Standard Blog Whole Post

Bob Mackin Three days after the BC Liberal

Social media sabotage or Facebook faux pas?

Bob Mackin

B.C. government Facebook, March 27

Did a real jihadist hijack the British Columbia government’s Facebook page on March 27 or was it the work of a premature April Fool’s Day prankster?

The site briefly featured images of fire, a person wearing military fatigues, and Arabic script meaning “we are the government.”

Awkward Tweets after account hacked

First, the B.C. government Tweeted that it was “vandalized” and later that it was “compromised.” On Tuesday, it used the latter word again.

“The B.C. government’s Facebook page was compromised but the issue has now been resolved,” said a prepared statement sent by Rodney Porter. “The province is in contact with Facebook to determine how best to mitigate or prevent incidents like this from occurring in the future. This was a matter related solely to Facebook. We worked with Facebook to resolve the problem as quickly as possible.”

Porter did not answer whether the government is investigating the incident internally or whether police had been contacted.

A representative of Facebook, who refused publication of their name, told theBreaker “their page got hacked, we were able to restore access after they filed a complaint.”

The Facebook representative recommended users pick a strong password, not share it with anyone, and read Facebook’s security features and security tips pages.

The B.C. election is May 9 and, like the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign, Facebook will be a battleground. The Liberals have produced Facebook video profiles of their candidates. NDP has two attack ads so far, the latest using the image of rotting strawberries as a metaphor for Liberal government corruption.

March 28, 2017

Bob Mackin [caption id="attachment_4332" align="alignright" width="415"] B.C. government

Bennett won’t step aside from Hydro while stumping for the Liberals

Bob Mackin

In 2013, he was on Premier Christy Clark’s much-maligned #DebtFreeBC bus. A British Columbia political celebrity, the grandson of Social Credit legend W.A.C. Bennett and son of Bill Bennett.

Except for Dave Barrett’s brief NDP interlude from 1972 to 1975, a Bennett was the B.C. premier between 1952 and 1986.

Bennett and Clark in 2013 (Twitter)

Kelowna’s Brad Bennett, the Clark-appointed BC Hydro chair since 2015, is going out on the campaign trail again, “from writ day to e-day.”

But will he temporarily step aside from his role atop the province’s biggest Crown corporation, which is building the $9 billion Site C dam?

No, he told theBreaker.

“Needless to say, the 28-day campaign is a very limited period of time, but it’s one I am prepared to give my attention,” Bennett said via email. “The BC Hydro board and its committees are not meeting during this period.

“As I’ve said before – I encourage all citizens to become involved in the democratic process in the way they are comfortable and able to participate.”

During the 2013 election campaign, Liberal candidates Peter Fassbender and Suzanne Anton remained on the B.C. Pavilion Corporation board, only resigning after they were elected. Fassbender even did an interview at his campaign office to oppose an NDP promise aimed at privatizing B.C. Place Stadium. Fassbender is the municipal affairs minister and Anton the attorney general, both running for re-election.

The code of conduct for provincial board appointees says: In general, a conflict of interest exists for directors who use their position at the organization to benefit themselves, friends or families. A director should not use his or her position with the organization to pursue or advance the director’s personal interests, the interests of a related person, the director’s business associate, corporation, union or partnership, or the interests of a person to whom the director owes an obligation.

BC Hydro has long provided positions of prominence to friends of the party in power. Premier Mike Harcourt appointed NDP-friendly lawyer John Laxton as chair in 1993. Laxton resigned in disgrace amid the 1996 “Hydrogate” scandal. Reporters David Baines and Jeff Lee discovered that Laxton was an investor in British Virgin Islands companies that held shares in a private subsidiary of BC Hydro that was developing a power project in Pakistan. Then NDP-premier Glen Clark turned to former Socred Attorney General Brian Smith to take over from Saxton in 1996.

Today’s Premier Clark is under fire for exempting the Site C project from a B.C. Utilities Commission review, costly BC Hydro contracts with run-of-river power projects, and rising electricity rates for British Columbians.

Clark represents a riding in Kelowna, but lives in a $3.7 million house in Dunbar registered to a business associate of part-time Kelowna resident, Greg Kerfoot. Clark has not disclosed where she stays in Kelowna, on the rare occasions that she does not fly home to Vancouver after daytime photo ops.

March 28, 2017

Bob Mackin In 2013, he was on Premier

B.C. wine store auction fails the transparency test

Bob Mackin

Whenever British Columbia’s government uses the word transparent, always take it with a grain of salt. Then ask questions.

Last Nov. 3, it said it pulled in more than $6.9 million after auctioning six special wine store licences. Bidding started at $125,000 per licence.

Minister Polak purchasing plonk at a Loblaw-owned store (BC Gov)

Grocery and pharmacy giant Loblaw Companies snagged all six via the government’s B.C. Auction agency from April 19 to May 5 last year. The government claimed the online auction was “evaluated by a third-party auditing firm to ensure the process was fair and transparent.”

theBreaker wanted to find out just how transparent the process was, and asked for reports on each auction and the evaluations by the third-party firm.

Via freedom of information, the government released a two-page, May 20 letter from Shane Troyer at Grant Thornton to the Liquor Control and Licensing Branch and a two-page May 25 report. Partially censored, of course. No information about the bidders or their bids was released at all.

Grant Thornton generally gave the process a thumbs up. Whatever problems that existed have been censored from the report that was released to theBreaker. Grant Thornton admits its procedures did not follow a standard Chartered Professional Accountants Handbook audit.

So was the process transparent?

No.

Another round of auctions was scheduled for December.

Sixteen B.C. grocery stores have opened B.C.-only wine departments since laws were changed in April 2015, 11 of which are Jim Pattison-owned Save-On-Foods. Loblaw-owned stores in Kelowna, Langford, Langley, Surrey and Vernon are the other five.

Grocery stores with aspirations to sell booze are hampered by the one-kilometre buffer zone to protect existing government and private liquor stores from competition. That explains why none are in Vancouver.

Speaking of competition, the protectionist, B.C.-only wine departments are the subject of the United States’ January complaint to the World Trade Organization.

Wine Store Licence Auction FOI by BobMackin on Scribd

March 27, 2017

Bob Mackin Whenever British Columbia's government uses the word

Who got a sneak peek of the BC Liberal housing plan last July?

Bob Mackin

An aide to Deputy Premier Rich Coleman may have given someone outside government a sneak peek into the BC Liberals’ plans to address housing affordability.

The government has refused to show who Coleman’s chief of staff, Tobie Myers, emailed the week before lawmakers reconvened in Victoria to regulate the real estate industry and impose a tax on foreign buyers in Metro Vancouver.

On July 19, 2016 at 9:32 a.m., Myers sent an email to someone whose name the government censored. It claims disclosure of the recipient would harm the government’s finances.

Coleman (BC Gov)

“Following up on this one that we sent over to PVO [Premier’s Vancouver Office] last week – did you have any concerns?” Myers wrote. “We are expecting to see a draft [treasury board submission] based on this doc in fairly short order.”

The heavily redacted Summary of Provincial Housing Affordability Proposals was dated July 7 and released under the freedom of information law. Only one proposal, enhanced partnership with the federal government, is visible.

Those four pages were among the 26 heavily redacted pages released to theBreaker, which applied for a copy of the cost-benefit analysis and business case for the controversial BC HOME Partnership down payment assistance program for first-time homebuyers.

The documents indicate that a submission was prepared in September 2016 for Treasury Board, but the submission was not released to theBreaker, nor was any document containing a cost-benefit analysis or business case. B.C. Housing CEO Shayne Ramsay claimed that he has no copy of the cost-benefit analysis or business case.

The Premier’s office missed its own March 15 deadline to release documents it holds. In January, the finance ministry said it would release records, but only if $1,140 was paid. theBreaker refused and complained to the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner.

theBreaker asked separately for a report about the methodology behind the already-disclosed numbers for the three-year, $703 million program. In a letter sent March 27 to theBreaker, the government claimed it needs to consult an unnamed third party or public body and set May 10 as the new deadline. The provincial election is May 9.

Last week, the government said 831 BC HOME applicants were approved since Jan. 16. By theBreaker’s analysis, that is 12.4 per day and it would be 2026 before Coleman’s stated target of 42,000 loans is reached.

Meanwhile, NDP housing critic David Eby continues to wait for Coleman to release documents about $80 million in spending on two B.C. Housing downtown Vancouver projects involving party insiders. Coleman pledged March 23 in the Legislature that they would be released within a week. theBreaker reported March 10 about how Wall Financial sold a $6.7 million Chinatown property to B.C. Housing the week after Peter and Bruno Wall donated $400,000 to the BC Liberals in 2016.

The BC Liberals promised in their 2001 platform that the party would make B.C.’s government the most open, accountable and democratic in Canada.

HOU-2016-65165 by BobMackin on Scribd

HOU-2017-70825 delay to May 10 by BobMackin on Scribd

March 27, 2017

Bob Mackin An aide to Deputy Premier Rich

Exclusive video: Why did Vancouver’s mayor meet a party donor on a Saturday in May 2015?

Bob Mackin

What was the Mayor of Vancouver doing at the office tower of a prominent developer and party donor on a Saturday afternoon in late May 2015?

Saturday, May 23, 2015, to be precise.

Cell phone video given to theBreaker shows Vision Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson and Westbank Projects president Ian Gillespie at the Shaw Tower. Westbank developed the once-tallest tower in Vancouver and it remains the company’s headquarters.

The video shows Robertson entering the main floor at 3:09 p.m. with Gillespie, where a bag was deposited at the security desk. They were also photographed at 4:48 p.m. near the street.

A developer visiting city hall on a business day would fall within the realm of dog-bites-man. But a mayor visiting a developer and major party supporter on a Saturday, at the developer’s office building, meets the man-bites-dog test of newsworthiness in real-estate mad Vancouver.

Why were they meeting?
What was discussed?
What was the outcome?
Robertson and Gillespie, May 23, 2015

Nothing improper is implied, but those are the three simple questions that readers of theBreaker deserve to know. Neither Robertson, Gillespie nor their representatives responded to repeated queries from theBreaker.

In November 2014, Robertson won his third term as mayor and Vision Vancouver retained its city council majority, with help from Gillespie. Winter and spring 2015 were especially busy on several fronts for Gillespie, downtown Vancouver’s titan of tall towers.

Were they discussing items on the agenda for the May 26, 2015 city council meeting?

That was when Robertson and the Vision Vancouver-dominated city council voted to send the proposal for a video screen on the west facade of Westbank’s Telus Garden tower to public hearing.

At the public hearing on the same day, Robertson and city council voted to remove the restriction on office uses on the ground floor of Telus Garden, and allow a “retail use continuity agreement.”

Were they discussing the city council-granted neighourhood energy monopoly for Gillespie’s Creative Energy?

City hall inked a memorandum of agreement with Creative (formerly Central Heat Distribution) on Nov. 29, 2013 and voted to amend the enabling Northeast False Creek and Chinatown bylaw on April 28, 2015.

Last September, however, the B.C. Utilities Commission sent city hall and Gillespie back to the drawing board when it rejected the proposed monopoly.

Were they talking about the rezoning of Gillespie’s property at 1754-1772 Pendrell Street for a 21-storey tower?

Westbank filed an application on Jan. 26, 2015 and city council gave the rezoning on Sept. 15, 2015. It withstood a court challenge in Feb. 2016.

Were they talking about party fundraising?

Gillespie was a Vision Vancouver bagman during the 2011 election and threw a big fundraising party on Oct. 25 that year at the Westbank-developed Fairmont Pacific Rim tower. That just so happened to be a week after city council approved in principle Telus Garden, the new headquarters for B.C.’s biggest private sector company.

Post-election filings show that Westbank gave $11,705.70 in 2011 and $15,000 in 2014.

Westbank donated just shy of $150,000 through 2015 to provincial parties ($121,000 to the BC Liberals and $28,574.88 to the NDP). But we do not know how much Westbank (or any other company, for that matter) gave to Vision Vancouver (or any other municipal party).

That is because the law does not require municipal parties and politicians in B.C. to disclose donations they receive in non-election years.

Similar to provincial parties and politicians, there is no limit to the dollar value or source of donations to local government parties and politicians in B.C.

Westbank launched sales of its next Vancouver tower project, called Alberni, on March 18 in Singapore.

theBreaker will let you know if Robertson or Gillespie break their silence about what they were doing at Shaw Tower on May 23, 2015.

March 24, 2017

Bob Mackin What was the Mayor of Vancouver

Mr. Fingerbanger Goes to Victoria

Bob Mackin

You never know who you’re going to see in Victoria.

Fort St. John court clerk Frederick Garrow got a business trip to the capital because of a staff shortage at the Victoria Provincial Court.

The Victoria Times Colonist reported March 18 that three clerks were seconded from elsewhere in the province to cover for sick or retired staff.

That’s not the only staffing shortage in the capital city’s courthouse. Last month, two accused drug dealers walked free when judges wouldn’t tolerate further delays. In 2016, the Supreme Court of Canada, in the Jordan case, set 18 months as the maximum for charge-to-trial in Provincial Court cases.

Fun-loving Garrow’s Facebook and Instagram’s posts indicate he is having a grand time, staying at hotels like the Chateau Victoria and the Marriott Inner Harbour and enjoying refreshments at the Sticky Wicket.

The friend of Education Minister Mike Bernier also captured images of what may have been Speaker Linda Reid’s last exit from the Legislature on March 16 and even got to rub elbows with Attorney General Suzanne Anton and Premier Christy Clark.

You can find those images (and more) on Garrow’s safe-for-work Instagram account, under the not-safe-for-work handle (ahem), FreddyFingerbanger.

Meanwhile, Mitch Bellamy, a badminton-playing entrepreneur/executive coach, showed what it’s like inside a Helijet flight taking-off from Victoria en route to Vancouver.

The passenger to his right on the flight? None other than Clark. See the video from March 16 on his Instagram page.

The smiling passenger to his left appears to be one of Clark’s RCMP bodyguards. The occupant of the opposite window seat is Clark’s press secretary Stephen Smart, who did not respond for comment.

Clark is a frequent Helijet flier. She prefers to commute between Victoria and Vancouver, where she lives in a $3.7 million Dunbar house registered to Vancouver Whitecaps’ owner Greg Kerfoot’s close associate Nevin Sangha.

March 23, 2017

Bob Mackin You never know who you’re going

Of the 2013 red light-running Premier who didn’t wear a seatbelt in 2016

Bob Mackin

Remember when Premier Christy Clark got caught running a red light during the 2013 election campaign?

Jonathan Fowlie of the Vancouver Sun was along for the ride for his April 27, 2013 profile, “Christy Clark, a politician first.”

At times, the two seem more like sidekicks — siblings even — than they do mother and son. And especially so the morning when the two were on their way to Hamish’s goalie clinic.

“Let’s see you go through this red light,” Hamish challenged as they pulled up that morning, at 5:15 a.m., to an abandoned Vancouver intersection.

“I might. Don’t test me,” Clark replies.

“Yeah. Go ahead.”

“Should I?”

“There’s no one.”

“Would you go through? You shouldn’t because that would be breaking the law,” she says.

And with that the car has already sailed underneath the stale red stoplight and through the empty intersection.

“You always do that,” says Hamish.

Fast forward to October 2016.

Instead of a newspaper reporter in the backseat, it was Clark. The driver? CTV News anchor Tamara Taggart at the wheel of a Land Rover. Her co-anchor, Mike Killeen, was in the passenger seat.

They were shooting a carpool karaoke skit on Oct. 18, 2016 for the opening of the Taggart/Killeen-hosted Jack Webster Awards, where B.C.’s best journalists were honoured on Oct. 20, 2016. Clark had some time on her hands. She cancelled the last fall sitting of the Legislature before the 2017 election. The documents at bottom show how her aides, Ben Chin and Stephen Smart, put their minds together to help plan the James Corden-inspired video, in which the 2013 red light-running incident was mentioned.

Look closely. Clark is not wearing a seatbelt. That’s a breach of Section 220 of the Motor Vehicle Act, an offence that carries a $167 fine.

To borrow the late, great Webster‘s famous politician-shaming words: “Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!”

Clark Webster Skit by BobMackin on Scribd

March 23, 2017

Bob Mackin Remember when Premier Christy Clark got

Opposition councillor vows to bring city hall rule-breaker Mayor Moonbeam back to Earth

Bob Mackin

As Chris Isaak sang in “Wicked Game,” it’s strange what desire will make foolish people do.

Vancouver Mayor Gregor “Moonbeam” Robertson promoted the new “Moon and Back” single by his girlfriend, Wanting Qu, on his Twitter account March 19. NPA Coun. George Affleck isn’t going to let him get away with it.

Mayor pumps girlfriend’s career

Section 1.1 of the city’s employment code of conduct is plain and clear. Robertson put his heart ahead of his mind and his muse ahead of his constituents when he promoted Apple Music and Qu, the thirtysomething Olympic Village-dwelling Chinese citizen signed to French-owned Universal Music Group.

Council officials… are keepers of the public trust and must uphold the highest standards of ethical behaviour. Council officials… are expected to… be free from undue influence and not act, or appear to act, in order to gain financial or other benefits for themselves, family, friends or business interests.

“It was inappropriate and I will be pursuing it at council,” Affleck told theBreaker.

Robertson did not respond to theBreaker. His spokeswoman Katie Robb said Robertson uses a “personal” Twitter account, to which Affleck scoffed.

“Given that his Twitter handle is @MayorGregor, because of that he has significant followers,” Affleck said. “He has significant influence in the city with that title.”

Robertson’s first Tweet was Sept. 26, 2008, during his first Vision Vancouver campaign for mayor. What’s more, Robertson’s Twitter account links directly to city hall’s MayorofVancouver.ca website and the purpose of the account, since fall 2008, is to communicate to the citizens of Vancouver that pay his bills.

Robertson’s Twitter account is effectively taxpayer-funded because his public disclosure statements show that his only source of income is via city hall, the Metro Vancouver board and the TransLink board.

This year, Robertson’s main gig at 12th and Cambie will pay him $168,748. According to the most-recent figures, TransLink paid Robertson $34,600 in 2015 and Metro Vancouver $4,667.

March 22, 2017

Bob Mackin As Chris Isaak sang in "Wicked

B.C. paying Gordon Wilson $600-a-day, whether he’s working or not

Bob Mackin

By now, Gordon Wilson will have grossed a half-million-dollars since “coming home” to the BC Liberal Party during the 2013 election.

For helping Premier Christy Clark win, the ex-B.C. Liberal leader scored a plum patronage gig in October 2013 as the Buy B.C. LNG Advocate. A new job for which there was no open, public competition. Last year’s cabinet order extending his appointment to Feb. 24, 2018 at $150,000-a-year means Wilson is poised to gross $650,000. Unless there is a change in government.

Wilson’s 2013 “come home” video

That’s a lot of money to be a traveling salesman for a product that could be at least three years from its first sale. Wilson made headlines last year when he claimed that B.C. has a “moral obligation” to export LNG to China. The hyperbole was met by a Times Colonist editorial in which Wilson was dubbed “glib and cynical.”

Based on an analysis of Wilson’s travel expenses from January 1, 2016 to September 30, 2016, he worked on 61 of 189 business days. Wilson charged taxpayers $4,507.67 for accommodation and $12,117.47 for travel, including $2.75 TransLink fares. Part-timer Wilson was paid his full $12,500-a-month cheque, totalling $112,500.36 over nine months.

That means taxpayers are dinged $595.24 per business day, whether or not Wilson is advocating for B.C. LNG.

Add the cost of expenses, and the daily ding for the nine months was $683.20.

All this for a fella who was an LNG buzzkill during the 2013 election. “The most compelling reason to be concerned about relying on this golden goose, however, is the fact that the markets we are told will buy all we can supply may not materialize as we think, and even if they do, the price they are prepared to pay for our product may be well below what is anticipated,” Wilson wrote on his blog on April 23, 2013.

Wilson did not respond to theBreaker for comment. Neither did his son Mat, the B.C. Liberal candidate hoping to knock-off NDP incumbent Nicholas Simons in Powell River-Sunshine Coast.

That was the seat “Flip” Wilson held from 1991 to 2001, a period in which he became opposition leader, had that affair with caucus-mate Judi Tyabji, lost the Liberal leadership to Gordon Campbell, started the Progressive Democratic Alliance, folded that small tent and joined the NDP.

Last year, Tyabji wrote Clark’s error-riddled “Behind the Smile” biography, which can described as the least-unauthorized, authorized biography in the Gutenberg age. Her son Kaz is scheduled to go on trial in Calgary on Sept. 11 over charges of importing deadly fentanyl from China.

Sept. 11 is, coincidentally, the same day that B.C. Liberal executive director Laura Miller is scheduled to go on trial in Toronto for breach of trust, and mischief in relation to data and misuse of a computer system to commit the offence of mischief. The charges date back to her days as deputy chief of staff for Ontario Liberal Premier Dalton McGuinty.

Wilson LNG JTI-2016-64951 pg 1-75 by BobMackin on Scribd

Wilson LNG JTI-2016-64951 pg 76-150 by BobMackin on Scribd

Wilson LNG JTI-2016-64951 pg 151-225 by BobMackin on Scribd

March 22, 2017