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Business, News

Bob Mackin 

“It’s nice to see federal political parties working together on something,” said Justice Gordon Weatherill April 22 in B.C. Supreme Court in Vancouver.

Justice Gordon Weatherill (LinkedIn)

Weatherill is presiding over a hearing scheduled to last seven days in which lawyers for the Liberal Party, Conservative Party and New Democratic Party are asking him to overturn a two-year-old ruling by an adjudicator with B.C.’s Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner (OIPC). 

In a March 2022 ruling, former commissioner David Loukidelis decided that federal political parties are subject to the collection, use and disclosure requirements under B.C.’s Personal Information Protection Act (PIPA). The parties maintain they are under the exclusive jurisdiction of the federal Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act and Canada Elections Act.

The case was prompted by three B.C. residents who complained to the OIPC after they asked four registered parties in August 2019 for information about what personal information they possessed.

First up was Liberal Party lawyer Cathy Beagan Flood of the Toronto office of Blakes.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Sept. 25, 2020 (Flickr/PMO)

“The constitutional question raised by this judicial review is whether federal political parties’ communications with voters in the federal elections, for purposes of federal election campaigns, fall within federal or provincial jurisdiction,” Beagan Flood told the court. “We submit that the obvious answer to this question that it is federal, is the correct answer.” Parliament, she said, chose to give federal voters a right of access to their personal information held by Elections Canada, by the Chief Electoral Officer, but not a right of access to personal information held by political parties.

“Under provincial legislation, the complainants have a right to make these access requests. Under federal legislation, they would only have a right to make requests to Elections Canada,” Beagan Flood argued. “The Liberal Party, nevertheless, voluntarily gave the complainants access to their personal information. That personal information was primarily information that have been shared with the Liberal Party by Elections Canada, pursuant to the Canada Elections Act.”

Beagan Flood mentioned Bill C-65, which is in first reading before the House of Commons.

The amendments “will add further privacy provisions to the Canada Elections Act, however even if those amendments pass as currently drafted, it will remain the case that under federal law only Elections Canada will be subject to access to information requests and not the political parties.”

Lawyers for the Conservatives and NDP will also make their arguments before Weatherill. So will lawyers for the complainants, OIPC, B.C. Attorney General and federal Attorney General. 

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Bob Mackin  “It’s nice to see federal political

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Bob Mackin 

The B.C. government has intervened in the receivership of the delayed Garibaldi at Squamish ski resort and says the B.C. Supreme Court has no jurisdiction to grant a reverse vesting order (RVO) to enable the sale.

Artist’s conception of the delayed ski resort on Brohm Ridge near Squamish (Garibaldi at Squamish)

In January, secured creditors Aquilini Development LP, Garibaldi Resort Management Co. Ltd. and 1413994 B.C. Ltd. offered $80.41 million for Garibaldi at Squamish Inc. (GAS Inc.) and Garibaldi at Squamish LP (GAS LP). The bid includes almost $73.5 million in GAS debt. The so-called stalking horse offer, designed to set a floor price, was the only one tendered to court-appointed receiver Ernst and Young (EY). 

GAS Inc. defaulted on $65 million owing to the three Aquilini companies, prompting the September 2023 receivership petition. 

In March, EY applied for court approval of the sale by RVO. A November 2022 article in Canadian Lawyer magazine explained that an RVO is a purchase of shares in a debtor company, so that the “bad assets – including liabilities and creditor claims – are removed, and the good assets stay in the company.”

On April 19, lawyers from the Dennis James Aitken firm, representing the provincial government, filed their opposition to a deal which would see all GAS liabilities moved to a new company that would then be bankrupted. 

“The Garibaldi RVO circumvents the authority of the Minister of Water, Land and Resource Stewardship to approve a disposition of the licence of occupation, with or without additional requirements as conditions precedent, pursuant to the Land Act,” said the province’s filing. “The Garibaldi RVO seeks, wrongly, to nullify these provisions and the province’s constitutional obligation to consult with affected First Nations, including the Squamish Nation.”

If the court grants the order, the province wants an amendment to limit the release provisions to ensure preservation of potential claims for environmental remediation. 

Justice Paul Walker heard April 22 that the Squamish Nation is not objecting to the application or transaction.

EY said there was no other offer for the companies, which face a January 2026 deadline to begin construction under the provincial environmental assessment certificate (EAC). 

GAS Inc. was created in 2001 to transform 2,800 hectares of previously logged forest on Brohm Ridge into a four-season resort with accommodations and amenities. GAS does not own any physical assets. Its primary asset is an interim agreement with the province that gives GAS the right to pursue construction and development. It generates no income, instead relying on third-party funding.

EY determined the RVO is the best and only way forward. It said proceedings under the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act are not a “viable path forward for the project, Garibaldi and Garibaldi’s stakeholders” and the Companies’ Creditors Arrangement Act is not “practical or reasonable in the circumstances.”

Roberto (left), Luigi, Francesco and Paolo Aquilini and Michael Doyle at the November 2018 opening of Elisa Steakhouse (Elisa/Facebook)

“Given the unique nature of this interim agreement, its interdependence on the EAC, and the corresponding considerable expenses, and the tight timeline to satisfy the pre-construction conditions, it is difficult to ascertain a value for the assets of Garibaldi,” said EY’s April 10 filing. “The interim agreement grants an intangible opportunity to build the project, at the significant cost and risk of the purchasers.”

The 2016-granted EAC was extended in 2021 with a deadline to begin construction in January 2026. Work has not begun and there is no allowance for another extension, meaning it would require a fresh application to proceed. 

The project, on Squamish Nation territory, faces 40 pre-construction conditions, eight of which are deemed urgent. They include old-growth management, archaeology plan, Brohm River management plan and a dam for a snowmaking reservoir. Work to satisfy the conditions would cost more than $5 million over the next 12 months. 

When it was approved in 2016, GAS was estimated to cost $3.5 billion with a 30-year, four-phase build resulting in 126 ski and snowboard runs, fed by 21 lifts and accommodation in 5,233 hotel, condo, townhouse and detached units. 

Disagreements between factions connected to the families that own the Vancouver Canucks (Aquilini) and Dallas Stars (Gaglardi) have held the project back. 

The two unsecured creditors are Northland Properties Ltd. and Garibaldi Resorts (2002) Ltd., who are owed $6.37 million and $13.8 million, respectively. 

Northland Properties owns Revelstoke Mountain Resort and Grouse Mountain. Founder and chairman Bob Gaglardi is also president of Garibaldi Resorts (2002) Ltd., the company whose secretary is Aquilini Investment Group founder Luigi Aquilini.

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Bob Mackin  The B.C. government has intervened in

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Bob Mackin 

Vancouver’s empty homes tax helped the city achieve a $534 million surplus last year. 

But some of that could be coming at the cost of citizens’ privacy, said Mayor Ken Sim’s former chief of staff.

Kareem Allam (Twitter)

Kareem Allam went public on X, formerly known as Twitter, last week about the audit that he faces for the North False Creek condominium where he lives with his wife. He said city hall even wants to see his marriage licence in order to verify that he is the owner. 

“None of the city’s business who I’m married to,” said Allam, who also managed the ABC Vancouver party’s 2022 election campaign. “I just thought that was a bit of an intrusion of privacy.”

Under a city bylaw, owners of residential properties declared or deemed vacant must pay a 3% tax on the assessed value. The city’s 2023 statement of financial information said it collected $43.3 million in empty homes tax revenue last year. The city’s online staff directory shows 21 people employed in the vacancy tax branch, 11 of whom are compliance analysts and two are supervisors. Vacancy tax manager Deepak Saini was paid $131,883 last year. Operations supervisor Michael Tham was paid $93,838.

Allam left Sim’s office after three months in February 2023 to return to his communication, polling and lobbying company, Fairview Strategy. He said he understands why the tax is charged, but has concerns about the audit methods, which could include a house visit and inspection of a kitchen or bedroom.

“It’s a gross overreach of municipal authority,” Allam said. 

The provincial government has a similar annual declaration requirement under its speculation and vacancy tax, which charges a 0.5% rate for Canadian citizens or permanent residents who hold an empty residential property or 2% for foreign owners. 

“The province already has this data and information,” Allam said. “The more times data changes hands and goes through different databases, the more vulnerabilities you create.”

City of Vancouver spokesperson Phoenix Lam said nobody on staff was available for an interview. 

A statement from the city hall communications office said all declarations are subject to audit for up to two years after a declaration date and the audits are in line with provincial and federal tax program standards. If audited, owners are required by law to provide evidence to support their declarations. The city claims it “requests only the minimum number of documents required to verify a declaration.”

The city’s Vacancy Tax Compliance Policy Manual said that evidence reviews can involve a variety of documents, from a B.C. Assessment notice, homeowner’s insurance and cell phone bill to an ICBC vehicle registration and licence, utility bill and sworn affidavit. 

The city’s website said the tax office “does not collect, use, disclose, store, secure, or dispose of personal information in any manner that is unauthorized by the [Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act].” A limited number of privacy-trained staff are provided access to files on a secured system on city premises.

The city website does not mention the loophole in the privacy law. Section 33 sets out how a public body can disclose personal information, including sharing with another public body or law enforcement agency to assist in a specific investigation. That section allows, for instance, police to contact ICBC to seek information without a warrant about drivers and policyholders. 

Vancouver city hall (Mackin)

In 2019, an adjudicator with the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner ruled that the Ministry of Finance was allowed to collect, use and disclose the name, address, date of birth, social insurance number and email address of individuals required to fill out the annual speculation and vacancy tax declarations. The adjudicator decided that, under Section 33, the personal information was necessary for administering the tax and allowed for disclosure to the Canada Revenue Agency.

Carson Binda, the B.C. director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, said his organization does not only disagree with the audits, but the tax in general.

“You create more housing by swinging hammers, not by hiking taxes on folks, folks living and working in cities like Vancouver,” Binda said. “So we would urge the City of Vancouver to scrap the empty homes to stop these invasive and unacceptable audits that put people at risk.”

City hall, then ruled by Vision Vancouver, began charging a 1% empty homes tax in 2017. It was scheduled to rise to 5%, but the ABC supermajority voted in May 2023 to keep it at 3%. It also voted to waive $3.8 million in taxes for developers who had empty or unsold units.

Real estate taxes have been one of the weapons employed to combat dirty money in B.C.

In 2019, an Expert Panel on Money Laundering for the B.C. Ministry of Finance estimated $5.3 billion was laundered through B.C. real estate in 2018. A report by the former head of the RCMP for Western Canada, Peter German, said almost 14,000 residential properties worth more than $16.1 billion were “owned by individuals or entities with service addresses outside Canada, a fifth of which are in high-risk jurisdictions for money laundering.” 

German’s report also said 3% of B.C. titles were held by persons who list their occupation as student, homemaker or unemployed, and a quarter of them had clear title. 

“These tend to be expensive houses, with 88 houses over $10 million that are apparently owned by nominees,” the report said. 

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Bob Mackin  Vancouver’s empty homes tax helped the

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For the week of April 21, 2024:

For several hours on April 13, the world watched and wondered: what next for the Middle East and beyond?

Colwood city councillor Ian Ward near the border of Israel and northern Gaza (Ian Ward)

While Israel’s war on the Iran-backed Hamas terrorists drags on in Gaza, Iran directly attacked Israel for the first time. The ally of China and Russia fired missiles and drones at the Jewish state, in retaliation for Israel’s April 1 bombing of Iran’s consulate in Syria, which killed seven Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps members. 

A politician from Vancouver Island happened to be there. Colwood city councillor Ian Ward was near the end of a trip to meet survivors and visit sites of the Oct. 7 massacre.

Ward is Bob Mackin’s guest on this edition of thePodcast.

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

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For the week of April 21, 2024: For

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Bob Mackin 

An NDP government-commissioned survey about Surrey found a high plurality of respondents disagreed with replacing the RCMP with the Surrey Police Service (SPS). 

“Just over two-in-five Surrey residents (42%) agree with the transition, while just under half (46%) disagree,” said the May 2023 survey by Research Co., obtained via freedom of information. “The transition is popular among residents aged 18-to-34 (65%) and aged 35-to-49 (50%) but drops among those aged 50-to-64 (22%) and those aged 65-plus (29%).”

(RCMP)

Ten percent of the 966 Surrey adults who responded to the May 24-31, 2023 online and telephone survey were undecided. The margin of error was plus/minus 3.1%, 19 times out of 20.

“Respondents of Indian descent are more likely to agree with the transition (63%) than those of European heritage (35%),” said the Research Co. report. “On a regional basis, agreement with the transition is highest in Fleetwood (53%), followed by Whalley/Centre (49%), South Surrey (40%), Newton (39%), Guildford (38%) and Cloverdale (35%).”

The poll came less than a month after the province’s director of policing services recommended Surrey continue with the switch to a municipal force, but set various conditions if it wanted to keep the RCMP. Almost two-in-five (39%) said they had changed their minds in the past month to become more likely to side with the RCMP and just over a third (34%) said their opinion was unchanged. Just over one-in-five (22%) changed their preference to the SPS. 

Almost two-thirds (64%), however, expressed fatigue, agreeing that the police transition issue is a mess and needs to be resolved one way or another. A majority (55%) said that the public should ultimately make the final choice, because “it is only up to Surrey residents to decide.”

“More than three-in-five Surrey residents (61%) think a referendum is a good idea, while 18% believe it is a bad idea.”

The top reason to keep the RCMP, chosen by three-in-four respondents, was the RCMP’s role as a Canadian institution and symbol of national identity. Agreement was lower, but still in majority territory, for all other reasons tested by Research Co. 

May 2019 photo of Patton (left), Coun. Linda Annis, McCallum, Guerra, Nagra and Elford. (Annis is a member of Surrey First)

Those included: Surrey Mayor Brenda Locke’s pro-RCMP promise to voters (67%), the RCMP’s job of keeping Surrey safe from crime (66%), policing is a decision for Surrey residents, not provincial politicians (65%), the high cost of switching (62%) and the opinion that the SPS is a failed experiment created in a flawed and secretive process (61%). 

On the other side of the ledger, smaller majorities agreed with three reasons to continue the switch: the hiring of hundreds of staff and expenditure of millions of dollars on SPS (61%), local recruitment for the new force (52%) and the understaffed RCMP’s 1,500 province-wide vacancies (51%). 

Forty-six percent of respondents agreed with the transition to the municipal force due to the province’s $150 million, five-year subsidy offer and the ability to avoid $72 million in severance costs if the SPS had to be shut down. 

In July 2023, Solicitor General Mike Farnworth said Surrey did not meet the director of policing services’ conditions and ordered the SPS to replace the RCMP. He offered $150 million to Surrey city hall over five years to facilitate the transition. 

Locke and her Surrey Connect majority stuck to their 2022 campaign promise to keep the RCMP, so the NDP majority amended the Police Act in October to accelerate the SPS replacement of the RCMP. 

City of Surrey applied to B.C. Supreme Court for a judicial review, aimed at overturning the province’s decision, because it estimated Surrey taxpayers would shoulder an extra $464 million over the next 10 years. Surrey rejected the province’s $110 million additional offer to settle out of court, so hearings will go ahead as scheduled beginning April 29. RCMP Commissioner Mike Duheme wrote April 12 to Farnworth, to say that despite the province’s move to overrule Surrey and mandate the transition, there is no authority for RCMP members to work under the command of municipal officers. 

Meanwhile, the poll also found that 55% of Surrey residents felt the province is on the right track and 53% felt the government is on the right track. 

“The issues that get the most mentions from Surrey residents are cost of living/affordability/inflation (68%), health care (47%), housing/price of real estate (39%), crime/public safety (29%) and homelessness (24%).”

Ninety percent were very or somewhat concerned about crime in Surrey. 

A previous Research Co. survey of 704 adults in January 2023 found cost of living and affordability was the top issue for 43% in Surrey, followed by crime and public safety (20%) and housing prices and real estate (15%). At the time, relatively few respondents were concerned about healthcare (8%), gas prices (4%) and addictions and the opioid crisis (3%).

The ruling NDP holds seven of the nine Surrey seats. A 10th riding will be added in October’s provincial election. 

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Bob Mackin  An NDP government-commissioned survey about Surrey

Business, News

Bob Mackin 

West Vancouver firefighters extinguished a house fire in the British Properties during dusk on April 14.

House fire on April 14, 2024 at 215 Stevens in West Vancouver (Adam Smith)

A neighbour reported seeing smoke coming from the roof of 215 Stevens Drive around 7:45 p.m. Smoke drifted eastward across the Capilano River and into North Vancouver. Two residents of the house were assessed by B.C. Ambulance paramedics and released. 

“Crews arrived and there was smoke and flame coming from the first and second floors of the chimney chase,” said Jeremy Calder, assistant chief, fire prevention, for West Vancouver Fire and Rescue. “Crews did an aggressive attack and were able to knock the fire down, ensured all the residents were out of the building.”

Calder said it was an accident and does not believe a contractor was involved. The homeowner reported conducting hot works, “which is like welding-type work on the exterior of the building, by the chimney.”

The 1996-built house was assessed last year at almost $3.71 million. It has six bedrooms and eight bathrooms. It is located on the east side of the British Properties, near Capilano Golf and Country Club.

Calder recommends keeping a fire extinguisher on site and monitoring in the area while doing any similar work “for at least a couple hours to ensure that you haven’t started any fires and ensuring that you have working smoke detectors inside your home to notify you of any fire.”

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Bob Mackin  West Vancouver firefighters extinguished a house

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For the week of April 14, 2024:

The spring phase of public hearings in the Foreign Interference Inquiry is over. 

The climax came April 10 when Prime Minister Justin Trudeau testified about evidence the Chinese Communist Party meddled in the 2019 and 2021 elections. Commissioner Marie-Josee Hogue’s May 3 interim report deadline is rapidly approaching. The final report is due at the end of the year. 

Kenny Chiu, the Steveston-Richmond East Conservative MP from 2019 to 2021, testified April 3 about the disinformation campaign on Chinese-language social media that led to his defeat. 

Chiu is Bob Mackin’s guest on this edition of thePodcast.

“I’m glad at least, after the Rosenberg report, after David Johnston trying to sweep it under the carpet, we now have Judge Hogue, who seemed to understand the importance of this. She impressed me by changing her mind and granting access to witnesses, interrogation of witnesses, to parties that are are not full participants,” Chiu said.

“Her change of heart has told me that she is serious about getting to the bottom of this. But unfortunately, as you have also mentioned, that she is under an nearly impossible schedule.”

Hear the full interview on this edition. 

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

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For the week of April 14, 2024: The

Business, News

Bob Mackin

Elections BC is investigating 12 municipal political parties over allegations they broke the Local Elections Campaign Financing Act (LECFA) during the 2022 election campaigns.

ABC Vancouver’s campaign ad with Ken Sim and co-star Laura Appleton (ABC Vancouver)

Three of the parties have majority control of their respective city councils: ABC Vancouver, Burnaby Citizens Association and Contract With Langley Association. 

The others are the Civic Non-Partisan Association and Vision Vancouver Elector Association, which were once the dominant parties in Vancouver, former Vancouver mayor Kennedy Stewart’s Forward Together, Vancouver mayoral contestant Mark Marissen’s Progress Vancouver, councillor Chak Au’s Richmond Community Coalition, councillor Linda Annis’s Surrey First Electors Society, former mayor Doug McCallum’s Safe Surrey Coalition, Surrey-Newton Liberal MP Sukh Dhaliwal’s United Surrey, Township of Langley Mayor Eric Woodward’s Contract With Langley and Spirit Alliance, which ran two unsuccessful candidates in Kelowna. 

Elections BC said the investigations are related to one or more contraventions of laws against accepting prohibited donations, failing to deal with prohibited contributions and/or sponsoring election advertising without an authorization statement. 

“The investigations will determine whether contraventions have occurred or not and Elections BC will share the results of these investigations once they conclude. At this point no contraventions have been confirmed,” the agency said in an April 11 announcement. 

Parties and candidates had until Jan. 13, 2023 to disclose their campaign financing reports to Elections BC, which said it reviewed and spent until last September auditing the reports. 

“Some filers were required to submit supplementary reports to correct information in the initial filings, or disclose additional information required by LECFA.”

Investigations will proceed independently and case-by-case and Elections BC said it would either confirm each target is in compliance or subject to enforcement, including fines and provide updates on Wednesdays. 

Christy Clark (left) and Mark Marissen – divorced but always a political couple (Silvester Law/Instagram)

“All of the elector organizations listed above have been cooperative with Elections BC throughout the compliance review, audit, and supplementary report filing processes,” the announcement said. 

Under the rules for the 2022 campaign, individuals were allowed to donate up to $1,250 per campaign, if they were living in B.C. and a permanent resident or citizen of Canada. Companies and unions were banned from donating in 2017. 

Candidates and parties are required to have a financial agent that must follow rules about handling donations and filing returns. Elections BC has the power to levy fines up to double the amount of a prohibited donation. 

The biggest name under investigation is ABC Vancouver, the Sim-led party that dominated the 2022 civic elections in Vancouver. 

The party returned more than $116,000 in prohibited donations before last Christmas, including almost $7,000 to Sim and his immediate family. 

Elections BC launched the investigation earlier last year after a complaint from rival party TEAM for a Livable Vancouver. Director Sal Robinson conducted an analysis of ABC’s public filings and found several irregularities. 

In 2018, Sim represented the NPA and narrowly lost to Stewart by just 957 votes. The NPA took another two years to satisfy Elections BC’s reporting requirements. 

In October 2022, at the helm of the new ABC party, Sim defeated incumbent Stewart by a 36,000-vote margin, becoming Vancouver’s first Chinese-Canadian mayor. ABC took supermajorities on city council and park board.

ABC’s amended disclosure said it raised more than $1.4 million in donations for the campaign and spent $800,077 of that. Sim’s chief of staff Trevor Ford and ABC financial agent Corey Sue did not respond for comment by deadline. 

Progress Vancouver leader Marissen was the fourth place finisher in the 2022 race for mayor. However, Elections BC disqualified him from running in 2026 and deregistered the party last July when it launched an investigation. 

Elections BC cited Progress Vancouver for taking a non-permissible loan of $50,000, receiving donations without reporting contributor names and addresses, accepting prohibited campaign contributions from outside B.C. and accepting contributions that exceeded annual limits.

Image from WeChat video of Sept. 23 Fred Harding campaign event (NPA/WeChat)

“Further enforcement actions may apply depending on the results of this investigation,” Elections BC said last July. “Elections BC will provide an update on the outcome of this investigation once it concludes.”

Marissen said April 11 that Progress Vancouver has provided Elections BC “with all of the information that they have requested to date.”

“We hope to have this issue resolved as soon as possible,” he said. 

Chris Wilson, financial agent for the NPA, said Elections BC has been investigating the omission of financial agent contact information from a radio ad that aired on CKNW during the campaign. Wilson said the omission was corrected before election day. 

“The voice actor we hired to record the radio ad just didn’t read my name, even though that’s what they were instructed to do,” Wilson said. “

“We’re disappointed that this matter has taken so long to close.”

The NPA’s fifth-place candidate for mayor was Fred Harding, a former Vancouver cop who lives full-time in Beijing where he has promoted sales of Vancouver condominiums to Chinese investors.

Meanwhile, Stewart’s Forward Together party filed an amended report on Feb. 26 that said it took in $924,238.35 and paid out more than $1.1 million in expenses. 

Forward Together repaid two prohibited 2022 donations last July for $1,250 each to Stewart and his wife/council candidate Jeanette Ashe.

Woodward, who leads Contract With Langley, said his party has completed four audit inquiries from Elections BC since the election and continues to co-operate with the agency.

“We are waiting for more information from them regarding what follow-ups or additional information they are looking for,” Woodward said. 

Said BCA president Marcel Marsolais: “We will work with Elections BC to resolve any concerns and are committed to being in compliance with the LECFA.”

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Bob Mackin Elections BC is investigating 12 municipal

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Bob Mackin

Crews cut down almost 2,700 trees in Stanley Park during the month of January alone, according to records released under the freedom of information law.

Crews load logged Stanley Park trees at a makeshift yard in the Prospect Point Picnic Area (Bob Mackin photo)

Last November, the Vancouver Board of Parks and Recreation announced 160,000 trees would be removed due to wildfire and safety risks caused by the Hemlock looper moth infestation and drought.

The monthly report, submitted by main contractor B.A. Blackwell and Associates, showed 2,159 of the trees, measuring more than 20 centimetres in diameter, were cut around the Stanley Park Causeway. Between 98% and 100% of falling in the area was completed by the end of the month, but tree and debris removal was finished in only one of the four designated quadrants. 

Elsewhere, crews cut 287 trees around Prospect Point and 247 around the Stanley Park Railway. 

In total, Blackwell subcontractors cut down 2,693 trees from Jan. 1-31. The report said that 349 cubic metres of logs were hauled away, but it did not provide the number of individual logs or disclose the end users. A subcontractor was photographed March 21 hauling at least 50 logs, including some that were a century-old, from Stanley Park while heading east on Georgia near Granville. 

The Park Board has yet to release the figures for October to December or February and March.

The January report said there were 10 climbers/fallers, five equipment operators and eight brush clearing traffic control persons working on the project. The only major incident was on Jan. 12, when a forwarder broke down “for a short time” on the Prospect Point Trail. A mechanic was able to move it to the processing compound — near the Prospect Point Picnic Area — before the weekend. 

The contract with Blackwell also requires the company to notify the Park Board if they discover any archaeologically sensitive material or evidence of culturally modified trees. But a response from the city’s freedom of information office said that, as of Feb. 15, “the Park Board project team and archaeologist have not received any notification from B.A. Blackwell as per the requirements referenced in the request.”

Stanley Park logging hauler Skytech (Mackin)

The Park Board is spending almost $7 million on the operation. Top city hall bureaucrats approved the first phase last August and recommended the emergency, no-bid contract with North Vancouver’s Blackwell while city council and park board politicians were on summer holiday. 

Blackwell’s subcontractors include Edith Lake Falling Ltd. and SkyTech Yarding Ltd. of Squamish and Swatez Forestry of Nanaimo. 

It took until February for the Park Board to release a copy of the Blackwell report behind the operation. 

Titled “Stanley Park Hemlock Looper Impact and Wildfire Risk Assessment,” the 37-page report to Joe McLeod, the city’s manager of urban forestry, is dated Jan. 24 — almost two months after the Park Board announced the operation to cut a quarter of Stanley Park’s trees. 

Blackwell reported that pest infestation killed or severely defoliated 20,300 trees with a diameter greater than 20 centimetres and 166,000 trees that are 20 cm or less in diameter. A majority of trees affected were western hemlock, but Douglas firs and western red cedars had been impacted to a lesser extent. 

Blackwell recommended emergency work between October and March because of decreased public use and to avoid bird-breeding season. 

Norm Oberson, owner of Arbutus Tree Service and a member of the Trees of Vancouver Society board, fears that the risk of wildfire is being overstated in order to expedite bulk tree removal. He said that heightens the likelihood of errantly cutting healthy trees.

Vancouver software designer Michael Robert Caditz formed the ad hoc Save Stanley Park group and is seeking legal advice aimed at applying for a court injunction to stop whatever logging work is left. 

The Park Board has said it plans to replant and regenerate the forest. 

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Bob Mackin Crews cut down almost 2,700 trees

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