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Business, News

Bob Mackin 

A shakeup inside BC United, as Kevin Falcon’s party hired a new campaign manager on July 10.

Mark Werner, who oversaw Ellis Ross’s BC Liberal leadership bid in 2022, has taken over, with 14 weeks until the Oct. 19 election.

Werner told theBreaker.news that campaign operations director Kelly Reichert, strategic advisor Hamish Marshall and executive director Lindsay Coté will report to him.

Mark Werner (left) and Ellis Ross in 2022 (Werner)

“Caucus is very happy and the mood and the tone is changing,” Werner said.  

Werner will oversee all facets of the central campaign and also guide the local campaigns for Kamloops incumbents Todd Stone and Peter Milobar. 

The former president of the B.C. Guide Outfitters Association was a northern B.C. grassroots organizer for the BC Liberals under Christy Clark. He managed Ross’s runner-up campaign in 2022, a contest marred by accusations from Falcon’s six challengers that the former multi-portfolio cabinet minister’s team violated the party’s rules about membership sales and spending. 

Under the weighted voting system, Falcon eventually defeated Ross on the fifth ballot 52.19% to 33.65%. Michael Lee finished third with 14.14%. Just over a year later, in April 2023, Falcon rebranded the party as BC United. 

“He’s the leader, so I’m going to support him,” Werner said. 

After the spring session of the Legislature, BC United suffered defections of caucus chair Lorne Doerkson (Cariboo-Chilcotin) and mental health and addiction critic Elenore Sturko (Surrey South) to the Conservative Party of B.C. The party led by former BC United MLA John Rustad (Nechako Lakes) is riding high in public opinion polls as a likely heir to BC United as the opposition party in the next version of the Legislature. Former BC Greens leader Andrew Weaver suggested the Conservatives could even upset the David Eby-led NDP and form government.

BC United reported $672,000 in donations in the April to June quarter, compared to $1.1 million for the Conservatives and $2.2 million for the NDP. 

Does Werner think he can turn it around? 

“I can and will. Things are not as bad as people think they are.

“The polls don’t reflect what people think, once people get to know John [Rustad],” Werner said. “I don’t think people know Kevin, either.”

To that end, Werner plans to produce a short video on Falcon’s life and family, refine the party’s brand and logo and put together an operations team. 

“I do see a path to victory,” Werner said. 

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Bob Mackin  A shakeup inside BC United, as

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Bob Mackin

Could Alan Mullen return to the B.C. Legislature as an MLA? 

The former chief of staff to Darryl Plecas, the speaker from 2017 to 2020, confirms he is being courted by more than one party to run in the Oct. 19 provincial election.

Darryl Plecas (left) and Alan Mullen in Abbotsford (Mackin)

“I’m considering it, I’m having the discussions, I’ve certainly not committed one way or another,” Mullen said, adding he was approached for interim discussions about running in the Lower Mainland.

He declined to say which parties are showing interest, except to say that BC United, the former BC Liberal Party, is not one of them. Plecas was ejected from the party when he was chosen speaker in 2017, early in the Green-supported NDP minority government. 

Mullen rose to prominence by helping Plecas expose corruption in the Legislature, where clerk Craig James and sergeant-at-arms Gary Lenz both resigned in disgrace in 2019. James was later convicted in 2022 of breach of public trust. 

“I think some people, certainly in the back rooms of political parties, are scratching their heads thinking, why would you be asking him, a little bit controversial, and he basically calls a spade a spade,’ Mullen said. “Well, yeah, I wish every politician would call a spade a spade.”

Mullen said he has never been a card-carrying member of any provincial or federal party and is not an ideologue. Instead, “in my capacity as chief of staff, it was always all about doing the right thing… it was about protecting the taxpayer, was always about looking after British Columbians.”

Among the work he did while in Plecas’s office was a 2020 report recommending cost-saving measures in Legislature security. It took until July 2023 for the Legislative Assembly Management Committee to adopt recommendations from “Review of the Sergeant-at-Arms Department and Proposals for Reform.” That is when the all-party committee heard that the first group of 10 unarmed safety officers began orientation and training. 

Mullen’s report recommended that Legislative Assembly Protective Services become a security department with unarmed officers in order to save more than $1 million a year. He found that the force protecting just 5.9 hectares was costing taxpayers $5 million a year and had become more expensive than the police forces in Victoria suburbs Oak Bay and Central Saanich. 

The B.C. Legislature should be a “glass house” where transparency is the priority, Mullen said.

“It’s the people’s house doesn’t belong to any political party, it doesn’t belong to any politician. They’re simply they’re doing the people’s work.”

After Plecas chose not run in the 2020 election, Mullen became head of investigations for a provincial regulator. He said he would mull the offers to run for office during the next three weeks. 

“I haven’t said no, and I certainly haven’t said yes, I’ve taken any call, any conversation. I’ve had the meetings, and I will continue to do so, and I’ll have some more this week,” said the Burnaby resident. “But at the end of the day, it’s not about necessarily me. It’s not about stepping back into the limelight. it’s not even about the political party. It’s about, is this the best time to do it, and is it the best thing for the province? If I feel overwhelmingly then, yes, that’s the answer, then I would obviously accept that and throw my hat in the ring.”

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Bob Mackin Could Alan Mullen return to the

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Bob Mackin

How was this for passing the torch?

Members of Canada’s Los Angeles 1984 Olympics team, which finished fourth. (Canada Basketball)

Canada Basketball sent an all-points-bulletin in mid-June to players on men’s Olympic teams dating back to 1976. Four dozen of them paid their own way and showed up on Canada Day weekend in Toronto at the OVO Athletic Centre, where the Paris 2024 squad reported to training camp.  

Greg Wiltjer from the 1984 team and Steve Konchalski, assistant coach to the late Jack Donohue. (Canada Basketball)

“Unsure if Team Canada will ever assemble that much Canadian Olympic basketball talent ever again,” said West Vancouver’s Howard Kelsey, who played on the fourth-place squad at Los Angeles 1984, which lost in the bronze medal match to Yugoslavia.

Kelsey co-founded the Canadian National Basketball Teams Alumni Association and played a significant role in helping Canada Basketball president Michael Bartlett and general manager Rowan Barrett achieve the unprecedented reunion. 

“Several years ago, many of the players, and many of the Olympians, would not come together to support,” Kelsey said. “That’s a miraculous journey.”

Four of the teams were coached by the late Jack Donohue, whose assistant Steve Konchalski attended the reunion. Jay Triano, now an assistant coach with the NBA’s Sacramento Kings, was there as coach of the Sydney 2000 team and member of the playing roster for the 1980 to 1988 squads.  Sydney 2000 star and two-time NBA MVP Steve Nash was unable to attend due to previous commitments.

The doctor for all five teams did attend. Dr. Andrew Pipe was named recently to the Future of Sport in Canada Commission, headed by former Ontario Chief Justice Lise Maisonneuve.

Howard Kelsey (left), Raptors’ broadcaster Paul Jones and Bill Wennington, from the 1984 team. (Canada Basketball)

The Montreal 1976 team finished fourth after losing to the Soviet Union in the bronze medal match. It was Canada’s best since silver at the Berlin 1936 Olympics. The Seoul 1988 and Sydney 2000 teams were sixth and seventh, respectively. The 1980 team did not make it to Moscow, due to the boycott over the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan.

“So proud of these ‘kids,’ talented, humble and hungry to represent. Our ‘80 team hasn’t changed a bit,” Tweeted Leo Rautins, former national team coach. 

Canada is ranked seventh after the FIBA 2023 World Cup, where it upset the U.S. for the bronze medal last September in an overtime thriller.  Led by Dillon Brooks and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, and coached by Jordi Fernandez, it was a first for Canada on the world stage. 

In the opening round at Paris, Canada will face Greece July 27, Australia July 30 and Spain on Aug. 2. 

While Kelsey is counting the days to this year’s Olympic tournament, he is also looking ahead to L.A. 2028. Alumni from the 1984 team hope to return to the City of Angels to watch Canada’s best get on the podium there. 

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(Canada Basketball)

Members of Canada’s Paris 2024 basketball team and alumni from Montreal 1976 to Sydney 2000 at the Canada Day weekend reunion in Toronto. (Canada Basketball)

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Bob Mackin How was this for passing the

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For the week of July 7, 2024:

The special 350th edition of #thePodcast with host Bob Mackin, featuring guests Mario Canseco and Andy Yan in the return of the MMA Panel.

Bob Mackin (left), Andy Yan and Mario Canseco, together, the MMA Panel.

It’s halftime in 2024 and the MMA Panel focuses on the second quarter of the year. Specifically, the performances of leaders at Vancouver and Surrey city halls, Metro Vancouver, the B.C. and federal governments. With 15 weeks left until the provincial election, could Conservative John Rustad upset Premier David Eby and the NDP? Will Prime Minister Justin Trudeau stay or will he go? All that and more on #thePodcast. 

Plus, this week’s Pacific Rim and Pacific Northwest headlines. 

CLICK BELOW to listen or go to TuneIn, Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

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For the week of July 7, 2024: The

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Bob Mackin

A disbarred Richmond real estate and immigration lawyer failed to convince a B.C. Supreme Court judge that her signature had been forged on a cheque for nearly $900,000. 

Hong Guo and her Guo Law Corp. sued former bookkeeper Jeff Zixin Li and former conveyancing clerk Danica Qian Pan, along with BMO, CIBC and Gateway Casinos and Entertainment.

Guo alleged that between February and April 2016, Li and Pan “conspired to misappropriate” more than $6.6 million from Guo’s trust account at CIBC. She alleged Pan moved funds through the BMO branch located in the same building as her office and transferred the money by bank drafts to an account at Gateway.

Hong Guo

On June 27, Justice Neena Sharma dismissed Guo’s application for a summary judgment. At issue is a single cheque for $887,562 deposited at the Richmond branch of BMO into an account owned by Pan. CIBC had refused to handle the cheque, but BMO claims it has suffered a loss. 

“While the misappropriation of trust funds may not be in dispute, the parties disagree about the plaintiffs’ role in, knowledge of, and responsibility for that misappropriation,” Sharma wrote.

Guo filed the lawsuit in July 2016 and claimed to have worked with Chinese authorities to investigate and prosecute Li and Pan. Early this year, she released court documents from China that said Li and Pan were sentenced by a court in Zhuhai, China to 13 and 15 years in prison, respectively.

Guo started a new action against CIBC in early 2018 in Vancouver and later added BMO and Gateway as defendants.

The judge noted that the Law Society of B.C. found that Guo improperly left at least 125 pre-signed, blank cheques drawn on her firm’s trust account with Li in mid-March 2016. That led, in part, to the Law Society’s finding that Guo failed to properly supervise her staff. Li and Pan filled out the pre-signed cheques by adding payee names and accounts.

BMO’s counterclaim sought payment of Cheque 1117 by Guo, the final cheque in a sequence cashed by Pan. 

Guo told the court that BMO has no authority to enforce payment because her signature was forged. 

Sharma said there were two issues for her to decide. Whether the matter is suitable for summary judgment and, if so, whether BMO was holder in due course of Cheque 1117.

Guo denied signing the cheque and denied authorizing anyone to sign it, but she did not explain to the court how or why she knows that. As such, she “failed to establish that there is no genuine triable issue as to whether BMO was a holder in due course of Cheque 1117.”

Sharma called Guo’s memory lapses and cognitive issues “troubling” and lacking reliability. 

“Guo’s evidence of hardship is wholly inadequate. She provides no documents or certified records regarding her overall assets, income, liabilities, or debt. Remarkably, she attempts to rely on her inability to work as creating hardship to justify her access to the funds paid into Court, even though her inability to work arose from her own misconduct, suspension, and ultimate disbarment,” Sharma wrote.

“I add that it may be contrary to the interests of justice to allow a lawyer disbarred for her own misconduct (as opposed to mental health or disability issues) to successfully claim financial hardship when that would have the effect of giving her success on an application on which they otherwise could not succeed.”

Guo originally came to Canada from China in 1993 and studied law at the University of Windsor. She worked in the State Council in China’s central government and was called to the B.C. bar in 2009. 

In 2018, Guo finished fourth in the Richmond mayoral election. Prior to election day, she denied in an interview with this reporter that China had committed human rights abuses against Uyghur Muslims and journalists, among others.

A Law Society of B.C. [tribunal decided last November that Guo was “ungovernable” and could no longer practice law because of a “lengthy, serious and highly aggravating” record of professional misconduct, including breach of trust accounting rules, conflict of interest, misrepresentations, misappropriation and mishandling of trust funds and breach of LSBC orders.” 

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Bob Mackin A disbarred Richmond real estate and

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Bob Mackin 

TransLink says it will cut $90 million in spending annually as it edges closer to a $600 million funding shortfall. 

But CEO Kevin Quinn’s salary increased $48,000 over the last year to almost $507,636.

TransLink CEO Kevin Quinn (TransLink)

Quinn, who was imported in July 2021 from the Maryland Transit Administration, was paid $459,733 in base salary during 2022, his first full year in the job. He replaced Kevin Desmond, who ran the company for five years, beginning in 2016 at $365,000-a-year. 

Quinn’s total remuneration, including accrued time payouts, taxable benefits and pension payments, was $561,082, according to the statement of financial information sunshine list. The regional transit company released its salary and expenses list two weeks after Metro Vancouver, which revealed Commissioner Jerry Dobrovolny was paid $711,000 last year. 

In 2015, before TransLink lost a plebiscite seeking a municipal tax hike to pay for expansion, CEO Ian Jarvis’s $422,000-a-year salary sparked controversy. Jarvis was replaced temporarily by Doug Allen, whose contract called for $35,000-a-month. 

General managers of TransLink’s biggest operating subsidiaries, Michael McDaniel of Coast Mountain Bus Co. (CMBC), and Sany Zein of B.C. Rapid Transit Co. (BCRTC), were paid $413,066 and $398,066, respectively last year. 

Christine Dacre, the chief financial officer since 2019, was fourth at $387,649. She was replaced last month by Patrice Impey, the City of Vancouver’s chief financial officer who earned more than $321,000 last year at city hall. 

Other top earners in the TransLink pay parade for 2023: 

  • Ex-chief operating officer Gigi Chen-Kuo: $375,462. 
  • COO Jeffrey Busby: $311,130
  • Vice-president of communications Steve Vanagas: $292,304
  • General counsel Jennifer Breeze: $277,507
  • Vice-president of real estate Wendy Comeau: $277,252
  • BCRTC vice-president of operations Mike Richard: $256,001
  • CMBC vice-president of operations Donald Palmer: $248,254
  • CMBC vice-present of maintenance Randy Helmer: $242,196
  • Vice-president of planning and policy Sarah Ross: $235,056
  • Direct of IT/cybersecurity Tobin Kunju: $234,346
  • Vice-president of financial services Olga Kuznyetsova: $232,175
  • Executive director of the Mayors’ Council Mike Buda: $223,685

TransLink’s cost-cutting follows the April federal budget which contained no new spending on public transit in Vancouver, after 2023 lobbying road trips by Lower Mainland mayors arranged by contractor Earnscliffe. 

The $90 million cost-cutting plan contemplates eliminating 35 unfilled corporate jobs, reducing leadership training courses and reducing the use of third-party contractors. 

On July 1, TransLink hiked fares 2.3%. Adults must pay $3.20 to $6.35 depending on the zone distance. Monthly passes now cost $107.30 to $193.80.

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The beleaguered Vancouver green building products company that purported to be worth $1 billion in 2021 was sold for $500,000 plus more than $22 million in assumed liabilities. 

On June 28, B.C. Supreme Court Justice Michael Stephens approved the sale of Nexii Building Solutions Inc. (NBSI) to B.C.-incorporated Nexiican Holdings Inc. and Delaware-incorporated Nexii Inc. Nexiican director Blake Beckham and Nexii president Russ Lambert are both Dallas lawyers.

Nexii Building Products’ Squamish plant (Nexii/X)

“Notwithstanding that the financial advisor spent close to six months marketing the assets of the vendors, the Nexii transaction was the only bid submitted in the [solicitation and sale process] for the business and assets of the vendors and represents the only transaction available in respect of the vendors at this time,” said the report from court-appointed monitor KSV Advisory. 

The assumed liabilities include $2 million owing interim lenders in secured debt obligations and $20 million in secured convertible debt obligations. 

Stephens appointed KSV as monitor under the Companies’ Creditors Arrangement Act on Jan. 11 for NBSI, which owed creditors more than $112 million. NBSI’s Jan. 10 petition to the court said it owes the three senior secured lenders — Powerscourt Investments XXV LP, Trinity Capital Inc. and Horizon Technology Finance Corporation — USD$79 million and another $6 million to equipment lessors, trade creditors and landlords. Assets include equipment, accounts receivable, contracts and intellectual property worth a total book value of $69 million.

On April 26, Stephens approved the $3 million sale of NBSI’s five Omicron subsidiaries to six numbered companies owned by a group that includes William Tucker, the CEO of both NBSI and Omicron, and senior-vice president George Sawatzky. 

NBSI marketed the proprietary Nexiite panelling system, a low-carbon concrete alternative produced at its factory in Squamish for customers like Wal-Mart Stores Inc., JPMorgan Chase & Co., Starbucks Coffee Company and AECOM. 

As of Dec. 20, NBSI employed 142 people and its Omicron subsidiaries 160. Its executives included former Vancouver mayor Gregor Robertson. 

The court filing included a list of Omicron’s 87 design contracts and purchase orders, including clients ranging from Telus, Home Depot Canada Inc., Coca-Cola Bottling Ltd. and Lululemon Athletica to Port of Vancouver, ICBC, City of Vancouver and Liquor Distribution Branch. 

Tucker’s affidavit from January said that NBSI historically had funded growth through equity and some debt financing. 

“Currently, NBSI is not able to raise additional capital through equity and the senior secured lenders are not prepared to advance additional funds without a clear path to the sale of NBSI’s business,” Tucker swore in an affidavit. 

NBSI acquired Omicron in 2021 and owed Omicron $4 million. NBSI, according to Tucker, raised $125 million since 2019 and expected $14 million total revenue for 2023. It had four projects nearing completion and expected to bring $8.3 million revenue. Omicron, meanwhile, had 67 contracts in progress worth $150 million before costs and another $110 million worth of contracts. 

In August 2023, according to Tucker, Investcorp Green Limited invested $5 million in NBSI and, by November, the company had an $18-million term sheet for an investment from unnamed “strategic investors in the Middle East.”

“Unfortunately, shortly before closing, one of the investors terminated its involvement and the investment did not proceed,” said Tucker’s filing. “Losing access to these funds significantly limited the petitioners’ options.”

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Bob Mackin  The beleaguered Vancouver green building products

Business, Miscellany, News, Opinion

For the week of June 30, 2024:

The headline on the latest Research Co poll: BC NDP Lead Narrows as British Columbians Ponder Choices.

The second place Conservatives and third place Greens are up. BC United is in fourth — yes, the former BC Liberals are not even on the podium. 

The provincial election approaches on Oct. 19. Just 16 weeks away.

Joining Bob Mackin on this edition of thePodcast is Mario Canseco to discuss his latest Research Co poll on the parties, their leaders and the issues. 

Plus, this week’s Pacific Rim and Pacific Northwest headlines. 

CLICK BELOW to listen or go to TuneIn, Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Google Podcasts.

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For the week of June 30, 2024: The

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Bob Mackin

Nobody noticed that servers crashed at the E-Comm 9-1-1 call centre for more than two hours because of a missed email. 

The server room at the East Vancouver facility, which also houses City of Vancouver’s primary data centre, suffered a chiller failure at 2:07 a.m. on March 16 due to a faulty temperature sensor, according to the incident report obtained by theBreaker.news under the freedom of information law.

E-Comm technician at headquarters (E-Comm 9-1-1).

The backup system failed to activate, exacerbating the situation, said E-Comm’s facilities manager in an email to senior executives.

“We received a critical alarm email for ‘Ecomm, Chiller1’ at 2:07 a.m.” wrote Verin Jekkal. “Unfortunately it was missed due to its classification as a single-chime email.” 

The result was lost response time to both the chiller failure and the 4 a.m. systems outage. 

Not until 6:15 a.m. did anyone notice. 

That is when a technical specialist from the city checked his e-mail and saw the alert notifications. He immediately called his manager, Francis Tan, and key colleagues.

“At about 6:30 a.m. Francis contacted [Jekkal] which was when E-Comm was first advised of the issue,” wrote Kyle Foster, the city’s director of infrastructure and operations, in the city’s incident report. 

“None of these alerts were configured to be sent via text or phone call, nor are they monitored by a 24×7 service; they went unnoticed.”

City and E-Comm staff arrived on-site to begin recovery at 7 a.m. They opened the data centre doors and set-up large fans outside the rooms to disperse the heat, which reached a sweltering 57 degrees Celsius. 

Technicians from ventilation and air conditioning contractor Trane arrived at 8 a.m. and both primary and backup chillers were operational by 8:40 a.m. It was cool enough to power equipment back-up by 9:30 a.m.

E-Comm 9-1-1 headquarters (E-Comm 9-1-1).

While 9-1-1 continued to function, emergency call-takers and dispatchers used paper instead of computer-aided dispatch systems and white boards instead of screens. Except for an early slowdown, their ability to take calls was not impacted. They could not, however, access the B.C. and federal police reporting databases.

The outage affected anyone trying to use the city website or Van311 app between 4 a.m. and 8 a.m. and the city’s 3-1-1 non-emergency hotline between 7 a.m. and 10:30 a.m. It also impacted the 400 staff, mainly firefighters and community centre workers, on shift that morning.

Technicians rebooted the server at 12:30 p.m. on March 17 and rebooted and restarted multiple servers and monitored all applications for recovery throughout March 18. 

Foster’s report called it a high severity incident that would only have been worse had the outage occurred on a weekday. He found deficiencies in dashboard monitoring, internal staff and external partner contact details, incident reporting, response and communication procedures. 

On the positive side of the ledger, e-mail, Teams, OneDrive, and SharePoint Online remained accessible due to those being cloud-based programs. City workers also had the benefit of a recent three-day business continuity plan exercise. 

Internal E-Comm communication suggested an initial concern that the data centre could have been hacked. But a spokesperson for the company said that scenario was ruled out. 

“The cooling system failure was triggered by a technical problem, a fault in an electrical component of the main cooling system, and not malicious interference,” said E-Comm communications manager Carly Paice. “Next steps include the completion of a full post-incident assessment of the outage that is still underway, and incorporating lessons learned into ongoing work to strengthen technology resiliency.”

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Bob Mackin Nobody noticed that servers crashed at

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Bob Mackin

YouTube’s parent company says it is taking action to stop deepfake ads that portray Canadian finance minister Chrystia Freeland flogging a get rich quick scheme.

Liberal Finance Minister in deepfake videos seen on YouTube (YouTube)

theBreaker.news reported June 11 about the ads, found inadvertently May 31 on YouTube. The clips show Freeland, who is also the Deputy Prime Minister to Justin Trudeau, in ads that are packaged as reports on TV news channels. But they were generated by artificial intelligence (AI). A spokesperson for Freeland called the videos, and associated websites, fake and rife with false and misleading information. (SEE THE DEEPFAKE CLIPS BELOW.)

A Google spokesperson, citing company policy, provided comment on condition of anonymity. 

“Protecting our users is our top priority and we have strict policies that govern the ads and content on our platform,” said the Google statement. “These scams are prohibited and we are terminating the ads accounts and channels behind them. We are investing heavily in our detection and enforcement against scam ads that impersonate public figures and the bad actors behind them.” 

The source video for one of the Freeland clips was an April 7 Toronto news conference where she ironically announced $2.4 billion taxpayer funding to boost Canada’s AI sector. Last November, Google agreed to pay $100 million a year, plus inflation, to Canadian media outlets in order to be exempt from the Liberal government’s Online News Act. The controversial law is also known as a tax on web links. 

Google says it has long-prohibited the use of deepfakes and other forms of doctored content that aim to deceive, defraud or mislead users about political issues. It requires user verification and employs human reviewers and machine learning to monitor and enforce polices. Of the 5.5 billion ads it removed last year, 206.5 million contravened the company’s misrepresentation policy. It also suspended more than 12.7 million advertiser accounts. 

Mac Boucher, an AI content generation expert and partner in L.A.-based KNGMKR, spoke June 12 at the Trace Foundation and Vancouver Anti-Corruption Institute’s Journalism Under Siege conference in Vancouver. 

Boucher showed a reel of deepfake videos made with the images and audio clips of celebrities such as Christopher Walken and Morgan Freeman. He cited the popular PlayHT program as an example. 

“You feed it a video file or an audio file that I just rip off the internet. It takes a second to process and sometimes it messes up,” Boucher said. “But, then essentially, you have a TTS model, which is text-to-speech, where you can type anything you want, you can add sentiment to it, happy, sad, fearful, surprised, etc. It will start to be able to generate, oftentimes pretty bad generations, but it takes a little bit of tuning and tweaking and editing to make it come out a lot more naturally.”

Boucher, the brother of musician Grimes, said AI is cheap to produce. Disinformation is the drawback, but that is most effective when “people no longer believe in a system that is not really working in their best interests, or at the appearance that is in their best interests.”

“The internet is probably just going to look a lot like Times Square as of right now, which is not really a place that people spend a lot of time. It just attracts tons of tourists and people just passing through,” Boucher said.”Then there’s going to be small neighbourhoods that have standards of excellence for whatever the data.”

Mac Boucher (LinkedIn)

Some governments are slowly pondering regulation of the fast-evolving technology. California state senator Bill Dodd tabled the AI Accountability Act to regulate AI use by state agencies, including transparency of its use and push for state-funded AI education.

The Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre (CAFC) warned in a March bulletin that deepfakes use  “machine-learning algorithms to create realistic-looking fake videos or audio recordings. This is most commonly seen in investment and merchandise frauds where fake celebrity endorsements and fake news are used to promote the fraudulent offers.”

In May, the U.S. Federal Communications Commission proposed a $6 million fine for political consultant Steve Kramer who was behind robocalls two days prior to the first-in-the-nation presidential primary in New Hampshire. Those robocalls featured deepfake audio using President Joe Biden’s voice to encourage citizens to abstain from the primary and save their vote for the November presidential election.

Kramer was also arrested in New Hampshire on bribery, intimidation and voter suppression charges. 

Toronto-based Marcus Kolga of DisinfoWatch.org is concerned that the technology is advancing so rapidly that deepfake videos could become undetectable and ultimately be used by bad actors to cause financial manipulation and geopolitical disruption on a mass-scale. 

“This technology is only improving and it’s improving not yearly, it’s improving every month,” Kolga said. 

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