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Miscellany, News, Opinion

Bob Mackin

Change is constant and it can be very costly on a megaproject. 

Oxford University professor Bent Flyvbjerg’s “iron law of megaprojects” theory says that megaprojects tend to be delivered “over budget, over time, over and over again.” 

Take BC Hydro’s Site C dam, for instance. The BC Liberal government said in 2010 that it would cost $6 billion, later it ballooned to $8.8 billion. Further cost overruns were exposed by the B.C. Utilities Commission’s expedited review last year. When Premier John Horgan decided in December to keep building, he revealed the new cost of $10.7 billion. Higher and higher it goes. Where it will end, nobody knows. 

Horgan vowed in December that a new board would offer “enhanced oversight” to keep the project under control. But the NDP government has not moved on promises to reform public disclosure laws, policies and procedures. Outlets like theBreaker are already aiming to provide the public independent “enhanced oversight” of public spending and policymaking. It appears little has changed at BC Hydro since the Horgan Horde took over from the Clark Clique last July. 

On June 16, just four days after the Clark minority government’s post-election cabinet swearing-in, theBreaker asked for the Site C change order log, showing the individual cost changes to the project since Jan. 1, 2017. Change order logs are standard for any major construction project, and tell the story of how a project evolves. 

On July 28, BC Hydro refused to release any of the records, because it feared undue financial loss or gain to a third party. theBreaker complained to the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner.

On Jan. 22, BC Hydro finally released 10 heavily censored pages. The Crown corporation continues to stubbornly withhold all the costs of each of the contract changes. theBreaker will continue to seek the full documents, because, on a similar case decided last October, the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner ruled that the government cannot withhold change order logs. 

An adjudicator ordered the Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure to release costs of contract changes for the Evergreen Line.

The documents obtained by theBreaker as a result of the decision showed another $11 million in costs, which cast doubt on BC Liberal claims that the troubled Millennium Line extension to the Tri-Cities cost $1.43 billion. The OIPC ruling said there was no legal basis for maintaining secrecy of costs from a negotiated contract. In fact, the lawyer representing the government favoured release. Only Evergreen Line contractor SNC-Lavalin opposed disclosure, but did not offer any evidence that disclosure would harm its business. (SNC-Lavalin, the scandal-plagued Montreal engineering and construction giant, is also a contractor on Site C.) 

So what are some of the changes at Site C? 

A budget transfer from procurement to construction management. An increase for the independent environmental monitor. Transfer of staff from public affairs to environmental management and administration. A change to the contract value for the turbines and generators contract and a separation of the sub-project for the Generation Station and Spillway and Turbine and Generator. A radioactive pipe was disposed. A change to the Doig River First Nation burial site identification. And a contingency draw and budget transfer for the Portage Mountain Quarry. 

Those are just the tip of the iceberg, as you can see from the documents below. 

Were there any cost savings or did all of these contribute to cost overruns? 

theBreaker will endeavour to find out and let you know. 

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BC Hydro Site C Change Order Log 2018-037 by BobMackin on Scribd

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Bob Mackin Change is constant and it can

Miscellany, News

Bob Mackin

A deputy minister in the Christy Clark BC Liberal administration, who left the government with a $387,359 severance last July, has registered to lobby the NDP transport minister for a group representing non-union construction companies.

It is perfectly legal, for now.

Tim McEwan joined the Independent Contractors and Businesses Association of B.C. last September as senior vice-president of policy and stakeholder engagement. He registered Jan. 22 as one of three ICBA lobbyists. 

Ex-Deputy Minister Tim McEwan (LinkedIn)

At the end of November, the NDP government amended the Lobbyists’ Registration Act to ban former public office holders from lobbying for two years after departing government. That would have prevented McEwan from registering. However, the cooling-off period clause isn’t effective until Premier John Horgan’s cabinet says so. 

Liam Butler, a spokesman for Attorney General David Eby, said the amendments will “come into force by regulation, anticipated in spring 2018.” 

Even then, McEwan could be allowed to continue. 

“Once the amendments are in force, former public office holders that are captured in the two-year period will need to terminate their registration and apply for an exemption with the [Office of the Registrar of Lobbyists],” said Michelle Mitchell, spokeswoman for the registry. “They will be required to cease lobbying immediately.”

McEwan had three stints in the B.C. government, most recently five years under Clark. He was assistant deputy minister in the major investments office for three-and-a half years and then spent two years as deputy minister of small business, red tape reduction and liquor distribution.

Dermod Travis of government watchdog IntegrityBC said McEwan would have potentially better access to information than others, putting his employer in an unfair advantage. Travis said the NDP footdragging means it is not fulfilling lofty democratic reform promises it made while in opposition. 

“I suspect the public thought the NDP was going to represent more of a change than how the previous government operated, and less of government operating behind closed doors with party pals,” Travis said. “What we’re beginning to see is something like a line change in an NHL game.” 

Ex-NDP corporate fundraiser Rob Nagai with John Horgan. (Twitter)

Travis said B.C. ultimately needs the same type of transparency in lobbying as exists in Washington, D.C., where lobbyists are required to make public financial disclosures. 

McEwan listed his lobbying target as Transportation and Infrastructure Minister Claire Trevena, intending to discuss “project labour agreements.” Trevena’s ministry is reviewing TransLink’s business case for capital funding to build a new Pattullo Bridge, Broadway Subway and Surrey light rail transit. The megaprojects were estimated at $5.1 billion, combined, in 2014. The Mayors’ Council received a secret update on the skyrocketing costs in 2016, theBreaker exclusively reported.  

The ORL fined ICBA president Chris Gardner $1,000 last year for failing to update the organization’s registration. 

The $7 million guy 

Meanwhile, the B.C. NDP’s major gifts fundraiser, Rob Nagai, left the party in December after corporate and union donations to parties were banned. He joined BC Liberal lobbyist Mark Jiles’s Bluestone Group in January and has registered to lobby for six clients: Motion Picture Industry Association, Society of Notaries Public of B.C., Vitalus Nutrition, New Car Dealers of B.C., B.C. Salmon Farmers Association and B.C. Chiropractic Association. 

Nagai’s partner on the B.C. Salmon Farmers Association account is former BC Liberal cabinet minister Don McRae. McRae sat as a back-bencher during his last two years in office and would not be subject to the two-year lobbying ban because MLAs are exempt. 

Nagai boasted raising more than $7 million over seven years as the NDP’s corporate fundraiser. Jiles, a former business partner of BC Liberal powerbroker Patrick Kinsella, was the subject of an early 2017 Globe and Mail report about indirect donations by lobbyists to the BC Liberals. An RCMP investigation and appointment of special prosecutor David Butcher ensued.

Despite his rapid registrations, Nagai pales in comparison to NDP insider Bill Tieleman, who also appears as a pundit on CBC and is co-ordinating a multiparty campaign to defeat the proportional representation referendum. 

Tieleman registered his 17th client on Jan. 22, the Greater Vancouver Board of Trade-backed Better Transit and Transportation Coalition that is lobbying for the TransLink megaprojects.

NDP lobbyist Bill Tieleman and ex-BC Liberal Attorney General Suzanne Anton (Twitter)

His other 16 active clients are: B.C. Insulation Contractors Association, B.C. Naturopathic Association, Crumb Rubber Manufacturers Association of Canada Processing, Canadian Football League Players’ Association, Construction and Specialized Workers’ Union Local 1611, International Association of Heat and Frost Insulators and Asbestos Workers Local 118, International Longshore and Warehouse Union Canada, International Union of Operating Engineers Locals 115 and 963, Ironworkers Union Shop Local 712, Landcor Data Corp., Unifor Locals 111, 333 and 2200, Union of Canadian Transportation Employees, and Vancouver Native Housing Society. 

Several of Tieleman’s industrial union clients succeeded in convincing Horgan to carry-on with the Site C dam, now estimated at $10.7 billion. Tieleman joined ex-BC Liberal Attorney General Suzanne Anton and former longtime bureaucrat Bob Plecas in the anti-proportional representation campaign. 

“Sometimes three different types of hats — which is what he is currently wearing — is going to inevitably lead you into a conflict and that conflict will not look good on government,” Travis said. “It won’t look good on democratic institutions in B.C., and it raises concerns over the transparency and legitimacy of the upcoming referendum.” 

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Bob Mackin A deputy minister in the Christy

Miscellany, News

Bob Mackin

In a quest for more revenue, B.C.’s NDP government is planning to change the way you buy liquor and how you gamble — despite launching a new ministry to battle addictions.

The B.C. Lottery Corporation has a tentative $250,000 no-bid contract through 2019 with a Vancouver studio to develop new virtual reality games.

NDP technology minister Bruce Ralston at Archiact’s studio last August (Facebook)

A notice of intent says that Archiact Interactive Ltd. is the only supplier capable of the assignment “because of their specific focus developing game applications for VR delivery in gaming contexts for an assortment of retail and hospitality networks.”

Competitors have until Jan. 26 to formally challenge the contract. 

Archiact was founded by Frank Shen and Derek Chen. In 2016, they sold a 10% stake in the company for $4.2 million to China-based 37 Interactive Entertainment. 

BCLC is searching for a way to reach millennials amid an aging gambling market. A Sept. 25, 2017 briefing note to Attorney General David Eby, who is responsible for gambling promotion and regulation, said that BCLC’s online gambling portal, PlayNow.com, “has continued to grow year over year while land-based gambling is flat lining.”

Meanwhile, the Liquor Distribution Branch wants to sell booze online like Ontario. 

The Crown alcohol wholesaler and retailer is accepting bids through Feb. 6 for acquisition, implementation, design and ongoing enhancement of an e-commerce software as a service or cloud application solution. LDB’s web store would include the option for home delivery or online reservations and in-store pick-up.

The tender document doesn’t say how soon the public could be clicking and sipping, but it wants phase one of the three-phase program to be up and running this summer.

LDB consultants Forrester Research and Gartner Canada Co., the tender document said, “concluded that an all-in-one [business to business] and [business to consumer] e-commerce software solution is the best approach for the LDB in the beginning stages of developing a digital commerce business. Moreover, an all-in-one e-commerce software solution will ensure that the selected e-commerce software solution will include all major pillars of digital commerce management, experience management, order management, transaction management and product management.” 

Ontario’s Crown liquor giant launched online sales in July 2016 (LCBO).

In B.C., individual stores, like Legacy Liquor Store in the Olympic Village, are allowed to offer online plonk purchasing and beer buying. 

Liquor Depot and Liquor Barn sell online to Albertans via LiquorDirect.ca. The Seattle, Calgary and Edmonton markets are targeted by Drizly.com, which wants to become the Amazon of liquor.  

“Coast to coast, we work with local stores to make the biggest selection and best prices available to you,” says the Boston company’s online sales spiel. “Drizly gives you a better option for shopping beer, wine and liquor in your area. Choose to have it delivered immediately, schedule it for later or pick it up in-store to skip the line. It’s up to you.”

In July 2016, after a three-month internal soft launch, Liquor Control Board of Ontario began selling 5,000 products online, giving customers the option of shipping free to one of the 654 LCBO stores or paying a $12 service charge for home delivery within one-to-three days by Canada Post for orders $50 and up.

Online sales brought-in $7 million in the first year, but LCBO forecasts it to become a $1 billion bonanza within five-to-seven years. 

In November, Advertising Age reported that only 0.2% of beer sales were online last year, but Heineken USA CEO Ronald den Elzen forecast it would grow to 2.4% by 2021 and become “a total system shakeup.” 

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Bob Mackin In a quest for more revenue,

Miscellany, News, Opinion

Provincial Court Judge David St. Pierre heard four days of arguments over sentencing of  BC Liberal operative Brian Bonney.

Hear about it on this week’s edition of theBreaker.news Podcast.

Bonney pleaded guilty in October to breach of public trust, cancelling a trial that would have overshadowed the BC Liberal leadership election. He will learn his fate Jan. 31. 

Court heard that Christy Clark won the party leadership in 2011 with a block voting-by-proxy scheme run by her only caucus supporter, Burnaby MLA Harry Bloy.

Special Prosecutor David Butcher and the RCMP also learned that Clark’s Deputy Chief of Staff, Kim Haakstad, informed Clark about the Multicultural Strategic Outreach Plan in 2012. Clark claimed she knew nothing about the secret plan to pander to ethnic voters in swing ridings until late February 2013, when the NDP tabled a leaked copy of the memo in the Legislature. 

This week’s edition includes regular features Around the Rim and Cascadia Calling, a commentary about a taxpayer-funded court management convention at a controversial casino, and a special nod to the only Canadian city shortlisted for Amazon’s second headquarters. 

Listen to theBreaker.news Podcast. It’s free. 

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Provincial Court Judge David St. Pierre heard

Miscellany, News

Bob Mackin 

Christy Clark was told about the BC Liberal Multicultural Strategic Outreach Plan more than a year before the NDP released a leaked copy. 

That is according to email read in B.C. Provincial Court by Special Prosecutor David Butcher during the sentencing of an ex-government worker who pleaded guilty to breach of public trust. 

Premier Christy Clark’s WeChat account. She uses the name Jane Hui Zhi for her Chinese followers.

During a four-day hearing, which ended Jan. 19, Butcher asked Judge David St. Pierre to sentence Brian Bonney to 12 to 23-months house arrest. BC Liberal operative Bonney was hired to be communications director for the government’s multiculturalism branch and tasked to carry out the party plan to target ethnic voters in swing ridings for the 2013 election. 

St. Pierre will deliver his verdict Jan. 31.

The plan, which became known as Quick Wins, was authored in late 2011 by Clark’s Deputy Chief of Staff Kim Haakstad. Butcher said an update of the plan was sent to Clark on Feb. 22, 2012. A status update email from Haakstad to Gabe Garfinkel, Clark’s executive assistant, read: “I told PCC [Premier Christy Clark] I’d give her an update on this. Put it in her briefing folder.”

Haakstad resigned without severance on March 1, 2013, the same day that Clark told reporters in Prince George: “I was never involved in it, I didn’t know about it until Wednesday, until it was brought forward in the house.” 

During the March 4, 2013 Question Period, Clark said: “Had I known that this document existed, I would have put a stop to it immediately.” Haakstad quitely reunited with Clark on her failed Vancouver-Point Grey campaign team in the 2013 election. 

Bonney pleaded guilty on Oct. 12, 2017. A trial had been scheduled to run Oct. 16, 2017 to Feb. 22, 2018 and would likely have overshadowed the election of a new BC Liberal leader on Feb. 3. 

Clark resigned last summer after the party lost a confidence vote to the Green-supported NDP. 

Brian Bonney

Butcher said that while employed as a public servant, Bonney directed and supervised contractors to work on partisan activities to recruit support from ethnic communities “that were critical to [BC Liberal] electoral success.” Bonney was engaged in promoting the free enterprise, anti-union position of his party, while working as a public servant, Butcher said. “He carried out his tasks with gusto and enthusiasm.”

Butcher cited the nine-month sentence given to Michael Sona for the Conservative robocalls scandal in 2011 in a Guelph, Ont. federal riding as a leading case. Butcher said Bonney’s offence was worse, because he was part of a plan to affect the democratic system across an entire province. Unlike Sona, Bonney was experienced. 

Bonney’s defence lawyer Ian Donaldson asked St. Pierre for a discharge or conditional sentence and said there was no similar breach of public trust case, because there was no bribery or theft. Butcher said Bonney did receive personal benefit from the $140,000-a-year job. When the scandal broke, the BC Liberals repaid $70,000 to the public treasury. 

“Unfortunately, in the work he was doing, some of that work crossed the line between public and political or partisan,” Donaldson said. “He accepts that he was wrong in straying across that boundary, but the circumstances demonstrate, the emails and documents, that this wasn’t Mr. Bonney on a lark. This was Mr. Bonney doing his work and doing his job and being instructed and directed and guided by others to do things and him not putting on the brakes.”

David Butcher

Butcher said “the RCMP conducted a lengthy and challenging investigation into the case.” Most of the significant evidence came from email, mainly Gmail. 

“Most of the key witnesses from the Liberal party caucus and ministerial staff lawyered up,” he said. “Two former cabinet ministers, Harry Bloy and John Yap, did not, under the advice of counsel, ever provide statements to the RCMP.”

Bloy, a lifelong friend of Bonney, was rewarded by Clark as multiculturalism minister after she became premier in 2011. Bloy was the only member of caucus to support Clark’s successful campaign to become party leader. 

Butcher confirmed that the investigation found voting irregularities in the leadership contest that resulted in Clark defeating Kevin Falcon by 340 points on a regionally-weighted preferential ballot. 

“The election rules did not prohibit proxy voting. Bloy used his connections to [contractor Sepideh] Sarrafpour and his connections’ connections,” Butcher said. 

“Those connections gathered blocks of PINs which were supplied to Mr. Bloy, who provided them to other Clark supporters, who entered them online — block voting in a proxy process. The Liberal Party has acknowledged difficulties with this process and it has adopted a different system… and prudently they sought advice from the RCMP about how to improve the integrity of the process.”

Butcher said it was still a mystery why the BC Liberals paid Bonney-hired ethnic outreach worker Sarrafpour through Bonney’s numbered company and he agreed with St. Pierre that it was ironic for Bonney to work in a ministry that included the words “open government” on its shingle. 

“There are some things about this case that are really quite strange,” Butcher conceded.

Bonney quit his government job for health reasons and had been hired as CEO of the B.C. Homebuilders Association just two days before the scandal broke. He lost that job and has only worked on a commission basis since then, including a contract with the Canadian Taxpayers’ Federation. 

Donaldson said this experience “incinerated Bonney’s existence.”

At the end of the hearing on Jan. 19, St. Pierre gave Bonney the opportunity to address court. Bonney issued a short apology. 

“I think it is important that I say I do apologize to you, I apologize to the Crown, I apologize to the RCMP, and the people in the courtroom,” Bonney said. “But, most importantly, I apologize to everyone in Victoria and the people of British Columbia for what’s happened here.”

Bonney declined to comment outside the courtroom. 

It was not the first case involving a BC Liberal operative for St. Pierre, a 2009-appointed  judge. He was on the prosecution team for the trial of former ministerial aides David Basi and Bob Virk. They maintained their innocence in the BC Rail privatization trial until  they copped a plea bargain in October 2010 when the government agreed to pay their $6 million legal bill. 

Observers for the sentencing included BC Liberal communications director David Wasyluk, NDP MLA Ravi Kahlon and party worker Heather Libby.  Wasyluk, a former caucus researcher, was reporting back to party executive director Emile Scheffel by text message. Kahlon is a former aide to Adrian Dix, who filed a complaint with the RCMP about the Quick Wins scandal when the BC Liberals released 10,000 pages of email after the 2013 election. 

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Bob Mackin  Christy Clark was told about the

Miscellany, News

Bob Mackin 

The Deputy Attorney General gave thumbs up for almost 200 court administrators and sheriffs from across B.C. to hold a leadership conference at River Rock Casino Resort, even after the NDP government revealed it was a magnet for whale gamblers from China and dirty money. 

Documents obtained exclusively by theBreaker, under the freedom of information law, show that Deputy Minister Richard Fyfe gave approval Oct. 2, 2017 for the Court Services Branch to hold its second annual leadership conference at B.C.’s biggest casino. 

River Rock Casino Resort (Great Canadian Gaming)

“The evaluations from last year were overwhelmingly positive, thus the planning for this year started in spring 2017 and we are set to go Nov. 2 and 3,” wrote assistant deputy minister Lynda Cavanaugh to Connie Richter, Fyfe’s executive operations manager. “My apologies for not obtaining approval from the [Deputy Attorney General] earlier on. Although I have mentioned this to him I neglected to formally request approval, though it is implied in the note above.”

Fyfe’s signature is on a printed copy of Cavanaugh’s email. Cavanaugh had signed the contract with River Rock on July 14, four days before Premier John Horgan was sworn-in. 

It is not known whether Attorney General David Eby was consulted or even knew that the Court Services Branch continued to hold the conference at River Rock. Ministry communications staff did not respond by theBreaker’s deadline on Jan. 18.

Fyfe was assistant deputy attorney general in October 2010 when the BC Liberal government agreed to pay the $6 million legal bill for former aides Dave Basi and Bob Virk after their plea bargain halted the BC Rail corruption trial. The attorney general at the time was Mike de Jong, who is running to be leader of the BC Liberals.

On Sept. 22, 2017, Eby released an anti-money laundering report by MNP from July 2016 that had been suppressed by de Jong while he was the minister responsible for gambling promotion and regulation. The report said River Rock had accepted single cash buy-ins of $500,000 from gamblers with no known source of funds. 

Deputy Attorney General Richard Fyfe (BC Gov)

“Interviews have confirmed that players are indeed wealthy non-residents or business persons with interests both in Vancouver and China, coming to Vancouver to gamble,” said the MNP report. “While the patron may be bona fide, the unsourced cash being accepted by the casino may be associated with criminal activity and poses significant regulatory, business and reputation risk.”

Eby appointed anti-money laundering expert Peter German to review Metro Vancouver casinos. His report is expected in spring. 

The documents obtained by theBreaker show that $91,650 was budgeted for the 2017 conference. 

A May 16, 2016 briefing note for Fyfe, prepared in advance of that year’s conference, said the last time Court Services Branch held such a gathering was more than nine years previous. 

“Holding a leadership event in Richmond, likely close to the airport, will allow for a maximum number of participants to attend said event while mitigating costs,” said the briefing note. “The (2016) conference will be held in September during the Provincial Court Judges’ Conference to mitigate the workload.”

The briefing note said two identical one-day leadership sessions were held over a three day period, to allow half the team to travel and the other half to remain on the job. 

The agenda for the 2017 event included an opening welcome from Cavanaugh and B.C. Supreme Court Chief Justice Christopher Hinkson and Provincial Court Chief Judge Thomas Crabtree. 

In the United States, the General Services Administration spent $1 million on a 2010 Las Vegas conference. The agency’s administrator resigned amid the spending scandal. 

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MAG-2017-74020 by BobMackin on Scribd

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Bob Mackin  The Deputy Attorney General gave thumbs

Miscellany, News

Bob Mackin

Toronto is the only Canadian city that made the 20-city cut for Amazon’s quest to build a second headquarters.

The Seattle e-tail giant, one of the world’s most-valuable corporations, received bids from 238 cities last October, and issued the shortlist on Jan. 18.

Toronto’s bid touted its diversity, skilled and educated talent, lower corporate taxes and labour costs, infrastructure and land.

The 192-page, Olympic-style bid book was signed by Toronto Global chairman Mark Cohon, the former CFL commissioner, and CEO Toby Lennox. It included letters from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Premier Kathleen Wynne. Toronto offered 10 sites, including Harbourfront. 

Best of all, it was proactively released. You can read it here. 

In this case, the T in T-dot also means transparency.

Can’t say the same about British Columbia bids.

Victoria suburb Langford made a 55-page pitch, but 54 of those pages are all blacked out.

The B.C. government threw-in $50,000 for a Metro Vancouver pitch. But that bid book was withheld entirely because the Office of Premier John Horgan claims the bid book is protected by cabinet confidentiality and contain policy advice or recommendations, and it fears disclosure would harm intergovernmental relations and financial or economic harm to a public body.

theBreaker will complain to the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner. A precedent, however, was already set in 2003 when the successful Vancouver bid book to the International Olympic Committee for the 2010 Winter Olympics and Paralympics was published.

B.C. had little chance of being shortlisted for Amazon HQ2, because of its proximity to Amazon’s Seattle headquarters. The only city in the Pacific time zone to make the top 20 was Los Angeles, which is more than 1,000 miles south.

Foi Request Oop 2017 73473 by BobMackin on Scribd

Amazon Bid Redacted Langford by BobMackin on Scribd

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Bob Mackin Toronto is the only Canadian

Miscellany, News

Bob Mackin 

Less than a week since Vancouver’s mayor announced he wouldn’t run for re-election in October, theBreaker has confirmed that Gregor Robertson used a Gmail address to send and receive thousands of email messages between early 2014 and late 2017. 

Vancouver’s mayor and a failed presidential candidate: both hid their email.

theBreaker discovered last fall that lame duck Robertson used his personal Google email account to receive civic documents in 2016 and subsequently asked for all of Robertson’s correspondence on that address with any city hall official between Jan. 1, 2014 and Oct. 20, 2017. 

City hall was supposed to respond by Dec. 4, but invoked a delay to Jan. 18. 

On Jan. 15, three days before the new deadline, city hall received approval from the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner for a further delay of 100 business days to June 13.

OIPC officer James Gartshore turned-down the city’s application for a 250-business day delay, which would have prevented disclosure of the mayor’s email until after the Oct. 20 civic election. 

City hall claimed there is such a large number of records to search that it would unreasonably interfere with city hall operations to meet the deadline. 

In his reasons for decision, Gartshore wrote: “The city has identified at least 6,213 pages of potentially responsive records for this request. 

“Based on the information provided to the OIPC in the city’s request for approval, it appears that the city has been diligently processing this request and meeting the time limit would unreasonably interfere with the operations of the public body.”

Gartshore required city hall to immediately inform theBreaker of the delay and suggested the city should avoid a June 13 document dump.

“The city should release reviewed records to the applicant in stages as the review progresses,” he wrote. “The city should not delay releasing records merely to permit a ‘bulk release’ unless it is absolutely necessary for a global consideration of the disclosure package.” 

In a Dec. 12 response to a separate request, for Robertson’s Gmail to and from nine party insiders and real estate developers, city access to information and privacy director Barbara Van Fraassen claimed Robertson doesn’t conduct city business on his personal email account, but “city business-related emails received on this account are forwarded to the appropriate City of Vancouver department or the Mayor’s City of Vancouver account and then deleted.” 

When she was B.C.’s Information and Privacy Commissioner, Elizabeth Denham advised in 2015 against using personal email accounts for government business. She told elected and appointed government workers across the province that work-related email in a personal account was subject to disclosure under the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act. 

“The use of personal email accounts for work purposes can give the perception that public body employees are seeking to evade the freedom of information process,” Denham wrote. 

Failed 2016 presidential candidate Hillary Clinton is the most-famous politician to take extreme measures to hide her email. She avoided charges for using a private email server while she was Secretary of State. Her husband, ex-president Bill Clinton, was accused of tampering when he held a private meeting with Attorney General Loretta Lynch on his private jet in June 2016 in Phoenix.

“…there were literally thousands of people voting last November for the very first time. My commitment to them, on behalf of every member of my team, is that I will not let you down on making city hall more open and accountable.” –Gregor Robertson in his Dec. 8, 2008 swearing-in speech

In late 2015, Denham began to investigate Vancouver city hall. Her June 2016 report found it routinely broke the section of the FOI law that requires public servants to assist citizens in accessing information about their government. She noted city hall was discriminating against reporters and guilty of “inappropriate delays, failure to meet legislated timelines, missing documentation, incomplete responses, and adversarial communication with applicants.” 

Denham, now the United Kingdom commissioner, launched the investigation in the wake of revelations that Robertson’s first chief of staff, Mike Magee, was mass-deleting email from his city hall account and using his Convergence Communications lobbying company email address to receive city hall-related messages.

When Robertson came to power in 2008, he promised in his swearing-in speech that he would make city hall more open and accountable.

“I will not let you down,” he vowed. 

2017-402 – OIPC Formal Extension – 100 Days by BobMackin on Scribd

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Bob Mackin  Less than a week since Vancouver’s

Miscellany, News

Bob Mackin 

Vision Vancouver raised more than $220,000 in corporate donations for last October’s civic by-election, mainly from a small group of real estate tycoons. 

Cardona (left) and Robertson (Vision)

In Elections BC campaign finance returns published Jan. 15, the majority party on city council reported receiving $25,000 each from the De Cotiis family’s Onni and Amacon and a combined $24,500 from four of Concord Pacific tycoon Terry Hui’s companies. 

The $25,000 donation from Onni president Rossano De Cotiis was dated Oct. 16, two days after the Oct. 14 vote. Three days later, on Oct. 19, De Cotiis agreed in-writing to give city hall part of Onni’s Pearson-Dogwood lands in Marpole for a temporary modular housing project to house homeless people for $1 a year, until 2022.

Onni’s chief of staff is Duncan Wlodarczak, who left Vision Vancouver and joined Rossano De Cotiis’s company last May. Wlodarczak spent three-and-a-half years working for Vision in a variety of positions, from candidate support and community outreach to operations and partnerships.

Wlodarczak (left) and Robertson (Facebook)

Onni received an illegal $1.56 million waiver on development cost levies for its 43-storey Charleson condo tower in Yaletown. Onni repaid the funds in late 2016 after Global News discovered what the Vision Vancouver-dominated city hall called a mistake. Last spring, city manager Sadhu Johnston recommended not sending the matter to an outside firm for investigation. 

Other big money real estate donors to Vision’s war chest included Coromandel ($35,000), Shato Holdings ($25,000), Rize Alliance ($20,000), and Westbank Projects ($15,000). 

Vancouver Taxi Association ($10,000) and Vision bagman Joel Solomon’s Interdependent Investments ($2,500) were the only non-real estate donations of the 16. 

Vision also reported $29,400 from unions and $26,225 from individuals. Of the $278,125 raised, it spent $77,351.60 on candidate Diego Cardona’s fifth-place campaign. The reports do not show how much Vision paid to resolve Cardona’s $1,000-plus in traffic fines, which theBreaker exclusively revealed.

The rest of Vision’s fundraising revenue, $180,487.06, went to winning three seats on the NDP-resurrected school board. The previous BC Liberal government fired the school board in 2016 over a budget dispute.

NPA newcomer Hector Bremner, a lobbyist and former aide to Rich Coleman, won the city council seat vacated by Vision’s Geoff Meggs. Meggs quit to become NDP Premier John Horgan’s chief of staff. Turnout was a disappointing 11%. 

The by-election was the last in Vancouver before the NDP provincial government amended municipal campaign finance laws to ban corporate and union donations and set a $1,200 donation limit by individuals. 

In the 2014 general election, nearly all major parties that fielded candidates, including Vision and the NPA, released preliminary lists of donors before election day. In 2017, Vision and the NPA were the only two that refused to show their preliminary fundraising lists.  

NPA reported $100,012.45 income and spent $78,965.23 on Bremner’s campaign. It said it received $33,250 in corporate donors and $20,450 from individuals, and reported $46,312.45 in transfers from the party’s account. 

Bremner’s biggest single donor, at $10,000, was longtime BC Liberal bagman and NPA supporter Peter Brown. Three Terry Hui companies donated a combined $8,000. Polygon Homes, Stubos Capital and Ron Toigo’s Italian Oven Restaurant gave $5,000 each, said the NPA return.

Robertson revealed Jan. 10 that he would not run for a fourth term as Vancouver mayor. He denied that his failure to solve the city’s affordable housing crisis under his nine-year reign was the reason.

Vision Vancouver remains the majority party on city council with six seats, followed by the NPA (four) and Greens (one). 

UPDATE – Feb. 9: Meanwhile, the man who ran Vision’s office and fundraising machine from March 2012 to July 2017 has resurfaced with another branch of the De Cotiis famiglia.

The party’s former executive director, Stepan Vdovine, had a cup of coffee last summer with the Horgan Horde, as an aide to Tourism Minister Lisa Beare. His wife, Mira Oreck, is Horgan’s Vancouver-based director of stakeholder relations. 

Vdovine’s LinkedIn profile says he joined Amacon Developments as director of business development this month.  The residential, commercial and hospitality developer and landlord owned by siblings Lilliana, Teresa, Donato, Luca and Marcello De Cotiis. 

 

The next civic election is Oct. 20. 

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Bob Mackin  Vision Vancouver raised more than $220,000

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