by either Binance or Coinbase. But he intends to commence an action against the account holders and possibly others.

Elwood found that Wang showed first impression evidence against the individuals in control of the accounts on Binance and Coinbase, “acting together with Xin to perpetrate a fraudulent scheme to defraud him of his cryptocurrency.”

“I am satisfied that the respondents, Binance and Coinbase, are the only practical source of the personal information identifying the wrongdoers, and the only source of the information identifying the individuals in whose accounts the stolen bitcoin is presently being held,” Elwood concluded.

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Bob Mackin A man claims he was scammed

Bob Mackin

When Taylor Swift ended the Eras Tour in Vancouver last December, local tourism boosters said it would be a $157 million gold rush for the economy.

So how much did the superstar’s promoter pay to rent money-losing B.C. Place Stadium for the final three nights of her $2 billion grossing tour?

Outside B.C. Place Stadium on Dec. 7, 2024. (Mackin)

It is a state secret.

Under British Columbia’s freedom of information law, theBreaker.news obtained a copy of the license agreement between the taxpayer-owned stadium and the Ontario subsidiary of Swift’s Texas promoter, Messina Touring Group. Attendance for the three shows was a combined 178,042.

What MTG agreed to pay for the Dec. 1-5 move-in, Dec. 6-8 concerts and Dec. 8-10 move-out is censored. B.C. Place claims disclosure would harm its finances and reveal MTG’s trade secrets.

According to the key clause in the Sept. 27, 2024 contract:

Also, B.C. Place management was entitled to receive an undisclosed quantity of free tickets and suites:

Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner adjudicators and B.C. Supreme Court judges have repeatedly held that the public has the right to see contracts negotiated between private companies and public bodies.

B.C. Pavilion Corp., the stadium’s parent, forecasts it will end the fiscal year on March 31 with a $2.7 million loss.

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Bob Mackin When Taylor Swift ended the Eras

Bob Mackin

A who’s who of the Vancouver real estate industry, municipal politicians and even the couple at the centre of the B.C. Housing nepotism scandal turned out to support Mark Carney’s winning bid for Liberal leadership on Feb. 12.

Carney, who will be sworn-in as Canada’s 24th Prime Minister on March 14, drew 85 people to an event at a private residence in the V6J 1G1 postal code, according to the Elections Canada list of attendees obtained by theBreaker.news.

Mark Carney(left) and Wade Grant (Grant/X)

The postal code matches that of Rennie Marketing Systems. Founder Bob Rennie and son/principal Kris Rennie were on the list, along with chief operating officer Gregory Zayadi.

Notable politicos included Metro Vancouver chair and Burnaby Mayor Mike Hurley, West Vancouver Mark Sager, Vancouver city councillor Lisa Dominato, former Metro Vancouver chair Greg Moore, and Trudeau Liberal Members of Parliament Parm Bains (Steveston-Richmond East) and Randeep Sarai (Surrey Centre).

Also: former Atira CEO and Canada Mortgage and Housing director Janice Abbott and former B.C. Housing CEO Shayne Ramsay. They lost their jobs after a 2023 provincial government report found Ramsay in conflict of interest for favouring wife Abbott’s Atira Women’s Resource Society with millions of dollars in contracts.

During a March 4 Conversations Live panel discussion, Rennie said he was “working with Carney.”

“I’m trying to get a rental program in where people can buy, put it into a 25-year pool, get a preferred rate from CMHC and let’s allow foreign buyers to buy it,” Rennie said.

“They have to rent it out for 25 years and it will show the world we are open for business, because right now all of our governments are not showing that we’re open for business.”

Others who paid between $0 and $1,750 to meet and greet Carney:

  • Dax Aquilini, Aquilini Group, VP investments
  • Jill Atkey, B.C. Not For Profit Housing Association, CEO
  • Sheila Biggers, St. Paul’s Hospital Foundation, CEO
  • Nicole Brassard, Global Public Affairs, VP, former Liberal Party VP
  • Mike Bucci, Bucci Developments, VP
  • Suky Cheema, BDO Canada, real estate leader
  • Ajay Dilawri, Dilawri Auto Group, co-founder
  • Jonathan Cooper, Strand, SVP
  • Rossano De Cotiis, Onni Group, president
  • Geoff Duyker, Mosaic Homes, SVP
  • Nabih Faris, Intergulf, CEO
  • Ivan Fecan, Rogers Communications, director
  • Patti Glass, Grosvenor, VP
  • Byng Giraud, Sedgwick Strategies
  • Wade Grant, Musqueam Indian Band, intergovernmental relations officer, and Quadra Liberal nomination candidate
  • Quinten Grimm, Squamish Nation, project management specialist
  • Azim Jamal, Pacific Reach, CEO
  • Hassan Khosrowshahi, Wesbild, chair
  • James Innis, Sutton Group, president

    Atira CEO Janice Abbott with Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland (second from left) (Nomodic/CMHC)

  • Stephen Kukucha, Fort Capital, senior advisor, Sustainable Development Technology Canada, former director
  • Robert Macdonald, Macdonald Development chair
  • John MacKay, Strand, managing director
  • Susan MacLaurin, director, Nch’kay Development
  • Anne McMullin, Urban Development Institute, CEO
  • Craig Munroe, Vancouver Fraser Port Authority, director
  • David Negrin, Isthmus Management, chair
  • Deep Singh Sidhu, Massive Canada Building Systems Inc., chief investment officer
  • Gail Sparrow, Musqueam Capital Corp., director
  • Barrett Sprowson, Peterson Real Estate, VP
  • Ronald Stern, Stern Partners, founder
  • Ben Taddei, Conwest Developments, COO
  • Khelsilem Tl’akwasikan (aka Dustin Rivers), Squamish Nation council chair
  • Gurpreet Vinning, Prospectus Associates, partner
  • Bruno Wall, Wall Financial chair
  • Grace Wong, Chinese Canadian Museum, chair
  • Wilson Williams, Squamish Nation, spokesperson
  • Duncan Wlodarczak, Onni Group, chief of staff, Liberal Party of Canada in B.C. chair

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Bob Mackin A who’s who of the Vancouver

Bob Mackin

The daughter of a Vancouver man denied bail in Paris last month said she is devastated.

Thomas Herdman, 64, has been locked up in a French jail since June 2021, accused of money laundering and other offences related to a Vancouver encrypted phone company that U.S. authorities shut down in 2021.

Julie Kawai Herdman (left) and Thomas Herdman. (Kawai Herdman)

“My dad’s civil rights are being violated from being in there for almost four years without a trial and just the conditions he’s in,” Julie Kawai Herdman said in an interview. She said the case should be bigger news in Canada.

On March 12, 2021, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Southern District of California announced racketeering conspiracy and conspiracy to distribute controlled substances charges against Herdman and a West Vancouver man, Sky Global CEO Jean-Francois Eap. U.S. prosecutors claimed Sky Global netted hundreds of millions of dollars in profits by helping transnational criminals hide their transactions from law enforcement.

Herdman, through a company called LevUp Tech, distributed Sky Global’s modified smartphones, which worked on an encrypted network called Sky ECC. Police from Belgium, France and Netherlands cracked the company’s French server and have used the evidence to prosecute hundreds of cases.

None of the allegations against Eap and Herdman has been tested in court. Herdman denies wrongdoing and Eap vowed in March 2021 to clear his name.

The case in the U.S. against Herdman and Eap has not proceeded to trial. Herdman met in Spain to co-operate with U.S. prosecutors, but was extradited to France instead.

In late January, Eap opened another location of his Hello Nori sushi restaurant chain at Park Royal in West Vancouver after more than three years of on again, off again construction. He is among the 30 charged by the French, but Herdman is the only one in custody. French prosecutors have been unable to extradite the others.

On Feb. 27, with his daughter in the courtroom, Herdman applied to be released on bail so he could live and work in Paris under house arrest and electronic monitoring while waiting for the trial, expected in 2026.

Kawai Herdman planned to live there with her father if he had been freed.

“Because I haven’t seen him for so long, I don’t think I would leave his side,” she said. “But apparently that wasn’t enough convincing for the judges, because they still declared him a flight risk.”

U.S. authorities claim Vancouver-based Sky Global sells goods and services to transnational drug criminals. (Sky ECC)

According to the statement he read in court, Herdman pleaded for bail so he could “prove my innocence from outside these walls.”

“My family’s paid millions in legal fees, losing their breadwinner to a French prison cell deemed ‘fine’ by authorities but condemned as overcrowded and inhumane by Europe,” he said. “This isn’t just my suffering—it’s theirs. Four years isn’t detention; it’s punishment without a verdict.”

Herdman’s lawyer called the French stance “absurd.”

“He is approaching four years of pretrial detention, a duration typically reserved for violent crimes and terrorist offences,” said Paul Sin-Chan.

Herdman missed his daughter’s University of B.C. graduation ceremony last May. His 93-year-old mother is recovering from a stroke.

“He’s always a little bit worried if he’s going to get home in time to see her before she gets even more sick,” Kawai Herdman said.

Jean-François Eap (Facebook)

Kawai Herdman describes the Fleury-Mérogis prison as grey and dystopian. Her father complained to her about the quality of food and the lack of heat in his room. She said he sometimes huddles around a stove to get warm.

“He’s lost a lot of weight and it looks like he’s lost a lot of a strength,” she said.

When they learned of the charges in 2021, Kawai Herdman and her mother shared in the shock and disbelief. But Herdman them assured that co-operation with U.S. authorities would result in a resolution.

“We didn’t think it was like a super huge deal to begin with, because my dad was sure that he was going to come home.”

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Bob Mackin The daughter of a Vancouver man

Bob Mackin

The end is here for Canada’s 23rd Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, who relied heavily on the West Coast to win his only majority government in 2015.

The Liberal Party chooses his successor March 9 — 3,412 days since Trudeau’s swearing-in.

The son of Pierre Trudeau promised “sunny ways” in 2015. Yet, he leaves in 2025, under a cloud after a series of conflict of interest scandals, the worst pandemic in a century and threats to Canada’s sovereignty from China’s Xi Jinping and the United States’ Donald Trump.

When he came to West Vancouver on Sept. 10, 2015 to announce an ocean protection strategy, I went to ask about his promise to spend billions of dollars on rapid transit infrastructure. Montreal’s corruption-plagued SNC-Lavalin wanted contracts to expand Vancouver’s SkyTrain and Canada Line network.

Candidates behind Trudeau on John Lawson Pier included Vancouver-Granville’s Jody Wilson-Raybould. Three years later, she was the Attorney General who upheld the rule of law, while he was the Prime Minister who got caught trying to let SNC-Lavalin off the hook.

CLICK and WATCH: Justin Trudeau on Sept. 10, 2015.

Justin Trudeau’s election eve rally was Oct. 18, 2015 inside the jam-packed Pipe Shop in North Vancouver’s Shipyards District.

As I left, I noticed a familiar face: Liberal Party fundraiser and former Richmond MP Raymond Chan.

I had been trying for several months to ask Chan questions about his solicitation of political donations from real estate developer Michael Mo Yeung Ching.

Ching, the son of Hebei’s former Chinese Communist Party secretary Cheng Weigao, was wanted in China on charges of corruption.

In 2015, Ching was in a marathon legal battle to clear his name and seek Canadian citizenship (he finally got it in 2020). It had emerged that Ching donated more than $11,000 to Trudeau’s campaign. His daughter, Linda Ching, had been the president of the federal Young Liberals in B.C. and a director of the Trudeau supporters’ group called Tru-Youths.

Moments after turning on my iPad camera, a group of people suddenly surrounded me and blocked my lens. They refused to tell me their names.

A North Vancouver RCMP officer later told them that reporters in Canada are free to shoot video in public. The Mounties refused to investigate my assault complaint. YouTube rejected Chan’s attempt to censor the video.

CLICK and WATCH: Inside and outside Justin Trudeau’s 2015 campaign finale.

Bob Mackin The end is here for Canada’s

For the week of March 9, 2025:

It is the end of the Justin Trudeau era. 

Trudeau must go and make way for a new Liberal leader, as Canada grapples with the Trump trade war and moves one, big step closer to a federal election. 

Looking back at one of Canada’s most-controversial and most-consequential prime ministers, with guest Tom Korski, the managing editor of Blacklock’s Reporter. 

Plus, hear from Jack O’Halloran, the CEO of Surrey Urban Mission Society, and this week’s Pacific Rim and Pacific Northwest headlines. 

CLICK BELOW to listen or go to TuneIn, Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

Have you missed an edition of theBreaker.news Podcast? Go to the archive.

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For the week of March 9, 2025: It