A look back at the controversies of the last 16 years under the BC Liberal rule of Gordon Campbell (2001-2011) and Christy Clark (2011-2017).
A look back at the controversies of
Bob Mackin
theBreaker has learned that BC Liberal Party soul-searching reached a fever pitch this week — the last full week of the free enterprise party’s 16-year dynasty.
Party brass met behind closed doors in Vancouver and Surrey to ruminate over losing power to John Horgan and the NDP, who will be sworn-in on July 18 after defeating the Liberals on a June 29 confidence vote. The post-mortem was not kind to the “Strong B.C., Bright Future” campaign, which was backed by a huge corporate-funded war chest. (Remember how Rich Coleman privately boasted last September to members that the bank account had never been so full and the party would wind up with more seats after the election?)
Clark and Fassbender in October 2016 (BC Gov)
Attendees of the Monday event at a top secret location in downtown Vancouver included senior party members, several cabinet ministers, former support staff and party-connected lobbyists. Several unloaded on the horrific 2017 election campaign and named lame duck Premier Christy Clark as the problem.
Another debrief in Surrey, with a similar mix of individuals, saw defeated cabinet minister Peter Fassbender get up and unload about Clark. The one-term Surrey-Fleetwood MLA “went to town,” according to theBreaker’s source. The former education and taxis/transit minister called Clark, not the party, the problem.
Fassbender admitted mistakes were made on the road to the May 9 vote and said “we could’ve been more giving.” He called Finance Minister Mike de Jong too difficult, but had more criticism up his sleeve for the premier, blaming her for the NDP’s return to the government side of the house. The former Palmer Jarvis adman and Langley city mayor’s criticism was so harsh and intense, that he was asked to slow down!
Fassbender was blunt: “She lost it for us. Period. End of story.”
Longtime Liberal powerbroker Prem Vinning was furious at two of Clark’s right-hand men, for costing the BC Liberals at least three seats in Surrey. Thousands of votes were lost in the battleground city because Clark stubbornly listened to her inner-circle. The NDP won six of nine ridings, much to the chagrin of longtime Liberal strategist Patrick Kinsella, who convinced the party he would deliver eight of nine. Before the election, and before redistribution, the Liberals held a 5-3 advantage.
A key decision was pinpointed during the Surrey session. Instead of supporting well-known Surrey businessman Satnam Johal’s candidacy, Clark sided with her brother Bruce Clark and ex-husband Mark Marissen’s recommendation for a Sukh Dhawilal-connected candidate: Puneet Sandhar. NDP’s Jinny Sims beat lawyer Sandhar by almost 1,800 votes in Surrey-Panorama.
Clark-favoured Dhaliwal was slated to run for the BC Liberals in 2013, but was forced to bow out over his tax evasion conviction. Dhaliwal made a federal comeback as a Liberal MP, by handily winning Surrey-Newton in 2015 over Sims.
While the shrinking Clark Clique clings to the dream that the slim Green-supported NDP minority will fall this autumn, expect the many disappointed realists in the party to spend the rest of this summer plotting a leadership change and house cleaning.
Bob Mackin theBreaker has learned that BC Liberal
Bob Mackin
How big is the British Columbia government’s information bureaucracy?
According to theBreaker’s analysis, there were 547 people employed earlier this year in Government Communications and Public Engagement (GCPE) and the Corporate Information and Records Management Office (CIRMO).
GCPE is part of the Advanced Education Ministry and handles public relations and crisis communications for each ministry, as well as the central government’s advertising campaigns. It spent $37.3 million for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2016. The BC Liberals regularly shuttled political staff back and forth into GCPE, to ensure political priorities were met. Newly minted BC Liberal opposition chief of staff Nick Koolsbergen and his deputy, Jessica Wolford, both held senior positions inside GCPE.
Athana Mentzelopoulos
John Paul Fraser
CIRMO is part of the Finance Ministry and includes Information Access Operations (IAO), the government’s freedom of information and privacy office. Several GCPE staffers also had roles interfacing with IAO. It spent $15.3 million last year. This year’s budget calls for $20.24 million.
The Public Service Agency, the government’s human resources department, released lists of staff for each department and their job descriptions after FOI requests from theBreaker. See the documents below.
At the end of January this year, there were 233 people employed in CIRMO, which also counts Privacy, Compliance and Training, Strategic Policy and Projects, Government Records Service, and Information Management Act Implementation.
Over in GCPE, there were 314 staffers. That department includes Corporate Priorities and Communications Operations, Strategic Communications Services and GDX: Government Digital Experience Division. Some 61 of GCPE’s staffers are also connected to CIRMO. GCPE assigned 141 workers to ministry communications offices before the election, almost double the number of people working at Postmedia’s Vancouver Sun and Province, B.C.’s largest private sector newsroom.
UPDATE: A Freedom of Information release to theBreaker — dated July 6, but not delivered until July 17 — includes briefing documents for Linda Reid. The ex-Speaker became Advanced Education minister in Clark’s short-lived, post-election cabinet. Bureaucrats told Reid that government spent “approximately $16 million in fiscal 2016-17” on advertising. The government originally planned to spend around $8.5 million.
Reid’s predecessor, Andrew Wilkinson, was fond of telling reporters before and during the election that a substantial amount was earmarked for advertising about the opioid public health emergency. The briefing note to Reid says that only $1.88 million was spent on the so-called “overdose information campaign.” Almost as much was spent claiming the pre-election budget was balanced ($1.87 million). Other big ticket campaigns included the B.C. HOME Partnership ($2.5 million), “B.C. Job Makers” ($1.5 million), “Climate Leadership” ($1.5 million), and “K-12 Curriculum Change” ($773,000).
Does government advertising work? The B.C. HOME subprime lending scheme is falling far short of expectations, while B.C. is on pace for more overdose deaths in 2017 than the 967 recorded last year.
Government does have a responsibility to keep the public informed about the vital services for which it pays and relies upon; its bigger responsibility, though, is to first deliver those programs efficiently and effectively. It must also sort, manage and store terabytes of information that it generates. But government functions more like a corporation these days, so it also spends heavily to disseminate information favourable to the ruling party and it calls upon staff and contractors who are friends of the party to help conceive and execute those campaigns. It censors information that it decides the public doesn’t have a right to see. The ruling party uses its taxpayer-funded media monitoring functions while in constant fear of embarrassment during this modern, perpetual campaign era.
In 1999, the fiery Liberal opposition critic Christy Clark blasted NDP Finance Minister Joy MacPhail for spending $700,000 on an ad campaign. Fast-forward to 2017, and she was running for a second term as premier after spending more than $15 million on the Our Opportunity Is Here ad campaign. Launched in November 2015, it was strategically designed to position the Clark Liberals for re-election on May 9. Instead, the party lost six seats, including four members of cabinet, and its majority. On June 29 Clark resigned after losing a the confidence vote.
The Green-supported NDP minority government will, no doubt, change the politically installed department heads.
In GCPE, it is longtime Clark friend and Deputy Minister John Paul Fraser, the son of conflict of interest commissioner and Liberal donor Paul Fraser. CIRMO is overseen day-to-day by assistant deputy minister David Curtis and Associate Deputy Minister Cheryl Wenezenki-Yolland. Ultimately, Deputy Finance Minister Athana Mentzelopoulos calls the shots. Mentzelopoulos was Clark’s bridesmaid and is, arguably, her closest political confidante. It was her blown call to issue a news release that falsely claimed the RCMP was investigating a data breach in the Ministry of Health in 2012. Mentzelopoulos was Fraser’s predecessor atop GCPE.
In opposition, the “GreeNDP” tabled numerous democratic reform private members’ bills — all rejected by the Liberals — that were aimed at increasing transparency and reducing government advertising waste. Will they pick-up where they left off and fulfil promises? Or be seduced by the power to control information?
With a new government coming July 18, theBreaker will be watching very closely and asking very tough questions during the first 100 days and beyond.
Certainly, Clark will have no credibility as opposition leader after compiling such a shoddy record of spending waste and mishandling of the public’s information. Premier John Horgan has the ability to shrink and transform the government’s bloated information censorship and propaganda bureaucracies. But does he have the will?
Only time will tell.
Psa-2017-70542 Gcpe Staff by BobMackin on Scribd
PSA-2017-70544 CIRMO by BobMackin on Scribd
Psa-2017-70542 Gcpe Staff by BobMackin on Scribd
GCP-2017-70541 GCPE Staff Diagrams by BobMackin on Scribd
GCP-2017-71979 – Reid Briefing Book by BobMackin on Scribd
Bob Mackin How big is the British
Bob Mackin
The B.C. government is withholding preliminary findings of a panel struck to review the business case for the Surrey LRT project.
But a February briefing note for then-transit and taxis minister Peter Fassbender says the second phase could use SkyTrain technology instead of the planned light rail.
The Feb. 9 briefing note, finally released this week to theBreaker via freedom of information, refers to the 11 kilometre Newton to Guildford “L-Line.”
There would be 11 stations with an additional potential future station at 84th Avenue. It would require 16 vehicles (13 in operation plus three spares. “An operations and maintenance facility is planned on the west side of King George Boulevard, south of 72nd Avenue. The most aggressive schedule for the project includes procurement in 2018, construction beginning in 2019 and completion in 2022.”
A second, 16 km phase from Surrey to Langley along Fraser Highway could follow five years later.
Ex-SNC-Lavalin executive Burke
“While the Mayors’ Council has proposed LRT technology for this project as well, TransLink is currently evaluating both LRT and SkyTrain technology for the line,” the note said.
The briefing note mentions that the Ministry of Transportation struck a due diligence panel through PartnershipsBC to review the draft business case.
The panel includes Los Angeles-based ex-Bombardier vice-president Les Elliott, ex-deputy B.C. finance minister Peter Milburn and James Burke, the retired former head of SNC-Lavalin’s Vancouver-based transportation division.
The scandal-plagued Montreal-based engineering and construction giant has been involved in every SkyTrain project, most recently the Evergreen Line, which encountered major tunnelling delays. In 2013, while Burke was in charge in Vancouver, SNC-Lavalin was blacklisted from bidding on World Bank projects for a decade.
“The business case specifically addresses project rationale, project delivery, procurement, funding and implementation. TransLink is also developing similar business cases for the Broadway Millennium Line extension project in Vancouver and the Pattullo Bridge replacement project in Surrey/New Westminster.”
All the preliminary findings were censored by the B.C. government, using loopholes related to cabinet secrecy, policy advice, intergovernmental relations, and financial interests of a public body.
The briefing note said PartnershipsBC met Feb. 7 with TransLink and City of Surrey staff “to discuss preliminary themes emerging from the Due Diligence Panel and establish an approach for addressing some of the major considerations.”
Documents included the speaking notes for Fassbender’s Feb. 10 meeting with Surrey officials, including Mayor Linda Hepner.
Surrey-Fleetwood’s Fassbender was one of four BC Liberal cabinet members who lost their seats in the May 9 provincial election.
The Broadway subway and Surrey light rail were estimated in 2014 to cost $1.98 billion and $2.14 billion, respectively. In March 2016, City of Surrey revised its estimate upward to $2.6 billion because of real estate costs.
TransLink spent $3 million to hire companies for design and cost estimates contracts in early 2015: Steer Davies Gleave and Hatch Mott MacDonald for the Surrey proposal, and Stantec for the Vancouver proposal.
Also in March 2016, TransLink CFO Cathy McClay admitted rising real estate costs and the declining loonie combined to drive costs up, but she wouldn’t give a hint about the new estimates. TransLink originally wanted to submit business cases to the federal and B.C. governments in the fourth quarter of 2016.
CSC-2017-71727-Surrey by BobMackin on Scribd
Bob Mackin The B.C. government is withholding preliminary
Bob Mackin
B.C. Place Stadium’s joint health and safety committee skipped two of its monthly meetings, despite the law that says management and staff must meet monthly.
(BC Place)
Minutes from an April 26 meeting, obtained by theBreaker via Freedom of Information, show that WorkSafeBC found the stadium in violation of section 131.2 of the of the Workers Compensation Act for missing the February and March meetings. That section states the committee “must meet regularly at least once a month.”
B.C. Pavilion Corporation’s spokesman downplayed the violation, claiming the committee meets “on average once per month.”
Duncan Blomfield said “due to personnel schedules” meetings for February and March were held April 11 and April 26 instead.
The B.C. Government and Service Employees’ Union, which represents B.C. Place workers, has yet to comment.
The April 11 minutes indicated there had been an “accident reported” during the World Rugby Canada Sevens on March 11. “The employee has not contacted the company or police, but worker has contacted WorkSafe. Reports and CCTV footage has been collected for WorkSafe to review,” it said.
When it came time to hold the April meeting, the committee of stadium managers and BCGEU members finally met on May 31.
PavCo has a long history of violating worker protection laws.
A Nov. 20, 2015 WorkSafeBC report found B.C. Place was failing to protect workers from violence and gave until late December of that year for the stadium to comply. It failed to make policies and procedures and offer training for three years.
In November 2006, a janitorial contractor collapsed on the job and later died in hospital. Nobody at PavCo or the worker’s company told WorkSafeBC, as they were supposed to. A whistleblower finally came forward in October 2008.
Less than a year before the stadium hosted the 2010 Winter Olympics ceremonies, WorkSafeBC found the staff who controlled the stadium’s original inflated roof weren’t trained or supervised to ensure health or safety at the dome. Written emergency procedures couldn’t be found by an inspector.
WorkSafeBC slapped PavCo with a hefty $68,970.57 fine on Nov. 6, 2009 after an electrician was nearly electrocuted on March 10, 2009. There were injuries during the $514 million renovation in 2011.
After the Olympics, it was learned that the stadium held no evacuation drill for more than two years prior to the event. Such drills are required annually.
In 2015, a worker that had been fired for snoozing on the job was reinstated.
When John Horgan is sworn-in as premier on July 18, it will end more than 16 years of Liberal oversight of PavCo, which included the preventable January 2007 rip and collapse of the roof and the costly and controversial replacement four years later with a retractable system.
Bob Mackin B.C. Place Stadium’s joint health
Bob Mackin
Activists with the Downtown Eastside SRO Collaborative Society are urging Vancouver city hall’s board of variance to just say no to a pot proprietor linked to a family they call “slumlords.”
Herban Legends wants city hall to excuse it from the 300 metre bubble zone around schools, so it can operate a “medical” (cough, cough) marijuana store on 3038 Arbutus. York House’s junior and senior kindergarten is located just 260 metres away at 3274 East Boulevard.
The company’s 2016 submission for a development permit and business licence (below) said it would be managed by Saggu Singh of Surrey, a hotel manager who claimed a “long and distinguished career in the military.” The document does not say for which force or country.
Herban Legends is really backed by the Sahota clan, well-known Downtown Eastside welfare hotel owners with a $130 million real estate portfolio. They also own the Sunshine Coast Cannabis Farm.
After years of doing nothing, Vancouver city hall finally shut down the Sahotas’ Balmoral Hotel near Main and Hastings. The 150 residents were relocated from the decrepit 105-year-old building which engineers deemed a risk to collapse.
3028 Arbutus – Operational Letter & Dwgs by BobMackin on Scribd
Bob Mackin Activists with the Downtown Eastside SRO
Bob Mackin
TransLink is spending $2.31 million for a committee to explore spending hundreds of millions of dollars to tax motorists who drive in downtown Vancouver and cross the region’s bridges.
So-called mobility pricing is how the Mayors’ Council wants to fund the regional share of the 10-year plan for roads, bridges and the Broadway subway and Surrey light rail. The latter two megaprojects will cost more than $4.6 billion combined, but the 2017 cost estimates are a tightly held TransLink secret, for fear of sparking sticker shock among taxpayers.
TransLink’s 2015 interim CEO Doug Allen (Mackin)
When interim CEO Doug Allen’s $35,000-a-month contract expired in August 2015, his exit report said TransLink should strike a committee and study the tax measure for two years, then take until 2025 to design and implement the measure. But this new committee is supposed to report and dissolve by the end of April 2018.
Almost three years ago, Allen warned that it would be a political minefield.
“Road usage charging can only be used to increase transit ridership [not fund roads and bridges] if it ever gets implemented in the first place,” Allen wrote in his advice to his successor. “Risks and challenges to implementation are numerous on both the technical and the public acceptability fronts — several orders of magnitude more complex than the Compass Card project.”
The Compass Card faregates and smart card project took an extra three years and doubled in budget to $200 million by the time it was launched in 2016. The road tax would require installation of networked surveillance cameras and sensors throughout the city, like in Milan, San Diego, Singapore, Stockholm and London. It cost the British capital $831 million to start-up and operate its congestion pricing system over the first decade, in order to net $1.3 billion net revenue.
Will anyone on the 14-member committee travel to see how it works, first hand?
“At present there are no plans for the commission to travel outside of the region as part of their work,” said TransLink spokeswoman Jill Drews.
“At present” could be the operative phrase. TransLink is notorious for junkets. Back in November 1999, chair George Puil led a 10-person, $70,000 delegation to London to explore the turnstiles on the tube. Puil’s travel buddies included: NDP MLA Jenny Kwan and her aide Ian McConnell, Millennium Line president Lecia Stewart, TransLink vice-president Sherri Plewes, ex-BC Transit boss Larry Miller, and transit consultant Jane Bird.
They enjoyed business class airfare and stayed in a $300 hotel room in the posh Mayfair district.
Mobility pricing committee chair Allan Seckel, who was Premier Gordon Campbell’s deputy minister during the 2010 Winter Olympics, and vice-chair Joy MacPhail, the former NDP leader, are being paid $2,500 and $1,666 respectively, per month. All members of the board — including directors like ex-NPA Coun. Jennifer Clarke, ex-B.C. trucking industry lobbyist Paul Landry, and United Way CEO Michael McKnight — will be paid a $550-per meeting stipend.
The board reads like a reunion of the Better Transit and Transportation Coalition, which lost the 2015 TransLink tax plebiscite: Greater Vancouver Board of Trade’s Iain Black, UNIFOR’s Gavin McGarrigle, Surrey Business Improvement Association’s Elizabeth Model and Counterpoint Communications’ Bruce Rozenhart. Rozenhart was in the backroom for Liberal incumbent John Yap’s re-election in Richmond-Steveston.
Bob Mackin TransLink is spending $2.31 million for
Bob Mackin
Gregor Robertson is the mayor of splitsville again.
One day after the third anniversary of confirming he broke up with wife of 30 years, Amy, the Vancouver mayor’s office admitted to the South China Morning Post that he was no longer in a relationship with girlfriend Wanting Qu. 
The 52-year-old mayor and 33-year-old Chinese pop singer (whose civil servant mother, Qu Zhang Mingjie, may be sentenced to death for real estate corruption in China) were said to have broken-up in May.
Cracks in their relationship were evident in late January, during Lunar New Year, when Qu posted a photograph of a flowerless plant on a black background, with lines from a James Bay breakup song on her Instagram page. During Lunar New Year in 2016, Qu posted a photo of the smiling couple with Year of the Monkey greetings in English and Chinese.
Qu traveled frequently with Robertson while he was on civic business, including the Vatican and Paris climate party in 2015. They maintained separate residences, Robertson in a renovated Alexandra Park penthouse (which he shows-off in the current edition of upscale Montecristo magazine) and Qu in an Olympic Village condo.
They were seen together March 12 after the Canada Sevens rugby closing ceremony. A week later, on March 19, Robertson committed apparent conflict of interest by using his @MayorGregor Twitter account to promote the Apple Music release of Qu’s “Moon and Back” single — contrary to city hall’s code of conduct.
NPA Coun. George Affleck confronted Robertson during question period at the end of the March 28 city council meeting, where Robertson oddly distanced himself from Qu.
Affleck referred to Qu as Robertson’s “partner in life,” to which Robertson responded: “I don’t have a life partner at this point, just to be clear on that front. The Tweet was really also an opportunity to listen to a Vancouver singer-songwriter’s new song.” (Oxford defines life partner as “a person with whom one is in a long-term monogamous relationship.” Robertson and Qu began dating in summer 2014.)
Robertson and Qu at Canada Sevens (Mackin)
The news overshadowed the July 4 resignation of Vision Vancouver Coun. Geoff Meggs to become Premier-designate John Horgan’s chief of staff.
Could the by-election to replace Meggs, that Robertson said is expected in mid-October, fill a soon-to-be-announced second vacancy on city council?
A source informed theBreaker that Robertson is in the running for a position with the Canada Infrastructure Bank. The new $35 billion, Liberal government Crown corporation will finance infrastructure projects with provincial, territorial, municipal and private partners. Robertson has been on the lookout for a federal gig since 2015, when he threw city hall support behind Justin Trudeau’s winning campaign.
Former Royal Bank of Canada chief administrative and financial officer Janice Fukakusa was named chair on July 6, a job that pays $85,000 to $100,000 a year. The Privy Council Office accepted board applications until June 30. CEO candidates have until July 21 to apply.
Between eight and 11 directors will sit on the board and they are expected to commit at least 25 days a year. Senior executives and board members must not be employed by another government, which would mean Robertson could not continue as mayor.
Robertson spokeswoman Katie Robb denied he was a candidate.
“Mayor Robertson has not been in discussions regarding a position with the Canada Infrastructure Bank,” Robb told theBreaker.
Meanwhile, the GregorRobertson.ca domain is back on the block.
It was registered Feb. 16, 2016 for one year. Last summer, Robb denied that Robertson had registered the domain, but did not answer whether any effort was made to investigate who had registered it or whether Robertson would contest the registration. Vancouver’s mayor is, by far, the most famous person named Gregor Robertson in Canada.
His GregorRobertson.com domain redirects to the Vision Vancouver website. It was registered in early 2007.
Bob Mackin Gregor Robertson is the mayor of
Bob Mackin
Onni’s Charleson.
Vancouver city hall isn’t going to send the Onni development cost levy waiver scandal to an external firm after all.
Last fall, the developer of the 43-storey Charleson tower in Yaletown was found to have illegally received a $1.5 million break. The developer of the mixed strata condominium/rental should have paid $4.5 million in DCLs, but it got the big discount under a program reserved only for 100% rental towers. The developer-friendly, Vision Vancouver city hall called it a mistake.
Council had passed a motion Dec. 13 that said “in the interest of transparency, accountability, and openness,” it would direct staff to recommend an independent third party inquiry into the matter.
“The scope of the inquiry should also include a review a review of all similar waivers relating to the STIR and Rental 100 programs,” said the motion.
A June 1 memo from City Manager Sadhu Johnston to Mayor and Council said the city’s chief risk officer did an internal review report Dec. 8 on the Charleson, and blamed an “administrative error.” The city’s internal auditors found no issues with the other 29 DCL waivers granted since 2009. KPMG was paid $26,771.35 to review the internal audit plan.
Johnson estimated that it would cost $230,000 to $350,000 to hire an external firm “to replicate the full scope of the internal audit review.”
“Given the other actions undertaken to date, it is our recommendation that the significant cost of a further external review is not warranted,” Johnston wrote.
Documents obtained by theBreaker under Freedom of Information show that bureaucrats Berg Balantzyan and Kathy Morgan were handling the file in 2014 when Onni got the DCL waiver. The company wrote a Dec. 1, 2016 cheque to city hall for $1,558,753.33.
2017-004 – res by BobMackin on Scribd
Bob Mackin [caption id="attachment_4680" align="alignright" width="259"] Onni's Charleson.[/caption] Vancouver
Some of the men detained by police on July 2.
Bob Mackin
Controversy of a different sort at the contentious Point Grey Road bike lane during Canada Day weekend.
A reader told theBreaker about an incident east of Lululemon founder Chip Wilson’s $75 million mansion around 6:30 p.m. on July 2.
A Vancouver Police spokesman confirmed it was a “roadside drug investigation.”
Man in handcuffs on Point Grey Road.
A witness who provided images to theBreaker, but declined to be indentified in print, said a police cruiser and two beach patrol all-terrain vehicles sped to the Bayswater beach access stairs.
The officers returned to street level with seven males, who were then lined-up two-to-three feet apart, except for one handcuffed male who was made to sit curbside. The handcuffs were eventually removed. The witness said police kept the males there for about two hours.
The witness heard one of the men say: “I’m not trying to be a bad guy; I’m trying to be a good guy.”
“The men were detained during the initial investigation and then released,” Const. Jason Doucette said via email.
“A number of items were seized and a vehicle was towed. No charges have been recommended at this point.”
As such, theBreaker has chosen to obscure the faces of the men for the time being.
UPDATE (Aug. 10): Doucette told theBreaker that no charges were laid. “The file has been concluded and would only be reopened if relevant additional information became available,” he said.
[caption id="attachment_4674" align="alignright" width="386"] Some of the
