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Business, Miscellany, News, Opinion

Bob Mackin

The 43rd general election is over and the Prime Minister’s Office is still occupied by Justin Trudeau, despite so many broken promises and scandals. The Andrew Scheer-led Conservatives missed a chance to beat a weakened Liberal Party, but scored a moral victory by winning the popular vote. The NDP’s Jagmeet Singh failed to match the party’s 2015 numbers, but he is now a potential ally for the minority Liberal government. What else happened on Oct. 21 in British Columbia?

What B.C. looked like in 2015 (left) vs. 2019. Conservative blue eroded Liberal red and NDP orange. (Elections Canada)

Overall numbers

The Liberals lost 1.01 million votes and 27 seats nationally since 2015. The Conservatives gained 500,000 and 22 seats. In B.C., the party with 17 seats in 2019 is the Conservatives. The Liberals lost six since 2015, one of them was Jody Wilson-Raybould, who went independent and kept Vancouver-Granville.

Liberals and NDP both have 11, though the Liberals had the popular vote edge. Conservatives had 799,239 votes to the Liberals’ 612,098. B.C. turnout was just over 65%.

Electoral reform debate reignited

The 2015 election was supposed to be the last under first-past-the-post, Trudeau said. His supporters are happy he didn’t fulfil that promise.

Under a different system, based on popular vote, the NDP could have more than one seat in Quebec and Conservative Andrew Scheer could have become prime minister. We already know where the Greens stand, staunchly for electoral reform. At a news conference in Burnaby on Oct. 22, Singh reiterated his support for proportional representation.

“The results show a broken electoral system,” Singh told reporters.

Alberta, Saskatchewan and Quebec ponder independence, what about Vancouver Island?

Jason Kenney runs a province with but one Liberal MP. Scott Moe runs another with none, now that Ralph Goodale is good as gone. They’re Conservative strongholds that want support for the oil industry.

Bloc-leader Yves-Francois Blanchet led a resurgent nationalist party that won 32 seats. Could the regionalism cause some in British Columbia to think of forging closer ties with Washington and Oregon?

JWR did A-OK

Jody Wilson-Raybould (right) gives her Oct. 21 victory speech (Mackin)

Jody Wilson-Raybould supporters were biting their nails, as the former Liberal attorney general trailed the Liberal and Conservative challengers early in the ballot count in Vancouver-Granville. Then a turnaround and the party gained steam in the Hellenic Community Centre.

Wilson-Raybould received the most media attention, beyond the leaders of the main four national parties. She thanked Jane Philpott, who joined her in the same place on Sept. 18 but was not lucky enough to be re-elected in Markham. Both Wilson-Raybould and Philpott were thrown out of the Liberal caucus over Trudeau’s SNC-Lavalin scandal. In August, Trudeau was found in breach of the conflict of interest law.

“I believe strongly that Vancouver-Granville sent a message that independent voices do matter, and that there is a different way that we can engage in political discussions,” Wilson-Raybould said in her victory speech.

“This win means that it’s okay to stand up for what you believe, to speak in truth, to act with integrity even with implications that might be set on you. That if you believe in public service and believe in contributing to the country and helping raising your voice to address issues that that matters.”

Wilson-Raybould’s career as a parliamentarian continues. With Trudeau remaining in the PMO, will the RCMP investigation of the SNC-Lavalin scandal continue?

Conservative recycling program

Andrew Scheer at Prospect Point in Stanley Park on Oct. 20 (Mackin)

North Vancouver’s Andrew Saxton and Vancouver South’s Wai Young lost bids to unseat those that unseated them in 2015. But Kerry Lynne-Findlay had better luck in a rematch with Liberal by-election winner Gordie Hogg in South Surrey-White Rock.

Fisheries and oceans minster Jonathan Wilkinson beat Saxton again, by almost 10,000 votes. Defence minister Harjit Sajjan had a 6,700-vote margin in 2015, which was cut in half to almost 3,000 in 2019’s win over former Vancouver South MP Young.

Dippers vs. Greens

The Green wave didn’t happen, despite climate change hysteria at a fever pitch with Greta Thunberg on tour and Extinction Rebellion protests throughout the country .

Leader Elizabeth May kept Saanich and Gulf Islands while by-election winner Paul Manly was re-elected in Nanaimo. In popular vote, May’s party tallied 290,629 votes in B.C. The NDP, meanwhile, won 11 seats with 572,063 votes. The only other Green elected across the country was Jenica Atwin in Fredericton.

The Green campaign hit a roadblock in the last two weeks of the campaign when the NDP made a concerted effort to portray May’s party as non-progressives with kooks in their midst who might just prop-up Conservatives in a minority scenario.

Justin Trudeau on July 29 at Kitsilano Coast Guard base (Mackin)

“It was a one way nastiness, it was lies and smears from the NDP against us and I have to say it was disappointing especially since we helped Jagmeet Singh win his seat in Burnaby by not running anyone against him,” May said on Global. “It will be a very hard relationship to work through because of the fact that they really didn’t care they were lying, they had no shame.”

Will the animosity spill over into the provincial arena, where the three-member Green caucus is supporting John Horgan’s NDP minority government?

Clark Clique

Hogg was one of three former members of Christy Clark’s BC Liberal caucus. The other ex-BC Liberal loser was Terry Lake in Kamloops-Thompson-Cariboo. Lake fell by almost 13,000 votes to Conservative Cathy McLeod. Former BC Liberal backbencher Marc Dalton won Pitt Meadows-Maple Ridge, defeating incumbent Dan Ruimy by more than 3,500 votes. 

Say it ain’t so, Joe

Steveston-Richmond East Liberal incumbent Joe Peschisolido is out.

One too many scandals involving clients of his law firm, his embarrassing photographs at social events with suspects under police investigation and the pro-China protester that was found working in his campaign office on opening day. Conservative Kenny Chiu, a former Peschisolido aide, is going to Ottawa with almost 2,800 more votes. Scheer signalled that this riding was in play, when he campaigned in Richmond with Chiu and also held his last campaign rally in a Richmond Sheraton hotel.

Chen (left) and Peschisolido at the Sino-Canadian Geographical Indication Development Association launch in August 2018 (Wow TV)

Star candidate loses

Ex-CTV anchorwoman Tamara Taggart won’t be going to Ottawa to read Justin Trudeau’s script. NDP’s Don Davies kept his Vancouver Kingsay seat with a comfortable 11,000 margin.

Singh’s days numbered?

Burnaby South parachute candidate and NDP leader Jagmeet Singh lost veteran MPs Murray Rankin in Victoria, Nathan Cullen up north and Fin Donnelly in Metro Vancouver who decided not to run again. Nationally, the party lost 15 seats, to 24. It had 59 two elections ago in Quebec, but now just one.

In B.C., the NDP tied for 11 seats with the Liberals. The Trudeau Liberals will need help from the NDP to keep governing in Ottawa, so Singh holds some cards.

But how long before the ambitious rear their heads? If the minority government lasts until 2021, that still could give Vancouver Mayor Kennedy Stewart an opening (the next civic election is 2022). Stewart made national news with a strong anti-Scheer statement last week, even though the Conservatives were not a threat to win a seat inside City of Vancouver. 

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Bob Mackin The 43rd general election is over

Business, Miscellany, News

Bob Mackin

The $7.7 million Shaughnessy mansion that hosted Justin Trudeau for a private Liberal Party fundraiser in 2016 is now the subject of a Vancouver Police Department investigation, theBreaker.news has learned.

Vancouver Fire and Rescue Services referred theBreaker.news to VPD Sgt. Aaron Roed, who said the major crimes section is now involved. An early morning fire on Sept. 21 destroyed a garage detached from the house on Churchill Street near 47th Avenue.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau visited with Miaofei Pan (left) and Wen Huan Yang in November 2016 (Mackin)

Owner Miaofei Pan showed a reporter surveillance footage of the fire. He also pointed to broken windows on the front of the house that he said were caused by gun shots more than an hour after the police left the fire scene. The fire, he said, cut the camera feed from the front of the house.

“We want to go back to China just for safety, but the children are studying and living here, so we have no choice, we have to accompany the children,” Pan said through a translator.

By coincidence, no cars were parked in the detached garage that night.

It was the second fire to tear through a Pan-owned property in less than two years. In October 2017, the 1911-built heritage mansion Pan owns with wife Wen Huan Yang at 3737 Angus in Shaughnessy suffered a devastating fire that was later ruled arson. Nobody has been charged.

Pan said that, before the Angus fire, he had planned to repair and renovate the heritage mansion, also known as Rounsefell House, after a tenant caused extensive water damage. He wanted to move his family from the Churchill house to Angus, because his daughters were complaining they needed more space.

“We already made the repair plan, we signed a contract with developers and construction companies. All documents have been done to repair the water damage,” he said.

Miaofei Pan outside the fire-destroyed garage (Ina Mitchell)

City hall filed a B.C. Supreme Court petition against Pan, alleging he did not follow an order after the fire to maintain the Angus mansion so as to prevent further weather damage and decay. The September 2018 response from Pan said the house could not be repaired because of hazards presented by the chimneys and hazardous materials inside the house. The structure is so fragile that WorkSafeBC issued a temporary stop work order that has since been lifted.

No court date has been set for the dispute with city hall. Pan has another court matter on the horizon, as he is appealing the late 2018 award of only $1 after a judge ruled he had been defamed by journalist Bing Chen Gao. In the verdict, the B.C. Supreme Court judge criticized Pan for being an uncooperative witness.

Pan is a past chair of the Beijing-aligned Canadian Alliance of Chinese Associations and was a donor to the Canada Wenzhou Friendship Society’s clubhouse near Aberdeen Centre in Richmond. Pan hails from the Zhejiang province coastal city Wenzhou, where he was in the real estate development business. The Richmond-based society gained attention during the 2018 civic elections for endorsing a slate of candidates in Richmond, Burnaby and Vancouver and offering a $20 transportation subsidy via WeChat. Richmond RCMP did not recommend vote buying charges.

Pan said the 2016 Liberal event attended by 80 people at his house was organized by the party, which had been trying to recruit his son to be a member. He said nobody made donations on-site, on the night of the event. The Liberal Party, he said, returned his $1,500 donation and paid for tea and cookies.

Pan said he was familiar with Raymond Chan, the former Richmond MP who became a party fundraiser in the Chinese community and is in one of the photographs, but said it was a woman from the Liberal Party office that called to ask if Pan’s house could be used as a venue. Pan said he was in China at the time, so he flew back to host the event. Police did come to the house for a security sweep before the event and that he spoke briefly with Trudeau, but the conversation was “very limited” due to the language barrier.

Miaofei Pan said someone shot a window at his house multiple times, hours after a fire destroyed a detached garage (Mackin)

According to The Tyee, Pan decided to hold the Nov. 7, 2016 fundraiser at his house after Trudeau invited him to a dinner in September of that year with China’s visiting Premier Li Keqiang. That was denied by the Liberal Party. In a Dec. 2, 2016, Globe and Mail story, Pan was quoted as saying he asked Trudeau to make it easier for rich investors from China to invest and stay in Canada.

Trudeau was in Vancouver for an earlier announcement of funding to help Department of Fisheries and Oceans deal with more South Coast oil tanker traffic.

The fundraiser was not advertised and Canadian media only found out from Wenzhou government and media websites. The ripple effects were felt across Canada.

By April of 2017, the Liberal Party buckled to pressure and announced reforms, including proactive disclosure of fundraising events and attendee lists. Elections Canada later began an online registry of major fundraising events involving party leaders and cabinet ministers. In B.C., it helped hasten campaign finance reforms after the 2017 provincial election. The Green-supported NDP government eventually adopted caps on donations and banned corporate and union financing of provincial and municipal elections.

Miaofei Pan’s photograph with Prime Minister Stephen Harper in 2011 (Mackin)

Pan said he met Trudeau again in Ottawa and jokingly told him that he would invite him to the other mansion, after it is repaired.

Pan said he believes Trudeau will win re-election on Oct. 21, but not with as many votes as in 2015. He considers Trudeau a “good guy and with enough capability to be a prime minister in Canada. Of course [Stephen] Harper was also a good guy as well.”

A photograph of Pan with Harper, shot in 2011, is displayed above golf trophies, at the opposite end of a room from a group photo with Trudeau from Nov. 7, 2016.

Elections Canada shows donations by Pan of $1,478.96 and $1,420 to the Liberal Party on Nov. 24, 2016 and $1,100 to the Abbotsford Conservative Association in September 2011. He also gave $1,000 and $1,450 to MP Jenny Kwan’s Vancouver East NDP association in 2016 and 2018.

His wife, Wen, donated $1,478.96 and $1,420 on the same November day in 2016 to the Liberals. Last December, she gave $1,550 to the Don Valley North Federal Liberal Association in Ontario. Han Dong is running instead of Geng Tan, the first Mainland China-born Member of Parliament when he was elected in 2015.

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Bob Mackin The $7.7 million Shaughnessy mansion that

Business, Miscellany, News, Opinion

Bob Mackin

Despite scandals and broken promises that have tarnished his term as Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau is well-positioned to remain in power beyond Oct. 21.

Thanks to a campaign that includes veterans of Vision Vancouver and BC Liberal war rooms, whose specialty is diverting attention from a baggage-laden incumbent and defining the opponent as undesirable.

A June 2016 photo of Christy Clark (left), Gregor Robertson and Justin Trudeau at Microsoft in Vancouver (BC Gov)

In 2019, the Liberals defined Conservative Andrew Scheer as a dual Canada/U.S. citizen who had a short career as a junior insurance salesman before he enjoyed big paycheques as a politician. The Liberals have painted him as a social conservative friendly with the alt-right who would adopt Doug Ford’s Ontario cost-cutting on a national scale — despite both evidence and Scheer’s emphatic statements otherwise.

Trudeau spoke the word “progressive” 20 times in the last seven minutes of his last Lower Mainland campaign rally on Oct. 20. The Liberals are banking on voters choosing the devil they know, rather than the devil they don’t. 

Nevermind Trudeau’s SNC-Lavalin scandal, the purchase of the Kinder Morgan pipeline, the broken promise to balance the budget in 2019, the broken promise to end first past the post elections, the comedic India trade mission, the lack of backbone against Xi Jinping’s China, revelations of Trudeau’s penchant for racist blackface costumes and the notorious “Kokanee grope” sexual assault allegation of 2000. His only major achievement was last year’s cannabis legalization. Because of the black market, it may never be the tax revenue goldmine that pot proponents promised. All items that the Conservatives should have kept reminding voters about on each of the 40 campaign days. 

“It’s up to a political party to define itself, it’s up to candidates for that political party to define themselves to do it first and do it better than their opponents,” said Dermod Travis of IntegrityBC. “If they don’t do it better than opponents, you end up with the campaign that we’ve just witnessed. It’s been a horrid campaign in that regard.”  

The Scheer Conservatives have peddled their “It’s Time For You To Get Ahead” slogan, promising to “put more money in your pocket,” rather than a sustained attack against the litany of Liberal corruption and broken promises.

Ben Chin with Christy Clark on B.C. election day in 2017 (Twitter)

A key member of Trudeau’s war room is Ben Chin, the former TV news anchor and Ontario Liberal who helped Christy Clark turn around her fortunes and score a BC Liberal upset over the NDP’s Adrian Dix in the 2013 B.C. election.

The BC Liberals and their proxies took the spotlight off unpopular Clark and demonized Dix, who was a top aide of Glen Clark when that NDP premier was forced to quit over conflict of interest scandal involving an applicant for a gambling licence repairing his deck. The BC Liberals didn’t want to run on their record since 2001, so they made the campaign about Dix and the 1990s NDP.

Rather than running a negative campaign about the contemporary BC Liberals, like he had led his caucus in question period, Dix went positive and lost. John Horgan did not repeat that mistake in 2017.

Gregor Robertson and Vision Vancouver won a third majority at city hall in 2014, facing the NPA’s Kirk LaPointe. The veteran newspaperman and broadcaster took a thoughtful platform to voters and attacked Vision’s backroom deal with the outside workers union. The union made a big donation after the party pledged it would not privatize any services.

Andrew Scheer at Prospect Point in Stanley Park on Oct. 20 (Mackin)

In that campaign, Vision Vancouver exploited LaPointe’s only major sin. He worked in North Vancouver and lived at the University of British Columbia.

Nevermind that Robertson broke up with his wife and never answered questions about his downtown condominium that had been arranged by a donor. Or that Robertson kept secret his affair with a pop singer whose mother turned out to be a corrupt Chinese government official. Vision Vancouver attack ads focused on LaPointe’s residence at UBC, which meant he didn’t pay taxes in Vancouver. Robertson won.

Chin wasn’t there when Trudeau led several Liberals up the Grouse Grind on Aug. 30, but Gabe Garfinkel (B.C. director), Brittney Kerr (national campaign committee); Braeden Caley (communications director) and Ange Valentini (regional director) were. Garfinkel was a Clark aide who ran unsuccessfully for the BC Liberals in 2017. Kerr is a veteran of BC Liberal and Vision campaigns and a lobbyist at Earnscliffe, the shop where veteran Liberal organizer Bruce Young is listed as principal. Valentini co-chaired Vision’s 2018 campaign. Caley was Robertson’s spokesman after working for Ujjal Dosanjh and Raymond Chan.

Liberal backroomers Gabe Garfinkel (left), Braeden Caley (facing camera), Brittney Kerr (back to camera) and Ange Valentini in North Vancouver on Aug. 30 (Mackin)

Clark’s former deputy chief of staff Kim Haakstad and developer Peter Wall’s lawyer David Gruber endorsed Vancouver Granville candidate Taleeb Noormohamed, who is running against Jody Wilson-Raybould the year after he withdrew a bid for Vision’s mayoral nomination for what he said were health reasons. Jonah Gowans, an aide to the BC Liberal caucus, is running in Courtenay-Alberni. Former cabinet ministers Terry Lake (health) and Gord Hogg (children and family development) are running in Kamloops and White Rock, respectively.

Another key element to the Liberal campaign is on social media. That also has a west coast connection. Mark Marissen, Clark’s ex-husband, pioneered the BC Liberal “digital influencers” before the 2013 election. It is even one of the product offerings advertised by his Burrard Strategy company, which has produced campaign promotional videos for Surrey-Newton Liberal incumbent Sukh Dhaliwal, among others.

You can see elements of the B.C.-developed Digital Influencers at play in this campaign, whether it’s Steven Joel Kerzner’s Ed the Sock or Neil “Before Zod” Waytowich, the former civil servant exposed by Blacklock’s Reporter, to others with handles like the purported broadcast, web and advertising professional G.T. Lem and “Suburban Voyeur,” whose bio identifies the user as an editor. There is also an army of virulent anti-Conservative, Ontario-centric tech industry workers, hockey moms, soccer moms and grandmothers smitten with Trudeau.

So if Andrew Scheer loses his bid to become Saskatchewan’s first Prime Minister since John Diefenbaker, look to the west coast where the playbook was perfected.

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Bob Mackin Despite scandals and broken promises that

Business, Miscellany, News, Opinion

Bob Mackin

Voters punished the BC Liberals at the ballot box in 2017 when they blamed Christy Clark for the housing crisis in Metro Vancouver. The foreign buyer tax was too little, too late, and the NDP exploited the most-famous Dunbar resident/Kelowna MLA’s penchant for taking big money donations from real estate tycoons.

A June 2016 photo of Christy Clark (left), Gregor Robertson and Justin Trudeau at Microsoft in Vancouver (BC Gov)

In early 2018, Gregor Robertson decided not to run for a fourth term as mayor of Vancouver. The public blamed “Highrise Robertson” for rubber-stamping too many luxury condo towers developed by donors who sold units for big profits to offshore investors that kept them empty.

What about Justin Trudeau and the federal Liberal Party? Why should those that rule British Columbians in Ottawa escape accountability?

Through various departments, the feds control or regulate immigration, foreign investment, banking, taxation and federal policing and prosecution. Trudeau raised funds for his campaign war chest with help from some of the same bagmen who kept Clark and Robertson in power. He has even started a first-time homebuyer incentive eerily similar to the BC Liberals’ 2016-announced program that was slammed by the head of Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation and promised to tax foreign buyers.

In May, after a photo op to announce more new Coast Guard vessels, Trudeau headlined a $25o to $1,500 per-plate cash-for-access Yaletown lunch and a South Vancouver Chinese banquet, where the price was $750 to $1,500 per-plate. Condo marketer Bob Rennie was on the donors’ list for the lunch. At the evening event, Ian Gillespie of Westbank was front and centre.

Gillespie’s Fairmont Pacific Rim is Trudeau’s preferred hotel when in Vancouver. Gillespie’s Woodward’s Atrium was the site of a Trudeau rally on the last day of the campaign.

Ian Gillespie (left) shows Justin Trudeau a coffee table book (Westbank/Facebook)

In 2017, Robertson could feel the tide turning against him, so he reached out to finance minister Bill Morneau. Morneau’s reply misspelled British Columbia and indicated there was little appetite for the federal government to crack down on money laundering in the real estate market. It took until the 2019 budget for the Liberals to acknowledge the problem. B.C.’s attorney general, David Eby, complained in late August that the funds had not yet arrived and Trudeau offered nothing definite.

As investment from China flooded into the Vancouver real estate market after Trudeau’s 2015 election win, the value of residences of high-profile Liberal MPs ballooned.

“If they benefited from the market, I think they had greater responsibility to make certain that people weren’t left behind while they were benefiting,” said independent watchdog Dermod Travis of IntegrityBC. “That was one of the lessons of the Christy Clark government learned, you saw too many of the BC Liberal caucus benefitting from these gigantic price jumps that were taking place in the Vancouver real estate market while, at the same time, sitting on their hands when it came to ensure there was affordable housing for those who were not as fortunate to be able to buy or inherit and, in many cases, are left to rent.”

Justin Trudeau (centre) standing at a Vancouver Chinese new year banquet in 2019.

Vancouver Centre incumbent Hedy Fry actually lives in the Arbutus Ridge area of the Vancouver Granville riding. She endorsed the nomination of Taleeb Noormohamed against ex-Liberal attorney general Jody Wilson-Raybould. Fry’s house was valued at $2.624 million this year, almost a million more than the $1.795 million it was in 2015.

Joyce Murray became president of treasury board and minister of digital government last March, when the cabinet was shuffled amid the SNC-Lavalin scandal. The incumbent in Vancouver Quadra lives in a West Point Grey neighbourhood north of the Jericho Garrison, which will eventually be redeveloped by a company owned by three local First Nations. The value of Murray’s house, which she shares with husband and tree-planting tycoon Dirk Brinkman, topped out at almost $4.26 million last year, but fell to $3.77 million this year. It was $2.697 million when Trudeau came to power in 2015.

Just a few blocks west of Murray is the home of Harjit Sajjan, the defence minister who represents Vancouver South. Sajjan’s property was worth $1.5 million in 2015, reached $4.113 million last year and is $3.65 million this year.

Vancouver Kingsway candidate Tamara Taggart is the party’s star candidate in the Lower Mainland. But the former CTV anchorwoman lives in Vancouver Granville in a house she owns with husband and 54-40 guitarist Dave Genn. It was $1.54 million in 2015. This year, $2.315 million.

Like Fry, Taggart endorsed Noormohamed, whose condo near the Plaza of Nations and Parq Casino was $864,000 in 2015 and $1.478 million this year. His tax bill goes to a North Vancouver architecture firm owned by his parents.

West Point Grey Academy’s 2001 yearbook featured then-teacher Justin Trudeau in blackface. Vancouver South incumbent Harjit Sajjan is a neighbour of the school in Vancouver Quadra.

Meanwhile, Steveston-Richmond East incumbent Joe Peschisolido, the embattled real estate and immigration lawyer, lives just outside the riding’s boundary. He reported in his Elections BC nomination papers that he lives in a modest two-bedroom condominium assessed at $621,000 in Richmond Centre. The Richmond Centre Liberal candidate, Steven Kou, lives in a $1.93 million house near Crescent Beach in Surrey.

That means Murray is the only one of the above seven Liberal candidates in the Oct. 21 election who is eligible to vote for herself.

MPs got a $3,300 pay raise on April 1, putting their basic salary at $178,900. Cabinet ministers are paid $264,400.

There is no law that mandates politicians must live in the jurisdiction to which they are elected. But voters on Oct. 21 might want to consider that, as well as the federal government’s role in allowing a housing crisis.

Travis said candidates should make a firm, public commitment to move into the riding at the very first opportunity.

“The idea that you’re going to spend the bulk of your time socializing with neighbours that don’t necessarily have the same interests, the same policy concerns as your constituents might, raises a concern about how representative you can be of those who you are actually their voice in Ottawa for.”

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Bob Mackin Voters punished the BC Liberals at

Miscellany, News, Opinion

Another milestone in British Columbia’s independent public inquiry into money laundering.

Justice Austin Cullen presided over the first open session on Oct. 18, when lawyers for two B.C. Lottery Corporation executives and an ex-RCMP whistleblower applied to participate in the public inquiry.

“The public has become aware of and concerned about this problem. One recent poll reported approximately 90% of British Columbians are concerned about money laundering,” Cullen said in his opening statement.

“There is also an incidental benefit from simply bringing additional concentrated attention to the crime of money laundering. The more awareness there is of its presence, and of the profound social harms it springs from and propagates, the less complacency there can be for facilitating or tolerating it.”

Public hearings will begin sometime in spring 2020. Oct. 23, however, is the first of five public meetings in cities across B.C. 

Premier John Horgan announced the public inquiry in May and cabinet set a May 2021 deadline for the commission to report to the provincial government. An ambitious timeline, what with the size and scope of the problem and those that it affects.

In an interview with theBreaker.news Podcast, senior commission counsel Brock Martland said: “We will be selective in focusing in on things we think we can accomplish and get us to the heart of we need in terms of evidence, recommendations, policy reforms.”

The inquiry has the power to call witnesses and compel the production of documents. No decision has been made on whether to call former high-ranking politicians yet.

Hear more from Cullen and Martland on this edition of theBreaker.news Podcast.

Plus commentaries, headlines and a compilation of Liberal leader Justin Trudeau’s broken promises and misleading statements. 

Click below to listen or go to Apple Podcasts and subscribe. 

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Another milestone in British Columbia's independent public

Business, Miscellany, News

Bob Mackin (updated Oct. 20)

Justin Trudeau’s March-appointed minister of digital government denies she is paying to advertise for her re-election on the WeChat social media and payment platform, despite an official warning by the House of Commons security department not to use the China-based smartphone app.

Joyce Murray, the Trudeau Liberals’ minister of digital government (WeChat)

theBreaker.news has learned that Vancouver Quadra Liberal incumbent Joyce Murray has her own account on the China state-censored platform as well as an account for her supporters. Both accounts carry images promoting the Liberal Party in the Oct. 21 election and attacking Andrew Scheer and the Conservatives. Some of the ads include the “authorized by the official agent” tagline required by Elections Canada.

It is not known how much the party spent to create and place the ads; unlike Twitter and Facebook, there is no proactive disclosure or political advertising registry on Tencent-owned WeChat. Through her spokesman, Jonathan Robinson, Murray said her campaign is not engaged in paid advertising on WeChat.

“My personal WeChat account is one of the many tools I and my team uses to communicate with the diverse residents of Vancouver Quadra. I am not advertising on it; we have not paid for any ads to be placed or promoted on my WeChat,” said a prepared statement from Murray. “My team applies the official agent authorization tag to our many signs, graphics, buttons, cards and other communications products whether or not there may be any placement cost.”  

Although advertising is commonly associated with payment for display of content, the Oxford dictionary defines advertisement as “a notice or announcement in a public medium promoting a product, service, or event or publicizing a job vacancy.” Elections Canada rules deal with regulated advertising, which does not include messages and content on a political entity’s own website or on free websites.

In the wake of his SNC-Lavalin scandal, Trudeau named Murray the treasury board president and minister of digital government in a cabinet shuffle last March. She is not the only Liberal using WeChat. Trudeau has an account. As does Scarborough-Agincourt incumbent Jean Yip. Yip posts similar ads that also contain the authorized by the official agent tagline.

The existence of Liberal Party ads on WeChat appears to contradict part of an Oct. 14 CBC report that questioned the veracity of Conservative Party Chinese ads on WeChat that claim Trudeau wants to legalize hard drugs. The CBC story said the Liberals denied using WeChat in their social media advertising mix. CBC also quoted spokeswoman for WeChat, Linda Kennedy, saying that “WeChat does not accept or support political ads on its platform.”

A statement received by theBreaker.news from Tencent’s Hong Kong public relations contractor Edelman claims WeChat does not accept or sell political ads on its platform and the company denies that posts which discuss political topics are ads placed on WeChat.

Myriam Croussette of the Office of the Commissioner of Canada Elections said the Canada Elections Act requires online platforms to keep and publish a digital registry of all regulated ads. Parties that buy ads online “must also disclose all election advertising expenses and ensure that the ads themselves contain the proper authorization statement (tagline),” Croussette told theBreaker.news.

Liberal Party WeChat ads calling Andrew Scheer fake (upper left) and promising gun control (lower right).

The threshold for registry provisions to apply to platforms mainly in a language other than English or French is 100,000 unique visitors in Canada per month, she said. MediaInCanada estimated 750,000 WeChat users in Canada.

“In the event of a complaint, the Commissioner of Canada Elections reviews all information received by his office to determine whether the issue falls within his compliance and enforcement mandate,” Croussette wrote. “Cases involving entities outside of Canada can be investigated and there are legal mechanisms that can assist the Commissioner in this work (ex. mutual legal assistance treaties).” 

It is not known how many Canadian users are among the more than 1 billion around the world who use WeChat. But Chinese-speaking voters are obviously vitally important for the Liberal Party in the Oct. 21 election, especially in Toronto and Vancouver-area ridings. The 2016 Census found a Chinese language is the mother tongue of 408,000 people in B.C., primarily Cantonese (193,530) and Mandarin (186,325). Nationwide, the number is 1.25 million.

Murray’s supporters’ group on WeChat is followed by more than 200 individuals and organizations. One of them is the taxpayer-funded Liberal Research Bureau.

Last July, House of Commons cybersecurity staff sent a memo to Members of Parliament, staff and administration, warning them not to use WeChat for business or sensitive communications.

Joyce Murray WeChat ad

“Communications sent via the WeChat application are not encrypted, leaving users vulnerable to interception and unauthorized dissemination,” the memo said. “Additionally, messages continue to reside on servers even after users have deleted them, with information pertaining to users’ locations saved as well. These servers are located outside of Canada and so are not subject to Canadian privacy laws. Rigorous protections of user data cannot be assured.”

A message on WeChat earlier this year forced Burnaby South Liberal candidate Karen Wang to quit the race. She posted a message that boasted of being the only Chinese-Canadian on the ballot and referred to NDP leader Jagmeet Singh, the eventual victor, as “of Indian descent.” Zhou Fengsuo, a survivor of the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, told theBreaker.news in an interview that WeChat has become a powerful tool of the Chinese government to organize and finance Communist Party influence activities outside China. WeChat was employed in August to organize pro-China rallies in Vancouver. Some users threatened violence against those advocating for democracy in Hong Kong.

Last fall, the Richmond-based Canada Wenzhou Friendship Society, an affiliate of the Chinese Communist Party’s United Front foreign influence program, offered a $20 “transportation subsidy” so that its WeChat group members would vote in municipal elections in Vancouver, Burnaby and Richmond for a slate of endorsed candidates.

Amid questions about vote buying, the offer was withdrawn. The RCMP investigated, but did not recommend charges.

The WeChat Pay digital wallet has become a major rival to western payment card companies and caused concern among law enforcement. In his 2019 Dirty Money report for the B.C. NDP government, former RCMP senior officer Peter German noted how WeChat Pay is highly popular at money service bureaus and luxury car dealerships in B.C. He warned that “underground bankers now rely on WeChat and other modern means by which to communicate the movement of money.”

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Bob Mackin (updated Oct. 20) Justin Trudeau’s March-appointed

Business, Miscellany, News, Opinion

She is the highest-profile politician in Canada who is not the leader of a party or a government.

The first aboriginal attorney general in Canada, who stood up to the prime minister when it came to the SNC-Lavalin scandal. Jody Wilson-Raybould opted to let the independent prosecution proceed against the company on corruption charges in Quebec.

Jody Wilson-Raybould in Vancouver-Granville on Sept. 18 (Mackin)

The disagreement cost Wilson-Raybould her seat in cabinet and then her spot in caucus. Justin Trudeau remains unapologetic, even after being caught violating the conflict of interest law.

The eyes of Canada will be watching the Vancouver-Granville riding on election night Oct. 21, to see whether Wilson-Raybould can keep her seat as an independent. It could be an every-seat-counts, nailbiter of an election night. 

Wilson-Raybould has drawn a coalition of supporters from across party lines and across demographics. She even has donors from as far away as Iqaluit and Halifax. On Sept. 18, she hosted the Night of Independent Voices rally and fundraiser with fellow ex-Liberal Jane Philpott and Elizabeth May, the leader of the Green Party, at Vancouver’s Hellenic Community Centre.

“Over the last eight months we have heard a lot about truth to power, truth to power is of course important, but so too is the power of truth,” Wilson-Raybould said in the speech, that you can hear on this week’s edition of theBreaker.news Podcast. “One of the problems with our partisan politics is we do not get enough truth, we get packaged truths, we get spun truths, we get partisan truths. But here’s the thing: no political party has the monopoly on truth. And where truths are bent and shaped to meet a partisan agenda or create spin, that is no longer truthful.”

Wilson-Raybould said the global trend toward the erosion of democracy, trafficking in fear and promotion of division can be reversed by fostering independence, integrity and cooperation.

“We need to have the courage and wisdom to support a good idea and good works no matter who says it or what political party they may be part of,” she said. “We need to stop with empty pandering and put down that make up partisan politics and actually do what Canadians want us to do. A more honourable politics.”

Kevin Falcon (left) and Andrew Scheer in Burnaby on Oct. 12 (Mackin)

Also on this edition, Conservative leader Andrew Scheer taps former BC Liberal cabinet minister Kevin Falcon. Should the Conservatives form government in the Oct. 21 election, Falcon will be the volunteer co-chair of a committee aimed at finding savings for taxpayers, by ending corporate welfare.

In an interview, Falcon dismissed speculation that he is looking for a political comeback, seven years after quitting the BC Liberal government.

Host Bob Mackin asked Scheer, should he become Prime Minister, if he would fight organized crime by bringing back the Chretien Liberal-closed Ports Police. Scheer, a former speaker of the House of Commons, was also asked whether a Conservative government would take a cue from B.C.’s corruption-fighting Speaker Darryl Plecas to reform the House of Commons.

Plus commentaries, headlines and a blast from the past: Justin Trudeau’s most-expensive broken promise. 

Click below to listen or go to Apple Podcasts and subscribe. 

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

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She is the highest-profile politician in Canada

Business, Miscellany, News

Bob Mackin

Justin Trudeau ran away from questions about time and money, when taxpayers footed the bill for his trip to Vancouver at the end of August to star in a Liberal Party campaign ad.

Justin Trudeau appearing in a Liberal campaign ad, shot Aug. 30 at the Grouse Grind. (Top: LPC/Suneeva; bottom: theBreaker)

His last taxpayer-funded trip to British Columbia before the election campaign officially started included the sequel to the 2015 campaign ad targeted at British Columbians. Both ads show Trudeau running up the world famous Grouse Grind trail in North Vancouver.

The ideal sunny, blue sky conditions of 2015 were replaced on Aug. 30 by fog, rain and cool temperatures at the tourist attraction. The conditions were a symbol of Trudeau’s troubled first term as Prime Minister, in which he was found to have broken the conflict of interest laws twice and broke numerous promises. Under the 2015 Liberal platform, Canada was supposed to get electoral reform and communities were supposed to become empowered grant permission for pipelines and LNG plants. Federal books were supposed to be balanced by election time. 

The Grouse Grind advertising shoot was the key part of Trudeau’s seventh taxpayer-funded trip on a government jet to the west coast since late May. Trudeau had used taxpayer resources to frequently visit B.C. for photo ops, campaign rallies and cash for access party fundraisers in the lead-up to the election.

Before the federal election officially started Sept. 11, theBreaker.news asked both the Prime Minister’s Office and the Department of National Defence for costs of Trudeau’s trips on government jets to B.C. They both refused to release the numbers. PMO spokeswoman Brook Simpson said the flights for Trudeau and his entourage “followed all appropriate rules and guidelines.”

Climbing the Grouse Grind trail was also an apt metaphor for the rising public debt under the Trudeau Liberals. In 2015, Trudeau got elected on a promise to balance the budget by 2019. 

Clockwise, from upper right: Liberal aides Katie Telford and Gerald Butts, the Grouse Mountain Skyride, star candidate Tamara Taggart and Trudeau’s waiting RCMP motorcade (Mackin)

Trudeau refused to stop and answer a question about the forecast $19 billion deficit from the only reporter on scene at the Grouse Grind trailhead.

Trudeau was joined by B.C. candidates Harjit Sajjan, Terry Lake, Terry Beech and Tamara Taggart. Taggart, the former TV anchorwoman running in Vancouver Kingsway, left the trail only four minutes after beginning the hike. She claimed to have neck pain. She took the Skyride up the mountain and was included later in the ad in a scene purported to be Trudeau nearing the top of the trail.

Taggart did not respond to an interview request.

In 2015, Trudeau claimed a Grind time of 54 minutes and 55 seconds. On Aug. 30, it was reported to be 52:55, exactly two minutes faster. But, strangely, Trudeau would not stop to answer a question about his finish time when he exited the Skyride station toward one of the more than a dozen RCMP vehicles that had waited on standby for four hours.

Documents obtained under Freedom of Information from the Metro Vancouver regional government show that Toronto production company Suneeva and ad agency Oryx were involved in the ad’s production. The producers paid a $5,000 deposit and $1,700 rental fee to Metro Vancouver, which regulates the Grouse Grind trail. An application for the production was filed a week earlier, initially for an anonymous VIP hoping to beat his personal best time.

When Grouse Grinders reach the top, they take the Grouse Mountain Skyride down. That is operated by a private company ultimately owned by Shanghai’s China Minsheng Investment Group. The Chinese parent includes directors who are Communist Party members. China Minsheng bought the beloved four season resort from local McLaughlin family in 2017. It was the most-prominent of the many Vancouver area assets sold to wealthy Chinese interests since Trudeau came to power in 2015.

Oct. 21 is election day. 

CLICK BELOW AND WATCH Justin Trudeau star in campaign ads on the Grouse Grind

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Bob Mackin Justin Trudeau ran away from questions

Business, Miscellany, News

Bob Mackin

The British Columbia Legislature scandal took a detour to a Surrey courtroom on Oct. 9.

A lawyer for Vancouver Sun and Province publisher Postmedia applied to Provincial Court Judge Gurmail Singh Gill to unseal the RCMP’s April 9 version of information to obtain a production order to collect evidence from the Legislature. The hearing had been scheduled before the previous day’s release of former Vancouver Police deputy chief Doug LePard’s damning Sept. 9 report that sparked Gary Lenz’s retirement as sergeant-at-arms.

Daniel Coles (Owen Bird)

Postmedia’s lawyer Daniel Coles said in court that the onus was on the special prosecutor and a lawyer for the RCMP to convince Gill that release of the information would cause serious harm to the administration of justice.

Coles said the application has larger implications for the public interest in knowing how business is conducted at the Legislature and the conduct of the RCMP in the investigation, which is entering its second year. Maximum transparency and accountability is required, he said. ITOs are normally public documents after a search is finished and the evidence gathered, although judges have the power to seal files to protect an ongoing police investigation or the identity of an informant.

“Would the release of this ITO related to the trailer and the wood splitter cause serious harm to the administration of justice?” Coles asked in court. “I appreciate that Mr. Lenz and [Craig] James and individuals like them have suffered adversity through this process, but the horse is out of the barn on that issue.… if there is leaked documents and various hearsay evidence and innuendo, well the antidote to that is truth.”

Brock Martland (vancrimlaw.com)

Special prosecutor Brock Martland, Joel Katz, representing the RCMP, and lawyers for James and Lenz all opposed the application with a common theme. Now is not the time for the information to be released, because it could adversely impact the integrity of the RCMP investigation.

“In the course of an ongoing investigation, in which the ball hasn’t stopped moving down the field, there should be caution with respect to whether that sort of opining or analysis of the evidence should come into the public record at this stage,” Martland said.

“The application is a perfectly sound one, it’s not unreasonable and it’s not unfounded. The only real concern that I’m expressing with respect to it is its timing. It’s a little bit too early,” Katz told the court. “It is a complex, and multifaceted investigation and therefore should take as long as it needs to take.”

Lenz’s lawyer Bob Cooper of McEwan Partners said the case has been high profile and highly political. Neither his client nor James, who was represented by Gavin Cameron of Fasken Martineau DuMoulin, has been charged with any offence.

“[Police] have been allowed so far to conduct their investigation in the way that they see fit and the way they normally do, in private,” Cooper said.

Gill reserved decision. 

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Bob Mackin The British Columbia Legislature scandal took

Business, Miscellany, News

Bob Mackin

Premier John Horgan’s chief of staff knew about the unfolding scandal at the Legislature almost four months before the clerk and sergeant-at-arms were suspended and escorted from the Parliament Buildings.

Premier John Horgan with chief of staff Geoff Meggs (centre) on a February 2019 trip to Washington State (BC Gov)

Doug LePard’s Oct. 8-released report found ex-sergeant-at-arms Gary Lenz breached his oath as a special constable. The scathing report mentioned a meeting that Horgan’s right hand-man, former Vancouver city councillor Geoff Meggs, hosted at the Vancouver Cabinet Office on July 30, 2018 with Speaker Darryl Plecas, Deputy Speaker Raj Chouhan and Alan Mullen, Plecas’s aide.

LePard refers to Meggs not by name, but by his title and as Witness 10. In his interview with LePard, Meggs remembered Plecas gave him a 40 to 50 page report with a long list of allegations, including the 2013 liquor incident that Lenz did not properly investigate.

“He recalled every page had surprising material and that the liquor incident was not the most shocking part,” LePard wrote. “He recalled that the key point regarding the liquor was that it was purchased with legislature funds, placed by the carton in (Clerk Craig James’s) pick-up truck, and delivered to the previous Speaker (Barisoff). He recalled he was told that this information was known to Lenz, and he hadn’t done anything about it, Witness 10 said this information was in the document he saw and was briefly part of their conversation.”

Meggs called the meeting brief and he advised Plecas to bring the information to police so that it could be “professionally assessed.”

“Witness 10 said the Speaker left behind a copy of his report, but he subsequently shredded it, and didn’t brief the Premier until the news broke in November, nor did he have any further knowledge of the matter,” LePard wrote.

Doug LePard

Meggs finally wrote a memo after Solicitor General Mike Farnworth informed Horgan on Nov. 19, 2018 that two special prosecutors had been appointed upon request of RCMP investigators. James and Lenz were suspended with pay and escorted from the Parliament Buildings the next day. For months they said they did no wrong and demanded their jobs back, but James retired in May after being found in misconduct and Lenz quit eight days before the LePard report’s release.

In his interview with LePard, Chouhan also called the meeting brief, but did not recall discussion about the liquor incident. Plecas, LePard wrote, told Lenz on Aug. 2, 2018 that the meeting “did not go well.”

Plecas and Mullen had alleged that Lenz told them on several occasions that he encouraged Plecas to inform Horgan about James stealing the liquor in 2013, in order to force James to resign.

Meggs did not respond for comment.

“Geoff has nothing further to add,” said Sage Aaron, Office of the Premier spokeswoman, by email in the morning on Oct. 9. By afternoon, however, it had become the lead-off issue in Question Period. Meggs released a statement that said Horgan asked him to meet with Plecas about his concerns with James. Horgan is a former Legislative Assembly Management Committee member and NDP house leader who opposed James’s controversial installation as clerk by the BC Liberals in 2011. Meggs’s statement said Vanessa Geary, executive director of the Premier’s office, joined him at the meeting.

“The document I reviewed was not evidence, but a copy of a summary of internal investigations conducted by the Speaker’s Office,” Meggs wrote. “There was no supporting documentation or back-up material. As the report was a duplicate and had nothing to do with the business of the government, I disposed of the copy of the report.”

Did Meggs decide on his own, without seeking legal advice, to shred the document? “Yes, correct,” replied Aaron.

theBreaker.news has asked for comment from Information and Privacy Commissioner Michael McEvoy.

Meggs was elected three times on the Vision Vancouver ticket led by Gregor Robertson. Despite a promise to run a transparent city hall, Vision made it one of Canada’s most-secretive. In 2016, B.C. Information and Privacy Commissioner Elizabeth Denham slammed City of Vancouver for routinely breaking the freedom of information laws. In 2018, theBreaker.news revealed how Robertson used a secret Gmail account to hide email from FOI requesters.

Meggs’s admission that he destroyed a copy of the report puts him at least at odds with the spirit of B.C.’s freedom of information laws — laws that the NDP promised during the 2017 election to reform, after slamming the BC Liberals for mass-deleting email.

In an April 27, 2017 letter from the NDP campaign to the B.C. Freedom of Information and Privacy Association, the party boasted of tabling a private members’ bill for a strict duty to document law.

Darryl Plecas, Sept. 20 (Mackin)

“Our proposed legislation creates the duty to investigate instances of unauthorized destruction of government information and removes legal immunity from officials who fail to disclose documents, making contraventions of the Act an offence subject to fines of up to $50,000,” said the letter.

Instead of tabling such a law, the NDP government made minor additions to the BC Liberal-enacted Information Management Act that it had previously criticized as insufficient.

The previous BC Liberal government had often used the transitory records loophole to avoid keeping records. Transitory records are temporary records that “are only required for a limited period of time for the completion of a routine action or the preparation of an ongoing record” and can be disposed.

Non-transitory records include useful information that helps explain the history of a relationship, decision, or project; and documentation that is evidence of a significant action (e.g. verification or approval to proceed).

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Bob Mackin Premier John Horgan’s chief of

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