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Bob Mackin

Ian Aikenhead is hoping that the second try at selling B.C. Place Stadium’s naming rights will be a charm. 

Seven years ago, the BC Liberal government cancelled a deal to rename the 1983-built stadium Telus Park. It would have meant $40 million over 20 years, including the installation and operation of equipment, but for a telecom sponsorship tiff and complaints by bidders for the provincial government’s telecommunications contracts. Bell won the former. Telus the latter. The public eventually compensated Telus $15.2 million for equipment and labour.

“This time around the government wants to do something that is very open,” Aikenhead, the chair of the B.C. Pavilion Corp. board since last August, told theBreaker.news. “One of the criticisms last time was the opportunity was given to one company. With the kind of interest that’s gone around North America with naming rights, the government felt the [request for proposals] has to be an open process.”

Image from PavCo’s naming rights sales pitch (PavCo)

PavCo issued the call for naming rights bidders in early February and hopes to have a deal by mid-summer. It will evaluate bids based on a sponsor’s brand, activation strategy, community engagement plan and, most importantly, fees and term. PavCo enlisted the expertise of sports marketing and branding expert Yoeri Geerits, a former senior vice-president of Nielsen Sports Canada who is now with Calgary-based threesixtythree inc.

“What we’re told is that the general sponsorship naming rights business has increased fairly dramatically in terms of what sponsors are prepared to pay,” Aikenhead said. “There have been some high water marks back east. If we’ve hit the crest of the wave or we’re about to hit it or we’ve gone past it, what the market is prepared to do is unknown at this point.”

That high water mark is in Toronto, where Scotiabank agreed to an $800 million deal with Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment to call the home of the Toronto Maple Leafs and Toronto Raptors Scotiabank Arena from 2017 to 2038. 

Closer to home, Rogers took over naming rights of the Canucks’ home from General Motors in 2010 for a reported $60 million over a decade. In Edmonton, Rogers inked a 13-year naming rights agreement. When it was announced in 2013, Oilers’ president Patrick LaForge told reporters who speculated on $1 million a year that the sum was “not even in the ballpark.”

PavCo chair Ian Aikenhead (AMJ Law)

A PavCo sales video seeks bidders who want to “be the jewel in British Columbia’s crown.” The Crown corporation is marketing the stadium as the only venue of its type in Canada that has never had a corporate title sponsor, which means it is a blank slate with no legacy names or nicknames. (Commonwealth Stadium in Edmonton remains with its original name, but the field name was sold to the Brick furniture chain.) 

Vancouver is a market of 2.46 million with 10.5 million visitors a year. PavCo says the stadium is passed by 53 million drivers and passengers annually. B.C. Place hosts 17 Whitecaps and 10 B.C. Lions regular season games a year, the wildly successful HSBC Canada Sevens rugby sevens, and large scale concerts and trade shows. In 2018, the Whitecaps averaged 18,211 per game attendance and the Lions 14,769.

“It’s hard to know what attracts a particular naming sponsor, but the location, all the activity, the fact that it’ll be discussed when there are concerts, shows, exhibits, sports teams, that’s what they’re interested in,” Aikenhead said. “To be attached to an iconic stadium that reflects well on their brand. It’s all about branding.”

East Vancouver lawyer Aikenhead’s duty is to lead the turnaround of B.C. Place, which recorded a $12.12 million loss for the year ended March 31, 2018. The figure included a budgeted $8.5 million payment to the Musqueam First Nation under the Parq Casino lands accommodation agreement. PavCo’s other property, the Vancouver Convention Centre, reported a $2.76 million profit.

Aikenhead was the president of the Pacific National Exhibition from 1992 to 2001 and brings the most event hosting experience to the position. Past PavCo chairs have included ex-Grouse Mountain owner Stuart McLaughlin, politician Peter Fassbender, developer David Podmore, executive recruiter Catherine Van Alstine, wholesaler Doris Bradstreet and banker Diana Reid. 

The mandate letter from Tourism Minister Lisa Beare, another new move under the NDP, orders Aikenhead to “maximize private sector revenue” and “explore options for additional revenue streams.”

To that end, the land known as Site 10C, on the east side of the stadium property, could be developed by PavCo, leased or sold. Last year, Vancouver city council approved in principle a 400-foot rental tower on the site. Aikenhead said the government has not made a decision on whether PavCo will develop the property or sell or lease the land. 

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Bob Mackin Ian Aikenhead is hoping that the

Bob Mackin

Finance Minister Bill Morneau’s chief of staff, one of several officials that Jody Wilson-Raybould says wanted her to let SNC-Lavalin off the hook, broke British Columbia’s freedom of information law when he mass-deleted email while working as a senior aide to Christy Clark in 2017. 

In her Jan. 29 decision, Information and Privacy adjudicator Celia Francis ruled that the Office of the Premier failed to respond “openly, accurately and completely” under the law.

Ben Chin watches Christy Clark at a voting station in Dunbar in May 2017 (Twitter)

Ben Chin was Clark’s executive director of communications when, on April 6, 2017, the Ombudsperson released a damning report about the unjust 2012 firings of drug safety researchers in the health ministry. theBreaker.news asked for all of Chin’s email for a 12-hour period on the day that the report dominated provincial news. But, after the provincial election, Clark’s office released only three pages: an op-ed ghost-written for Clark about softwood lumber exports to the U.S.

In mid-June 2017, theBreaker.news sought Chin’s message-tracking logs. The 17-pages of metadata contained proof that a “recover deleted items” folder included email that should have been disclosed to theBreaker.news. Nobody in Clark’s office searched the folder before its contents were deleted and saved to a backup server. 

On July 18, 2017, the NDP’s John Horgan succeeded Clark as premier. In an awkward twist, Horgan’s staff went to work to defend the conduct of Chin, even though Horgan constantly skewered the BC Liberals for what he called a “culture of deception, a culture of deceit, a culture of delete, delete, delete.” 

Francis noted that the government’s own guide on transitory records directs employees to preserve transitory records that are relevant to an FOI request or legal discovery. In her 2015 report, then-Commissioner Elizabeth Denham wrote that “once a public body receives an access to information request, it must keep all records, including both transitory and non-transitory records, in its custody or under its control. If these records are responsive, the public body must produce them unless specific exemptions to disclosure under FIPPA apply.”

The Office of the Premier argued that Chin properly disposed of the transitory email and, she wrote, “also suggested that the emails would be ‘of little or no value’ to the journalist. However, whether the emails were transitory or valuable to the journalist is irrelevant, in my view. The journalist did not request emails pertaining to a specified subject. He requested all of the Executive Director’s emails for a 12-hour period. As such, all of the Executive Director’s emails for that period were responsive to the request, whether transitory or valuable.”

Chin’s affidavit said that he regularly deleted emails he considered transitory, but would not have searched the recovered deleted items folder because he felt those emails were transitory and properly disposed. 

Though Francis found the Office of the Premier broke the law, she followed the rulings of two previous commissioners and did not order the premier’s office to find the deleted email.

“The Office of the Premier’s evidence has persuaded me that it would be a complex, onerous and costly business to restore the requested emails. In the circumstances of this case, I am satisfied that it is not reasonable to require the Office of the Premier to restore the email backups in order to respond to the journalist’s access request.” 

Chin left the B.C. government with a $159,533 golden parachute after the change of government and found a new job in October 2017 as Morneau’s senior advisor. He was promoted to chief of staff in May 2018. 

Ex-Attorney General Wilson-Raybould testified Feb. 27 to the House of Commons justice committee that Chin contacted officials in her office four times between Sept. 6 and 20, 2018 to talk about SNC-Lavalin’s desire to avoid a trial over the payment of $48 million in bribes to the brutal Gadhafi regime in Libya. Chin’s last contact came the day after Wilson-Raybould told Morneau to leave her alone. 

“[Morneau] again stressed the need to save jobs and I told him that engagements from his office to mine on SNC had to stop, that they were inappropriate,” said Wilson-Raybould.

theBreaker.news sought comment from Chin on both his email purge and Wilson-Raybould’s testimony. Instead of answering, Chin referred the query to Morneau press secretary Pierre-Olivier Herbert, who avoided the question about Chin breaking B.C.’s FOI law.

“It is Minister Morneau’s responsibility to protect and promote the creation of jobs across Canada and he will continue to raise such important issues with all his cabinet colleagues,” Herbert wrote. “At no time did Minister Morneau nor members of his office pressure the former Minister of Justice and Attorney General into making any decision regarding the prosecution of SNC-Lavalin.”

Federal lobbying records show that SNC-Lavalin CEO Neil Bruce communicated with Chin on Sept. 18 and Nov. 19, 2018. Clark hired Chin, the former spinner for Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty, in late 2012.  

Meanwhile, British Columbians keep waiting for Horgan to fulfil a 2017 campaign promise to enact a duty to document law and impose fines for those caught deleting or destroying government records.

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Aff #1 Ben Chin Sworn July 27 2018 by BobMackin on Scribd

Order F19-04 by BobMackin on Scribd

Bob Mackin Finance Minister Bill Morneau’s chief of

Bob Mackin

A White Rock youth soccer association has suspended the head coach of an under-17 girls team after allegations surfaced that he bullied and harassed players when he helmed the Vancouver Whitecaps W-League and Canadian junior national teams more than a decade ago.

Coastal FC said it is deeply concerned about the allegations, which were published on former Whitecap and national team player Ciara McCormack’s blog. The club has suspended Bob Birarda pending an investigation. 

“We are seeing this information for the first time,” said a statement on the club’s website. “We were not privy to any of this information at any point during the application and appointment process of the coach in question.” 

Bob Birarda in 2005 (CSA)

Executive director Chris Murphy declined comment. 

McCormack did not mention Birarda by name, but referred to the Oct. 9, 2008 news release that announced the Canadian Soccer Association and Birarda had agreed to a mutual parting “in the best interest of both parties.” The Whitecaps and Birarda also split on the same day. He had coached the Whitecaps to the 2006 W-League championship, missed the 2007 playoffs and advanced to the conference finals in 2008. 

McCormack wrote that Birarda, who she called “Coach Billy” on her blog, was “charismatic and charming, and a very, very good coach. In my early 20’s he built a training environment that I often participated in, and loved.”

When he became the Whitecaps and national under-20 coach, things changed. 

“Over time, with this immense amount of power, he started to bully and manipulate people and created a shitty, fearful environment. For those of us on the fringe of the national team, we were also on the Whitecaps, and so we were shuffled back and forth and at Coach Billy’s mercy,” McCormack wrote.

Ciara McCormack (Twitter)

“He reminded us often, that he was the reason we were training with the national team, with the obvious underlying insinuation that he gave us the opportunity and he could also take it away.”

McCormack alleged that Whitecaps’ ownership and senior management mishandled complaints. She recounted a May 8, 2007 meeting with president Bob Lenarduzzi in a North Vancouver coffee shop. McCormack and another player begged Lenarduzzi for both help and anonymity. “We told him we didn’t know where else to turn.”

She wrote that Lenarduzzi failed to keep their complaints confidential, that he told Birarda everything. 

“I was terrified and speechless that he’d put us in this situation when we were already so vulnerable and we’d begged him not to,” she wrote.

McCormack went to play with the Ottawa Fury instead that summer. After blowing the whistle on Birarda, McCormack never played again for Canada. She found a spot with the Irish national team and a club team in Norway, but ex-teammates back in Vancouver continued to complain to her of inappropriate behaviour by Birarda. She said the police should have been involved, but instead the CSA and Whitecaps hired a mediator in 2008 and eventually cut ties with Birarda. 

Bob Lenarduzzi (Whitecaps)

CSA general secretary Peter Montopoli did not respond. Lenarduzzi declined comment, but sent a prepared statement that said the well-being of staff and players is “of paramount importance.”

“As a club, we hold ourselves accountable to a respectful workplace policy of the highest standard and expect the same from our staff and athletes. Any matter arising which may be in contravention to this policy goes through a rigorous assessment and, where appropriate, action is taken.”

Birarda has not responded for comment. 

UPDATE (March 1): Meanwhile, B.C. Soccer Association president Kjeld Brodsgaard posted a statement on the association’s website March 1, after a Feb. 27 emergency meeting of the board of directors. Brodsgaard wrote that the board launched a third-party review to determine “whether there are systemic cultural behaviours affecting the safety of players.”

The outcome and recommendations will be shared with the association’s membership. Brodsgaard also publicized Canada Soccer’s third-party-operated whistleblower hotline (1-800-661-9675 and whistleblower@canadasoccer.com).

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Bob Mackin A White Rock youth soccer association

An all-party committee of the B.C. Legislature took one step closer to splitting for good with the man who bought the infamous wood splitter with public money. 

The wood splitter trailer at Craig James’s house in Saanich (Speaker’s Office)

Speaker Darryl Plecas’s second report on waste and corruption at the seat of government was published Feb. 21 by the Legislative Assembly Management Committee, two weeks after suspended clerk Craig James and sergeant-at-arms Gary Lenz replied to Plecas’s bombshell January report.

The new report points to discrepancies and errors in James and Lenz’s submissions, introduces new evidence and cites theBreaker.news reporting on the August 2017 whale watching junket and Seattle Mariners game disguised as an emergency preparation conference. It also includes a photograph of the wood splitter’s trailer parked beside James’s Saanich house last October. 

Host Bob Mackin interviewed Plecas’s chief of staff, Alan Mullen, about next steps.

“Whether these individuals should ultimately have their employment terminated, I think British Columbians are pretty clear in their views,” Mullen said. “But ultimately that is a decision of the House. They are appointed at the pleasure of the House and they must be removed at the pleasure of the House.”

LAMC voted for Plecas to stand back and let a retired judge come in and review the Legislature’s relationship with James and Lenz, who were suspended with pay on Nov. 20. Meanwhile, Plecas and Mullen are continuing to gather evidence for more reports, while the RCMP and two special prosecutors continue their criminal investigation. 

Keala Kennelly (She is the Ocean)

“We have a responsibility to British Columbians to continue to peel back the layers of this onion,” Mullen said. 

Also on this edition: 

The Vancouver International Mountain Film Festival is on until March 3. It includes the Feb. 24 Canadian premiere of She is the Ocean, a documentary on what unites nine women from around the world. Listen to Mackin’s interview with one of those women, Keala Kennelly, a pro surfer, actress and DJ from Hawaii.

She is the Ocean also screens March 1 in Tofino and March 8 in Vancouver. 

Plus Pacific Northwest and Pacific Rim headlines and commentaries.

Click below to listen or go to iTunes (aka Apple Podcasts) and subscribe

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

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An all-party committee of the B.C. Legislature

Bob Mackin

Plecas Report: The Sequel didn’t immediately result in the firing of suspended Clerk Craig James and Sergeant-at-Arms Gary Lenz on Feb. 21.

But it attacked their credibility after their error-filled Feb. 7 replies to Speaker Darryl Plecas’s first report about waste and corruption at the Legislature. 

The Legislative Assembly Management Committee released the new report with more allegations of overspending after meeting for two-and-a-half-hours behind closed-doors. A retired B.C. Supreme Court judge will be hired to determine whether to keep James and Lenz on paid leave or fire them. Meanwhile, the RCMP and two special prosecutors continue to investigate. A visit from their lawyer, Fasken’s Mark Andrews, failed to convince the all-party committee to give James and Lenz a sneak peek and chance to reply to the new Plecas Report. 

Plecas (left) and Ryan-Lloyd on Jan. 21 (Mackin)

“The House Leaders need to decide whether confidence in these two officers has been undermined to the point that, regardless of the outcome of the further processes, audits and investigations, Mr. James and Mr. Lenz cannot realistically return to their positions as the senior executives of the Legislative Assembly,” Plecas wrote in the 32-page report. 

James was paid $347,000 last year to be general manager of the Legislature, which ran on a $77 million budget. Lenz was paid $218,000 to be the director of operations and security. Their jobs were to operate and maintain B.C.’s seat of government and organize meetings among lawmakers. Deputy Kate Ryan-Lloyd is the acting clerk and Randy Ennis the acting sergeant-at-arms.

Five pages in the report deal with the August 2017 trip to Seattle and Olympia, Wash. Plecas cites theBreaker.news exclusive Feb. 10 story (“James and Lenz dinged B.C. taxpayers for big league baseball tickets and whale watching tour”) and brands James and Lenz’s explanations  “demonstrably false.”

B.C. taxpayers paid at least $10,352.46 to host a conference for the Legislative Assemblies Business Continuity Network that included a whale watching expedition and trip to a Seattle Mariners’ baseball game. 

“To be clear: Washington State is not a member of LABCoN,” Plecas wrote. “There was no prearranged ‘conference’ which required travel to Washington to attend,” Plecas wrote. “This was an initiative organized by Mr. James and almost entirely paid for by British Columbia taxpayers. It took place in Washington because Mr. James decided the group should visit Washington.”

Lawyers for James and Lenz, in letters that LAMC released Feb. 21, pleaded for them to be reinstated and said they did no wrong. There is no reason why the RCMP investigation cannot be completed with them back in their jobs, the lawyers, from the Fasken law firm, wrote to LAMC. They also called for a further investigation by an independent investigator with fair process afforded to their clients. 

Logo for the controversial 2017 conference.

Meanwhile, another 10 gems from the newn report, in Plecas’s own words.

Booze for Bill Barisoff 

Mr. James says that Mr. Barisoff paid for the liquor that was delivered to him by Mr. James. I asked Financial Services to locate the payment and they have provided me with a copy of a cheque from Mr. Barisoff dated June 26, 2013 for $370 with the memo reading “wine purchase”. That amount of money certainly does not accord with the accounts of two truckloads of alcohol that were loaded into Mr. James’ truck and which included beer and hard liquor – including a recent account I have received that, according to employees who were personally involved, the first load of alcohol included beer and a few wine boxes, and the second load of alcohol included wine and hard liquor. 

Moreover, Mr. James has provided no reasonable explanation as to why it would have been appropriate for the most senior officer of the Legislature to drive up to Penticton to sell wine and deliver a desk and chair to the former Speaker, stay overnight at the Penticton Lakeside Inn, and drive back the next day, billing all of the expenses to the taxpayers along with his very high salary for two days of work – noting as well that the value of the alcohol Mr. Barisoff purchased from the Legislative Assembly was only a fraction of the cost of Mr. James making the trip. To my mind, both as Speaker and as a taxpayer, this is unacceptable. 

Visits with Bill and Christy

Similarly, I cannot fathom what “business of the Legislature” would call for the Clerk to use work days to travel to Vancouver or Penticton to have lunch meetings with the former premier, Christy Clark and dinners with the former Speaker, Bill Barisoff. Mr. James’ explanation in relation to at least one of the trips to Penticton was that Mr. Barisoff – who had ceased to be Speaker and an MLA in 2013 – was continuing in 2017 to “attend to” Legislative Assembly business, four years and three Speakers later, which required an in-person visit from Mr. James to discuss it. That claim is farcical to me. I would like to know what Legislative Assembly business Mr. Barisoff is still, or was in 2017, involved in, if any. Even suspending disbelief and assuming these meetings were for legitimate work purposes, I do not see why they could not have been handled by phone or by email. 

Craig James (left) and Gary Lenz (Commonwealth Parliamentary Association)

Gary threw Craig under the bus 

Mr. Lenz simply does not address his many conversations with Mr. Mullen and me in which Mr. Lenz urged us to force Mr. James to resign by confronting him with his misconduct, or by asking the Premier to step in and tell Mr. James the government was “moving in a different direction.” He also does not address his statements, vehemently expressed to me on a number of occasions, that we did not want an audit or an outside investigation. In various instances, I first became aware of alleged misconduct by Mr. James because Mr. Lenz told me about it. In response, Mr. Lenz does not deny these conversations, but says he has not had the time, and does not “see the purpose” in “dealing with” my detailed recollections of conversations. He says my concerns should be dealt with on the basis of “facts, not hearsay.” But to put it bluntly: the fact of the conversations isn’t “hearsay.” The conversations were between me and Mr. Lenz. He was a party to them. To the extent the conversations included allegations about the Clerk, those allegations came from Mr. Lenz. 

Say what?

Mr. James’ explanation as to why the taxpayers should have purchased $500 Bose headphones is that he has an ear condition relating to sound and pressure.This is news to me, and is not noted on the claim form. Since my Preliminary Report, I have seen an expense claim Mr. James submitted on December 22, 2011, also for Bose noise cancelling headphones at a cost to taxpayers of $447.99. While noise cancelling headphones may address sound issues, I am unaware of them being effective for cabin pressure as they don’t create a seal of any kind on the ear that would alleviate pressure. In fact, an internet search offers a great many articles in which people complain that noise cancelling headphones cause ear pain. In any event, it is unclear to me how these two sets of expensive headphones are not a personal expense unless they are a form of medical accommodation for a disability, in which case they would be approved as such. 

That woodsplitter again

Mr. James says he stored the wood splitter and trailer at his “strata”, which he adds is “not a rural property.”  This implies he lives in a condominium and has no wood to split there. His property may technically be a strata-titled development, but it not a condominium. Instead it is a 3,600 square foot freestanding house on a 10,500 square foot lot with large trees behind the house.

Mr. James writes that he was frustrated storing the trailer at his property and arranged to have it stored at an RV facility. I note, however, that in front of Mr. James’ house is a recently constructed paved pad on which he had been storing the Legislature’s trailer until he apparently returned it. A photo of the storage location at his house from Google maps, and a more recent photo of the new pad with the Legislature’s trailer parked on it, are reproduced below. 

Where the wood splitter was located on the property is not known to me, but Mr. Mullen viewed it after it was removed and he advises me that it showed obvious signs of use. That a committee on which Mr. Lenz and Mr. James sat approved the recommended expenditure as part of purported disaster planning is not, in my view, an answer. Committees generally place their trust in senior management that expenditures are appropriate and necessary, until that trust is brought into question, or broken. 

Leg-room Lenz

Photos from the exterior of James’s Saanich house (Plecas Report)

In the executive summary and in paragraph 44 of his response, Mr. Lenz says that his practice and policy is to fly economy class. It has been brought to my attention that when Mr. Lenz travelled to London, England, from December 4 – 9, 2011, Mr. Lenz flew Executive First Class between YVR and Heathrow. Including the connecting flights to Victoria, the flights cost the taxpayers $8,074.94. Added to these were flight-related expenses for “Holiday House Travel” and “Intair Transit” which, together with travel insurance and a TASF charge brought the total cost of his flights for the trip to $11,103.94. Evidently, Mr. Lenz did not always fly economy class. 

The boys and their baggage

Mr. James has said that his expensing of the $800 Victorinox “Maverick” watch from the Hong Kong airport was in error and that he instead meant to expense the $600 piece of luggage that he purchased. If it was an innocent mistake (despite the attention that appears to have been devoted to the receipt submitted), it still leaves open the question of how it was appropriate to be expensing luggage at all. For the limited period of my review of expenses (April 2017 – November 2018), it was not just the laptop backpack ($432.80) and the $645.00 carry-on piece of luggage ($645.04) purchased in Hong Kong; luggage was also purchased in Heathrow ($743.92) and in Edinburgh ($253.61) and expensed to taxpayers. No MLA that I have talked to was aware of any policy whereby the Clerk’s office was maintaining a set of “loaner luggage”. 

Lastly, Mr. James has not addressed the obvious question of why, even if this was a legitimate or justifiable policy, luggage was not purchased by the Legislature’s staff directly as inventory and at reasonable prices. You can buy perfectly good luggage for $150 from the Bay in Victoria. No one who respects taxpayer money would purchase a $645 piece of carry-on luggage in an overseas airport boutique, whatever the purpose. 

Everything but a snow globe

Mr. Lenz and Mr. James say that all the shopping that was done in the gift stores was to purchase “precedents or merchandise for display or sale” in BC’s Legislature” gift shop, gifts for other people or as “protocol gifts” does not make sense. Mr. James appears to suggest that he was purchasing items in England for future sale in British Columbia’s Legislative Assembly gift shop. Even if that or the other justifications given were true, why are the taxpayers of British Columbia paying the high salaries of these senior executives to go shopping all over the world for small gifts? 

Who, for example, received the mustard, the “Quotable Churchill” book, the royal wedding memorabilia, the satirical books about Brexit, and the “Winter King” fantasy novel? 

Mr. Lenz’s trip to London in December 2011… There he attended the House of Lords Gift Shop on two occasions on December 8, 2011 and purchased such items as a Christmas pudding, a spirit decanter, cufflinks, a towel, a guidebook, an umbrella, playing cards, mint tins, dictionaries, computer mouse mats, along with various other things. The total cost of these items expensed to the Legislature, and the taxpayers, was $1,084.01. 

iClerk

No satisfactory response has been provided regarding the purchase of the wide array of Apple devices by Mr. James and Mr. Lenz. 

These expenses are embarrassing to the Legislature. Here is how one staff member explained the genesis of the program: 

“Craig and Gary decided that they wanted an iPhone, and the legislative comptroller said no, and the Computer Services said, “No, we don’t support that. You have the BlackBerry and that’s what you get.” So, they created a special project and started just buying them outright on their credit card… 

When it first started it was just Craig and Gary, and then it became Craig and Gary and Randy. And by the time I was fired, almost everybody had both an iPhone and an iPad. I was supporting all of them, setting them up, teaching how to use them. They were taking them all over the world racking up these huge roaming charges watching movies on these things because they refused to use wifi [on the basis that] it was too slow. So, we at one point had a bill for one of Craig’s trips that was thousands of dollars and had to try to dispute it with Rogers.” 

Why not Buy B.C.?

Lastly, it seems to me that if the Clerk was buying a suit as a new uniform for the BC Legislature that BC taxpayers are going to pay for, it ought to be purchased in BC so that a BC men’s clothing store and its employees would benefit from the purchase. 

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Plecas Report Feb 20 (1) by on Scribd

 

 

Bob Mackin Plecas Report: The Sequel didn't immediately result

Bob Mackin

An independent watchdog is hoping the Legislative Assembly Management Committee puts an end to the golden parachute entitlements for political staffers in the B.C. government. 

More than 130 BC Liberal appointees were laid-off by cabinet order July 17, 2017, on the eve of the NDP government’s swearing-in, costing taxpayers at least $11.3 million in severance payments.

“Severance is intended to tide you over, it’s not intended to act as a super-inflated bonus package, which seems to have been the practice with the change in government in 2017,” said Dermod Travis of IntegrityBC. “When you have a situation where the severance policies for staffers are more generous than the severance policies for MLAs, the transition allowance, you have a serious problem.”

Evan Southern, the BC Liberals’ operations director in 2017 (Twitter)

The all-party LAMC meets Feb. 21 to receive another report from its chair, Speaker Darryl Plecas, about corruption and waste in the Legislature. Clerk Craig James and Sergeant-at-Arms Gary Lenz were suspended Nov. 20 and are under RCMP investigation.

The $73,777 that Evan Southern scored was a fraction of the $540,955 given to public service head Kim Henderson or the $474,552.51 paid to deputy finance minister and longtime Christy Clark confidante Athana Mentzelopoulos in July 2017. 

Southern, however, took leave of absence in November 2015 from his full-time job as Clark’s director of issues management after the triple delete scandal. He worked in the BC Liberal headquarters through the May 2017 provincial election as the director of operations and returned to Clark’s office just long enough to qualify for the severance. 

Southern did not respond to requests for comment from theBreaker.news.

According to a statement from the Public Service Agency, “The employee was employed by the government in the public service as director of issues management in the Office of the Premier in July of 2017. Public service employees whose employment concludes without cause and without notice are entitled to severance in compliance with the Employment Termination Standards regulation.”

You wouldn’t know that by looking at Southern’s LinkedIn profile. His online resume says that he worked as director of operations for the BC Liberals from December 2015 to July 2017, but it makes no mention of his brief 2017 return to the Office of the Premier, which he originally joined in June 2014. Southern’s name does not appear in an archived copy of the government directory for July 2017 from the Legislature Library.  

Said Travis: “The BC Liberal Party, as his last employer, should be the party responsible for paying out the severance package.”

Southern was paid $102,902 in the 2014-2015 fiscal year, his last full-year in government. He originally joined the BC Liberal government in April 2011 as executive assistant for the Minister of Forests and Lands and later worked as chief of staff for the Attorney General from July 2012 to June 2014.

While working in the premier’s office, Southern’s duties included handling freedom of information requests. His job, but not name, was mentioned in the Information and Privacy Commissioner’s October 2015 investigation of triple deleting in cabinet ministers’ offices. Rather than a computer, Southern used Post-it Notes to keep track of freedom of information requests to the premier’s office.

“The Office of the Premier has put the FOI coordinator in a difficult situation,” Elizabeth Denham wrote. “I believe he is not adequately positioned to determine the Executive Branch’s access to information process. It is surprising that the executive branch of the Office of the Premier would conclude that not writing anything down about the processing of an access request, apart from a temporarily retained sticky note, is appropriate.”

Southern’s transfer to the party office, to become director of operations, was announced at the end of the next month in a memo from party executive director Laura Miller. 

“We’ve managed to pry him away from 501 Belleville Street [the address of the Legislature] where he’s worked the past six years in government, most recently as the Premier’s director of issues management,” Miller wrote Nov. 27, 2015. “Hard-working, well-organized, and highly-motivated, Evan will be an exceptional addition to our team.”

In December 2017, Southern joined the $765 million Capital Regional District sewage treatment project as director of communications and engagement.

Last fall, the NDP cabinet rubber-stamped Southern’s appointment to the Victoria-Esquimalt Police Board, after he was nominated by the Esquimalt council headed by Mayor Barb Desjardins. 

Desjardins ran unsuccessfully for the BC Liberals in 2017, while Southern was director of operations.  

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Bob Mackin An independent watchdog is hoping the

Bob Mackin

Amid a money laundering crisis in British Columbia, the NDP provincial government is giving the gambling regulator a boost of just $200,000 for the next fiscal year.

Meanwhile, an extra $2.4 million is allotted for government advertising that the party called wasteful when it was in opposition. It is also sending another $6 million to the Legislative Assembly, which is under a cloud of corruption and waste. 

That, from the budget for the 2019-2020 fiscal year, tabled Feb. 19 by Finance Minister Carole James. 

Finance Minister Carole James, Feb. 19, 2019 (Hansard)

Clerk Craig James and sergeant-at-arms Gary Lenz were suspended Nov. 20 and are under RCMP investigation. A report by speaker Darryl Plecas revealed overspending and corruption. The government plans to eventually add the Legislature to the freedom of information law. But, in the meantime, the budget includes a $6 million increase to $83 million for April 1, 2019 to March 31, 2020. That is driven by $1.87 million more in capital expenditures, almost $1 million more for members’ services, nearly half-a-million for the sergeant-at-arms and a whopping $3.35 million more for Legislative operations. 

“Obviously there is going to be a lot of scrutiny on the Legislative budget over the next while, so I will save my comments, because there will be a number of people speaking to that budget and the specifics,” James said in a news conference before delivering the budget speech in the Legislature. 

The Gaming Policy and Enforcement Branch sees a $202,000 bump to its budget, for $19.43 million over the next fiscal year. By comparison, Government Communications and Public Engagement, the central advertising and public relations agency within James’s ministry, is getting a $2.42 million increase to $37.8 million. 

“We are in fact looking at how we modernize our approach to advertising, we’re increasing the number of town halls both online as well as telephone town halls,” James said. “But the other big piece we’re looking at, that’s really why you’ve seen an increase in this budget, is we have, compared to the past government, a number of programs and services for people to apply to, to be able to benefit… we need to ensure the people have that information so they know those programs are available to them, and we make sure that people are applying to them.” 

The budget, which was foreshadowed by the Throne Speech a week earlier, contains no funding for a public inquiry on money laundering related to casinos and the real estate market. James said the government is awaiting two expert reports on real estate and luxury items before determining next steps. It has not ruled out a public inquiry, though Premier John Horgan has expressed a preference to stay the course instead of following the lead of Quebec’s Charbonneau Commission, which examined corruption in the construction industry. 

“It’s important to make sure that we know what we’re funding,” James said. “We won’t know that until we see the reports coming in.”

After the elimination of the government’s operating debt, James said ministers will be free to make budget requests to the Legislature during the fiscal year, under the supplementary estimates regime.  

The budget, James’s third, contains billions of dollars of more spending, but no new tax measures other than those previously announced, such as the April 1 $5 increase to the carbon tax, making it $40 per tonne.

Overall, this year the NDP expects to spend $58.27 billion and bring in $59 billion. James is forecasting a $274 million surplus. But the debt will rise from $67.8 billion to $72.5 billion.

The budget includes $1 billion in new social spending on the B.C. Child Opportunity Benefit, eliminating B.C. student loan interest, and hiking welfare rates.

  • $26 million hike in disability assistance. Rates will be up $50 per month, to $1,800 a year per person;
  • $318 million to end student loan interest. An expected average saving of $2,300;
  • $902 million for the CleanBC climate action program. Includes $41 million for energy efficiency home retrofits, $90 million for incentives to buy electric cars; climate action tax credits of up to $400 per year per family; 
  • $171 million more for forest fire, prevention, recovery and resiliency. Fire management and suppression costs ranged from $47 million in 2006 to a high of $650 million in 2017. The current fiscal year’s forecast is $615 million, while $101 million is budgeted for each of the next three years;
  • The $400 million-a-year B.C. Child Opportunity Benefit kicks in October 2020. A family with two children will receive as much as $2,600 a year, starting October 2020

The budget also includes $20.1 billion in capital spending. More than half of that for transportation infrastructure (such as the Pattullo Bridge and Broadway Subway) and hospitals (Royal Columbian, Royal Inland and the new St. Paul’s).  

First Nations will get $3 billion in gambling revenue over the next 25 years, including $300 million in the next three years.

The biggest sources of revenue for this budget are personal income tax ($11.05 billion), sales tax ($7.59 billion), and corporate income tax ($4.2 billion). Health ($22.98 billion) and education ($14.6 billion) are the biggest expenses. Property tax revenue is forecast to increase, but property transfer tax is projected to be flat as the real estate market faces a downturn. 

Insurance Corporation of B.C., described famously by Attorney General David Eby in early 2018 as a “dumpster fire,” is forecast to lose $1.18 billion this year and then only $50 million next year. That after the motor vehicle regulator and basic insurance monopoly missed projections by a half-billion-dollars two years ago. The corporation is struggling with higher claims costs and is responding by increasing rates and capping the costs of claims and lawsuits. 

“We’ve ensured there is more money just in case, but I’m feeling pretty confident,” James said. 

The budget assumes a weaker Canadian dollar and more resilient U.S. economy as upside risks. Downside risks include global trade uncertainty, ICBC and BC Hydro fiscal challenges, lower commodity prices and economic challenges in Asia and the European Union. 

James said the greatest threat to B.C.’s economy is a “global economic slowdown.” She said tax and regulatory changes have been focused on weaning the province from its reliance on real estate speculation. 

“There’s still some way to go before people will class housing as affordable in our major urban settings,” she said. 

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Bob Mackin Amid a money laundering crisis in

Jody Wilson-Raybould quit the Trudeau Liberal cabinet as the SNC-Lavalin scandal continued to unwind.

The NDP B.C. government’s third Throne Speech came and went, with no hope that there will ever be a public inquiry into money laundering.

Then the NDP shortlisted SNC-Lavalin for the $1.37 billion Pattullo Bridge replacement between Surrey and New Westminster.

On this edition of theBreaker.news Podcast, host Bob Mackin catches up with independent watchdog Dermod Travis of IntegrityBC.

On money laundering:

“[Premier John Horgan is] extremely tone deaf on the issue and he is going to have to recognize that some of the answers that both the government, regardless of who is in power, and the public want will only be found out through public inquiry.”

On the problem with SNC-Lavalin and Kiewit consistently ending up bidders or winners of B.C. government infrastructure projects.

“This province is seen, potentially, by competitors in the construction industry as someone else’s turf, there’s no point in  bidding… let’s go bid somewhere else. That’s not the image B.C. wants.”

On the dilemma faced by the Legislative Assembly Management Committee, after the B.C. auditor general meddling in its post-Plecas Report plan to find out-of-province help to get to the bottom of overspending by the suspended clerk and sergeant-at-arms:

“It is a mistake for Carol Bellringer to be involved… not for anything that she has done in the past that would suggest some type of partisanship or possibility of sweeping something under the carpet. Rather, that this is going to be a report at the end of the day that the public must feel that all of the issues at the Legislative Assembly have been reviewed, investigated and dealt with properly. If that person conducting that process comes from out of province and has no vested interest… we’re going to have a better product at the end of the day.”

Plus Pacific Northwest and Pacific Rim headlines and commentaries.

Click below to listen or go to iTunes (aka Apple Podcasts) and subscribe

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theBreaker.news Podcast: Money and corruption are ruining the land - catching-up with Dermod Travis
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Jody Wilson-Raybould quit the Trudeau Liberal cabinet

Bob Mackin

Are we any closer to a made-in-British Columbia version of the Charbonneau Commission, the Quebec public inquiry that got to the bottom of construction corruption in la Belle Province? 

The short answer is: no. 

The B.C. NDP government’s Feb. 12 throne speech offered no hope for a public inquiry about money laundering. Premier John Horgan said he would rather have experts investigate for short-term reports and take action on their recommendations rather than spend millions of dollars on years of hearings and litanies of lawyers. That did nothing to satisfy those seeking justice for the casino-real estate-fentanyl crisis known as the Vancouver model.

Then, two days later, the shortlist for the new $1.377 billion Pattullo Bridge, which connects NDP-held ridings in New Westminster and Surrey.

Kiewit and Flatiron are in separate groups. They were partners on the massively over-budget Port Mann Bridge. The third group is called “Fraser Crossing Partners,” a joint bid by Spain’s Acciona Infrastructure and SNC-Lavalin.

Attorney General Eby (Mackin)

Yes, that is the same SNC-Lavalin whose ex-CEO, Pierre Duhaime, pleaded guilty on Feb. 1 to helping a public servant commit breach of public trust over the McGill University superhospital project. The same SNC-Lavalin that has lobbied the Trudeau government to pay a fine rather than go on trial for corruption over millions of dollars of bribes paid to the Gadhafi regime in Libya. The same controversy that led to Vancouver-Granville Liberal MP Jody Wilson-Raybould becoming ex-attorney general last month and an ex-member of the Trudeau cabinet this week. 

That is also the same SNC-Lavalin that has counted British Columbia as one of its key markets. 

SNC-Lavalin maintains an office in downtown Vancouver, built and operates the Canada Line, is a contractor on the Site C dam and was the 64th sponsor of the Vancouver Olympics, after being the provincial government’s engineer on the Sea-to-Sky Highway project. 

In 2011, its then-chair, Gwyn Morgan, was on the inner circle of newly elected BC Liberal leader Christy Clark’s transition team. Lo and behold, under Clark’s premiership, SNC-Lavalin got contracts to build the Evergreen Line for the Ministry of Transportation and John Hart Generating Station for BC Hydro. 

It wanted to build the bridge to replace the Massey Tunnel, but the NDP cancelled that project. 

It also has its eyes on the SkyTrain extension to Surrey and the SkyTrain subway to the University of B.C. Vancouver city councillor Colleen Hardwick wanted to debate the latter at a city council meeting earlier this week, but Green Coun. Adriane Carr thwarted tabling of Hardwick’s motion.

To learn the entirety of SNC-Lavalin’s history in B.C., read the story I wrote for the Georgia Straight in 2014.  

So, back to this week. 

In the wake of Duhaime’s guilty plea, I had asked Attorney General David Eby whether the NDP government would review its relationship with SNC-Lavalin. There is no evidence that the previous BC Liberal government reviewed any ministry or Crown corporation relationships with SNC-Lavalin, to determine whether any public funds were misspent during construction and operations or whether any bribery or fraud occurred during the procurement stages.

Instead of an answer directly from Eby, his ministry’s communications staff sent a 153-word statement.

It’s government’s responsibility to do extensive due diligence when it comes to procurement and selecting a short-list of companies that can deliver the project on-time and on-budget.

Concerns around risks related to corruption or breach of trust informed, in part, government’s decision to introduce whistleblower legislation for British Columbia that comes into force this year.

Procurements are ongoing. We are using open procurement processes and are dedicated to getting the best value for people in B.C. British Columbia’s contracts include clauses that allow British Columbia to terminate the contract if evidence of illegality on the part of the service provider arises. Any allegations of illegality would be promptly reviewed by the public service and, if appropriate, referred to the police or other regulators.

There are many checkpoints in the procurement process, including the procurement team, project board or steering committees, legal counsel, fairness advisor, and a relationship review committee.

In summary, the answer is no. 

The NDP could do billions of dollars of more business with SNC-Lavalin, without pushing pause to determine whether it is doing enough to protect B.C. taxpayers from a company that Derek Corrigan, the NDP-aligned mayor of Burnaby, called-out in 2014.

Corrigan said SNC-Lavalin is “one of the few Canadian companies who could attain the high goal of being banned for 10 years by the World Bank for corruption. This is a company that is up to its earlobes in corruption in Montreal.”

Did you know?

Alterra Power Corp. hired SNC-Lavalin in 2014 for engineering, procurement and construction management of the Jimmie Creek hydro project, which began operations in August 2016. The run-of-river generation plant in the Toba Valley near Powell River.

In the Feb. 13-released report by Ken Davidson, Zapped, we learned that private power agreements signed under the BC Liberal government cost BC Hydro $16.2 billion over two decades — or $200 per year, per residential ratepayer. 

Davidson concluded that BC Hydro bought too much energy and energy with the wrong profile; paid too much for the energy it bought; and undertook these actions at the direction of the BC Liberal government.

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Bob Mackin Are we any closer to a

Bob Mackin

Skeena BC Liberal Ellis Ross leads all 87 members of the legislature in the category of advertising and communications. 

The ex-chief councillor of the Haisla Nation racked-up $20,135 in spin spending for the six months ended Sept. 30, 2018, according to a summary on the Legislative Assembly website. That is almost four times more than the average $5,400 spent by the rest of B.C.’s MLAs on advertising and communications and almost three times more than the $7,067 that Ross spent for his first 10 months in office after winning the northwest coast riding in the 2017 provincial election.

Ross is a regular advertiser in Black Press’s Northern Sentinel (Kitimat) and Terrace Standard newspapers. His office was invoiced more than $7,000 during the six-month period. Rather than a traditional summary of riding office services, community events and achievements in the Legislature, Ross uses his taxpayer-funded column as a soapbox critical of the NDP government and its Green allies. Here are some examples:

Taxpayer-funded ads from newspapers in Terrace and Kitimat (Black Press)

  • On Jan. 10, 2019, under the headline “NDP ignores the rule of law,” Ross wrote: [Forests Minister Doug] Donaldson is reminding British Columbians that the NDP is still very much an activist party unwilling to defend the province as a whole.
  • “Get ready to pay more in 2019” (Nov. 29, 2018): The new government in Victoria is throwing a wrench into the works by blindly following everything contained in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People without defining it.
  • “Play fair on proportional representation” (May 10, 2018): This is a government that wants to install a system of government that will concentrate the power in the lower mainland where all the NDP and Green seats are located.
  • “LNG is the pathway to a greener future” (April 26, 2018): Quite simply the Green Party refuses to recognize that LNG is a pathway to a greener economy.

Invoices also show taxpayers were charged $4,500 for more than 300 of Ross’s radio and TV ads, mainly from June through August. The 30-second spots appeared on Bell Media’s ez ROCK and CJFW stations. His two-minute long “MLA Minute” spots aired during CTV affiliate CFTK TV newscasts. Silvertip Signs and Frozen North Developments charged a combined $7,000 to create and host a billboard ad by Highway 37, the route between Kitimat and Terrace. 

Ross did not respond to interview requests, but his spending garnered at least one complaint. In a Facebook message last Dec. 10, Ross wrote: “Somebody in Prince Rupert is complaining that my articles in our local newspaper are political so the Legislature is looking into me. Someone wants me to be a bit quieter.” 

IntegrityBC’s Dermod Travis said government funds for MLAs are not intended to replace party funds. 

“If he is going to use these funds in a way to sponsor his communications with constituents, he should ensure those communications are non-partisan and focus specifically on government programs in a fair and balanced manner,” Travis said. “And not use it as a vehicle to promote his BC Liberal candidacy and his Liberal ties.”

MLAs regulate themselves: clerk’s office

Advertising spending is likely to come under the microscope in the wake of Speaker Darryl Plecas’s Jan. 21-released report on corruption at the Legislature. The Legislative Assembly Management Committee supported Plecas’s call for forensic audits. Its next meeting is Feb. 21. The agenda has not been released, but the all-party committee is expected to discuss the status of suspended clerk Craig James and sergeant-at-arms Gary Lenz, who are also under RCMP investigation.

The rules are clear: Content of constituency advertisements, according to the Members’ Guide to Policy and Resources, “is restricted to outlining constituency office activities, and the role played by the Member in the legislative process. Members may not print or mail, at the expense of the Legislative Assembly, any material seeking financial support or containing any identification or information of a partisan, political nature.”

A 2014 photo of Andrew Wilkinson (left), Ellis Ross, Haisla hereditary chief Sammy Robinson and Christy Clark, announcing the sale of Kitimat hospital lands to the Haisla. (BC Gov)

However, nobody on staff in the Clerk’s office is looking out for taxpayers when it comes to partisan-flavoured ad spending.

theBreaker.news sought comment from acting clerk Kate Ryan-Lloyd and executive financial officer Hilary Woodward. They did not respond. Another official, who asked not to be named in print, told theBreaker.news that responsibility for compliance with Legislature advertising rules rests with MLAs, their constituency office staff, and their respective caucuses. 

“What is constituted as partisan or political may sometimes be subjective and open to the interpretation, and the decision is made at the discretion and judgment of the Member,” said the prepared statement. “Legislative Assembly administrative support staff do not have a review role in this regard, but do provide interpretive guidance if a Member or their staff asks for advice on what may be permissible for communications paid by constituency office funds.”

Only five other ridings have fewer registered voters than Skeena and its 20,002. Ross succeeded three-term NDP MLA Robin Austin, who did not run again. The Green-supported NDP toppled the BC Liberal dynasty in the historic June 29, 2017 confidence vote, two weeks after Ross became the Minister of Natural Gas Development and Responsible for Housing.

BC Liberal MLAs were the top five biggest ad spenders during the year ended March 31, 2018: Coralee Oakes ($27,558); Linda Reid ($26,558); Jane Thornthwaite ($24,174); Greg Kyllo ($23,409); and Simon Gibson ($21,617).

None, however, could compare with 2018-elected leader Andrew Wilkinson. theBreaker.news exclusively reported in 2017 that the Vancouver Quilchena MLA spent a whopping $58,692 on spin before the 2017 election. He blew more than half the money ($30,383.80) on a late-December 2016 to early-February 2017 ad blitz on CKNW and CFMI. Wilkinson used the ads to promote a government website about housing programs at the same time as his own Advanced Education ministry was spending millions of dollars buying pre-election ads for the government’s loan scheme for first time buyers. The NDP has yet to fulfil promises to control government advertising.

Travis said newspapers and newsletters are the best advertising vehicles for MLAs. An urban MLA that buys radio or TV spots ends up buying more audience outside the riding than inside the riding. 

“That is, in essence, pouring money down the drain,” Travis said. “If you do the ad in such a way so that it benefits your colleagues, then you’ve obviously just acknowledged that this is a partisan ad. So it should be paid for by the party, not the taxpayers.”

MLAs spent a combined $5.2 million on their office operations in the first six months of 2018, including $483,002 on ads. 

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Bob Mackin Skeena BC Liberal Ellis Ross leads