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Bob Mackin

The seven current and former NPA board members ordered to pay ex-Vancouver Mayor Kennedy Stewart’s legal costs are considering an appeal. 

Last July, Justice Wendy Baker threw out their defamation lawsuit when she ruled Stewart acted in the public interest and without malice by publishing a news release in early 2021 alleging NPA members had ties to the alt-right.

Kennedy Stewart’s Forward Together campaign promo (Forward Together)

The parties made written submissions to Baker on costs last fall. In a March 20 written decision, Baker ordered David Mawhinney, Christopher Wilson, David Pasin, Phyllis Tang, Angelo Isidorou, Federico Fuoco and Wesley Mussio to pay Stewart’s $100,000 legal costs, but not damages. 

“The sad part of this ruling is that the Court, rightly or wrongly, is endorsing that political opponents can participate in an American-style character assassin on their foes and actually benefit from doing so in the form of cost penalties,” said lawyer and ex-NPA director Mussio. “The judgment, if upheld in the Court of Appeal, encourages political foes to have a field day on one other. Is that Canadian? I do not feel that this is healthy for democracy in Canada but nonetheless, the NDP instituted this legislation to protect politicians and the court is required to make tough decisions to uphold it.”

Mussio referred to the Protection of Public Participation Act, the unanimously passed 2019 statute that Stewart relied upon to quash the defamation case against him. Then-Attorney General David Eby said the law was intended to protect people from costly lawsuits that aim to limit or stifle criticism or opposition to matters of public interest. 

In her ruling in favour of costs, Baker wrote that the defamation claim had substantial merit, but the plaintiffs did not prove they were harmed and Stewart did not make the statements with malice. Stewart alleged the action was brought in bad faith or for an improper purpose.

“I do not agree that Mr. Stewart could be characterized as a smaller and more vulnerable party than the NPA directors. Similarly, I do not agree that the NPA could be properly characterized as a large and powerful entity,” Baker wrote. “Nevertheless, it is clear that the NPA and Mr. Stewart were in a political competition, and the filing of this notice of civil claim did serve to limit Mr. Stewart’s political expression from the time he learned of the claim in February 2021, until this claim was dismissed in the summer of 2022, a state of affairs which could easily be seen as politically advantageous to the plaintiffs and the NPA.”

The judge agreed with Stewart that the plaintiffs caused distress when they made conflict of interest allegations against three different lawyers Stewart hired. There was no application to disqualify Stewart’s third lawyer, David Sutherland. 

“The positions taken by the plaintiffs in relation to Mr. Stewart’s choice of counsel certainly increased Mr. Stewart’s costs, and caused him anxiety,” Baker wrote. “I am satisfied that the plaintiffs took the positions they did for strategic reasons, in an inappropriate attempt to limit and thwart Mr. Stewart’s defence.”

Baker said the issue in deciding costs was whether the plaintiffs’ case was about reputation and public expression or whether it was a strategic lawsuit against public participation. She ruled it was the latter.

“In light of the fact that I have ordered full indemnity costs in favour of Mr. Stewart which he states, in his affidavit sworn Sept. 19, 2022, total in excess of $100,000, I find it would not be appropriate to order damages in favour of the defendant. I am satisfied that the full indemnity costs I have ordered fully addresses any harm to Mr. Stewart arising from this action.”

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

In the court of public opinion, however, both sides of the case lost severely in the Oct. 15 civic election. 

Former NPA candidate Ken Sim defeated Stewart for the mayoralty in a landslide. None of Stewart’s Forward Together candidates was elected to city council.

The NPA was similarly shut out. Even its only incumbent, Melissa De Genova, was defeated when Sim’s new party, ABC Vancouver, won all but three seats on city council. 

Leaks from the Canadian Security Intelligence Service reported in the Globe and Mail suggest Stewart’s campaign suffered from meddling by Tong Xiaoling, China’s former consul general. 

NPA mayoral candidate John Coupar quit just over two months before election day and was replaced by parachute candidate Fred Harding, a former West Vancouver Police officer who lives in Beijing and promotes Vancouver real estate to Chinese investors. Harding finished a distant fifth place. 

The most media attention Harding and the NPA team got during the election period was when a Provincial Court judge allowed them to use Chinese characters beside their names on the ballot.  

  • Meanwhile, also on March 20, Elections BC fined Stewart’s campaign $500 for election

advertising without the required financial agent authorization statement. 

Elections BC received Sept. 28 and Oct. 4 complaints about Stewart robocalls and texts that lacked the name of the campaign’s financial agent and the financial agent’s contact information. 

The investigator found Stewart’s campaign spent $5,500 for all texts and $500 for a script that lacked the required authorization statement.

Investigator Adam Barnes could have fined Stewart’s campaign up to $10,000. He opted for the $500 penalty because all 13 telephone scripts and four out of five text scripts contained the authorization statement, the campaign amended the ad where possible and it had not been the subject of a previous fine. 

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Bob Mackin The seven current and former NPA

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Bob Mackin

A B.C. Supreme Court judge has ordered seven current and former NPA board members to pay ex-Vancouver Mayor Kennedy Stewart $100,000 in costs, but not damages, after Stewart thwarted their defamation lawsuit last summer.

Law Courts Vancouver (Joe Mabel)

Justice Wendy Baker threw out the claim from David Mawhinney, Christopher Wilson, David Pasin, Phyllis Tang, Angelo Isidorou, Federico Fuoco and Wesley Mussio in July 2022 under the Protection of Public Participation Act. Baker ruled that Stewart acted in the public interest when he issued a news release in early 2021 alleging NPA members had ties to the alt-right. The parties made written submissions to Baker on costs last fall. 

Baker wrote in her March 20 decision that although the defamation claim had substantial merit, the plaintiffs did not prove they were harmed and Stewart did not make the statements with malice. Stewart alleged the action was brought in bad faith or for an improper purpose.

“I do not agree that Mr. Stewart could be characterized as a smaller and more vulnerable party than the NPA directors. Similarly, I do not agree that the NPA could be properly characterized as a large and powerful entity,” Baker ruled. “Nevertheless, it is clear that the NPA and Mr. Stewart were in a political competition, and the filing of this notice of civil claim did serve to limit Mr. Stewart’s political expression from the time he learned of the claim in February 2021, until this claim was dismissed in the summer of 2022, a state of affairs which could easily be seen as politically advantageous to the plaintiffs and the NPA.”

The judge agreed with Stewart that the plaintiffs caused distress when they made conflict of interest allegations against three different sets of lawyers Stewart hired. There was no application to disqualify Stewart’s third lawyer, David Sutherland. 

“The positions taken by the plaintiffs in relation to Mr. Stewart’s choice of counsel certainly increased Mr. Stewart’s costs, and caused him anxiety,” Baker wrote. “I am satisfied that the plaintiffs took the positions they did for strategic reasons, in an inappropriate attempt to limit and thwart Mr. Stewart’s defence.”

Baker said the issue in deciding costs was whether the plaintiffs’ case was about reputation and public expression or whether it was a strategic lawsuit against public participation. She ruled it was the latter.

“In light of the fact that I have ordered full indemnity costs in favour of Mr. Stewart which he states, in his affidavit sworn Sept. 19, 2022, total in excess of $100,000, I find it would not be appropriate to order damages in favour of the defendant. I am satisfied that the full indemnity costs I have ordered fully addresses any harm to Mr. Stewart arising from this action.”

The plaintiffs’ lawyer Karol Suprynowicz, a partner at Mussio’s firm, has not responded for comment. 

In the court of public opinion, however, both sides of the case lost in the Oct. 15 civic election. 

Former NPA candidate Ken Sim defeated Stewart for the mayoralty in a landslide. None of Stewart’s Forward Together candidates was elected to city council. 

The NPA was similarly shut out. Even its only incumbent, Melissa De Genova, was defeated when Sim’s ABC Vancouver won all but three seats on city council. 

Leaks from the Canadian Security Intelligence Service reported in the Globe and Mail suggest Stewart’s campaign suffered from meddling by Tong Xiaoling, China’s former consul general. 

NPA mayoral candidate John Coupar quit just over two months before election day and was replaced by parachute candidate Fred Harding, a former West Vancouver Police officer who lives in Beijing and promotes Vancouver real estate to Chinese investors. 

The most media attention Harding and the NPA team got during the election period was when a Provincial Court judge allowed them to use Chinese characters beside their names on the ballot.  

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Bob Mackin A B.C. Supreme Court judge has

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Bob Mackin

A member of the human rights group that exposed networks of overseas Chinese police stations, including one allegedly in Richmond, told a House of Commons committee March 20 that Safeguard Defenders researchers were looking for something else.

(House of Commons)

“We came across the police stations as we were tracking how exactly the Chinese authorities had managed to return, according to their own statements, 230,000 individuals, all through clandestine means, between April 2021 and July 2022, alone,” Laura Harth, campaign director of Safeguard Defenders, testified to the Special Committee on the Canada–People’s Republic of China Relationship. 

Safeguard Defenders, based in Spain, gained international headlines for its September report called 110 Overseas and its December followup, Patrol and Persuade. Harth told the committee how her team relied on independently verified, open source statements from Chinese authorities and state and party media reports. Harth said they also found chatter among dissidents and activists on social media channels.

“How, starting in 2016, public security authorities from four local Chinese jurisdictions with large diaspora communities overseas have established over 100 so-called overseas police service centres in at least 53 countries,” Harth said. 

At least five are in Canada. In December, after the followup report, the RCMP confirmed a national security investigation of the Wenzhou Friendship Society in Richmond. The RCMP is also investigating alleged overseas Chinese police stations in Toronto and Montreal, which is linked to a municipal councillor from Brossard, Que.

Harth said the stations are part of the Chinese Communist Party’s wider United Front “sticks and carrots” approach to promoting policies and activities aligning with CCP interests and dividing CCP critics. 

“All these organizations share a direct and demonstrable linkage to the United Front Work Department. Understanding this linkage is fundamental. The United Front is the Communist Party’s of China’s prime influence agency, which seeks to influence various public and private sector entities outside China, including, but not limited to political, commercial and academic spheres,” Harth said. 

She said China’s transnational repression and influence activities need to be publicly denounced and, when necessary, investigated. A foreign agents registry should be part of a wider national strategy, which should include using the Magnitsky law, formally known as the Justice for Victims of Corrupt Foreign Officials Act, to sanction Chinese state institutions and officials. She also suggested promoting people in the diaspora communities that are not linked to the United Front. 

RCMP SUV outside the Wenzhou Friendship Society clubhouse in Richmond on Dec. 10, 2022 (Mackin)

“Give them a voice,” she said. 

In December, Cpl. Kim Chamberland of the RCMP’s national headquarters, confirmed the Richmond investigation, but declined to provide specifics. 

“The RCMP recognizes that Chinese-Canadians are victims of the activity we are investigating,” Chamberland said. “There will be no tolerance for this or any other form of intimidation, harassment, or harmful targeting of diaspora communities or individuals in Canada.”

Also at the Monday’s committee meeting, Royal Military College of Canada Prof. Christian Leuprecht called Beijing’s espionage and interference program the “single greatest threat to Canada’s democratic way of life” and said Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s staunch refusal to convene a public inquiry is jeopardizing Canada’s relationship with its most-important ally, the U.S.
“The PRC is intent on gaining control of Canadian critical minerals, and is actively running influence campaigns over resource development,” Leuprecht said. “[Spy] balloons and election interference are merely the latest episode in a long list of hostile, hybrid warfare efforts perpetrated by the CCP against Canada.” 

The Chinese consulate in Vancouver has denied leaked reports from the Canadian Security Intelligence Service about previous Consul-Gen. Tong Xiaoling meddling in federal and Vancouver elections.

“China has always adhered to the principle of non-interference in the internal affairs of other countries and has never interfered in any Canadian elections and has not interested in to do so,” read the March 16 statement on the consulate website.

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Bob Mackin A member of the human rights

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Bob Mackin

The campaign to recall Premier David Eby and force a Vancouver-Point Grey by-election has failed. 

Elections BC gave proponent Salvatore Vetro the green light to begin the petition Jan. 17, with a deadline of March 20 and a requirement to collect at least 16,449 signatures.

Salvatore Vetro

Vetro said Monday that his team collected only 2,737 signatures, which is 13,712 less than the minimum required to remove the NDP leader from the seat he has held since 2013.

“We may have lost the battle, but we didn’t lose the war,” Vetro said. “We are continuing on with educating the public through Bill 36 as the focus and also to try and attract those that don’t go to vote, and that usually amounts to 40% to 50% of the people.”

Vetro, an actor and former bus driver who opposed COVID-19 vaccine mandates, said he was motivated to organize the recall campaign based on the NDP government’s Health Professions and Occupations Act. 

The NDP majority rammed the bill through the Legislature on Nov. 24, the last day of the fall session, without debate on more than two-thirds of the bill. It gives the government more power over a streamlined set of healthcare regulatory colleges. 

“When a premier, unelected, invokes closure, and only discusses and cuts off the debate… that was a good reason why I called him a dictator, because he doesn’t consult,” Vetro said.

Vetro said his campaign had 77 volunteers. Elections BC registered 271 canvassers, 116 of whom were actively pursuing eligible signatories: people registered to vote in the Vancouver-Point Grey riding at the last election in 2020 and currently registered to vote in B.C.

Eby has won three Vancouver-Point Grey elections in a row, most recently with 12,602 votes in 2020, a 51.3% share.

During the course of the recall campaign, Eby travelled around the province, making big ticket, campaign-style funding announcements after predecessor John Horgan left a $5.7 billion budget surplus. The governing party also ran ads on Vancouver radio stations, promoting Eby’s first 100 days in office. 

Vetro’s petition was the third recall try in Vancouver-Point Grey, after unsuccessful attempts to unseat BC Liberal Leader Gordon Campbell in 1998 and 2003. 

It was also the 28th all-time failure since the NDP government of Premier Mike Harcourt passed the direct democracy law in February 1995. 

Prince George North NDP MLA Paul Ramsey, the Minister of Education, Skills and Training, was the first recall target in 1997. The petition fell 585 signatures shy of forcing Ramsey out of of office and triggering a by-election. 

Petition organizer Pertti Harkonen cried foul after forensic accountant Ron Parks delivered a report that found Ramsey’s anti-recall campaign overspent by $3,288 and benefitted from union-funded phone canvassers. 

The 1998 petition to recall Parksville-Qualicum BC Liberal MLA Paul Reitsma needed 17,020 signatures, but ended up with 24,530. The official count was never completed because Reitsma resigned instead of becoming the first recalled MLA in B.C. history.

The Parksville Qualicum Beach News had caught Reitsma writing letters to the editor in praise of himself, under the pseudonym “Warren Betanko.” 

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Bob Mackin The campaign to recall Premier David

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Bob Mackin 

The general secretary of the Canadian Soccer Association (CSA) said the organization is not only working to solve a pay dispute with women’s national team players, but is backtracking on program cuts that threatened the team’s hopes at this summer’s Women’s World Cup.

CSA’s Earl Cochrane on Marc 20 (ParlVu)

In testimony March 20 at the House of Commons Canadian Heritage Committee, Earl Cochrane pledged to give the team what it needs for the tournament in Australia and New Zealand. 

“Recently, Canada Soccer made some funding decisions for the operations of the women’s team, that it thought would have minimal impact,” Cochrane said. “We were wrong. Those decisions were made with good intentions of controlling spending, but we should not have made those decisions that negatively impacted the women’s team.”

The pay dispute and proposed spending cuts prompted players to threaten a strike before the February SheBelieves Cup tournament in the U.S. Team captain Christine Sinclair told the same committee on March 9 that the team’s most-painstaking battle is against the CSA and that the team does not trust the federation to be open and honest.  

Cochrane said the CSA was meeting with players for a “financial information session” in the afternoon, after making a March 9 proposal to pay men’s and women’s players the same $3,500-per-match, plus bonuses and incentives. 

Cochrane said a new deal with players will not necessarily mean equal spending at all times, due to different competition calendars. Cochrane said the CSA spent $37 million for staffing and programs of national teams from 2012 to 2019, with $2.92 million paid to players on the men’s team and $2.96 million for the women. What he did not say was that the women did something the men did not: They played in more meaningful matches and won medals.

Canadian women brought home medals from the the London 2012 and Rio 2016 Olympics and advanced to the quarterfinals of the Canada 2015 Women’s World Cup. The men’s national team, however, failed to qualify for both Olympics and the Brazil 2014 and Russia 2018 World Cups. 

Cochrane told the committee the CSA is developing a new five-year, revenue-focused strategic plan and discussing potential amendments to the controversial 2019 agreement with Canadian Soccer Business. Players have called the deal one-sided because it gives the private company the lion’s share of CSA marketing and broadcast revenues. The CSA argues it receives $3 million a year in royalties and no longer has to spend $1 million a year on broadcasting matches.

Cochrane denied it was a “bad deal,” but admitted it needs “some modernization.”

“The unilateral term option and limited ability for us to share in upside revenue are drawbacks of the agreement with CSB, but we hope to resolve those issues shortly,” Cochrane said. 

Christine Sinclair on Parliament Hill, March 9 (OurCommons/ParlVu)

Cochrane, meanwhile, told the committee that the sexual assault case of former CSA coach Bob Birarda “was the only case that we have had as a national body.” 

Last November, a Provincial Court judge sent the former national under-20 coach and senior assistant coach to jail for 16 months. Birarda pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting four players between 1988 and 2008. Birarda was only investigated and prosecuted after former Whitecap Ciara McCormack blew the whistle in 2019 on Birarda’s return to coaching girls soccer. 

Pressed further, Cochrane reiterated that there are zero cases currently being investigated nationally. “Provincially? I don’t know the answer,” he said.

As for last week’s FIFA announcement to expand the 2026 World Cup by 24 matches, Cochrane said he did not know how much revenue the CSA would receive for co-hosting with the U.S. and Mexico or precisely how many more matches would be played in Vancouver and Toronto, beyond the expected five each. 

“We’re talking about 10 to 12, maybe 15 games, over the course of the 104-game World Cup,” Cochrane said. 

Committee members resolved to call CSA chief financial officer Sean Heffernan and former presidents Nick Bontis and Victor Montagliani to testify before the end of the month. In 2016, Montagliani became president of CONCACAF, FIFA’s North and Central America and Caribbean subsidiary, and one of FIFA’s vice-presidents. Bontis resigned in February after a no-confidence vote by provincial soccer presidents. 

Vice-president Charmaine Crooks took over on an interim basis. CSA set a March 29 deadline for nominations to the presidency and vice-presidency. Candidates are restricted to those who have served at least one term on the CSA board. 

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Bob Mackin  The general secretary of the Canadian

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For the week of March 19, 2023: 

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s China crisis continues, with revelations in the Globe and Mail that Chinese diplomat Tong Xiaoling was working to change Vancouver city hall leadership.

Ex-Mayor Kennedy Stewart (Mackin)

An earlier report on leaks from Canada’s spy agency alleged Tong worked to flip Richmond’s two Conservative-held ridings to the Liberal in the 2021 federal election.  

On this edition of thePodcast, hear from former Vancouver Mayor Kennedy Stewart, who was warned by Canadian Security Intelligence Service officers that the Chinese government and its proxies were preparing to meddle in last fall’s civic election. 

“They said they had information and it was basically being ignored, so this was an opportunity to make the public aware,” said Stewart, who lost to Ken Sim. “In fact they were happy this would come out in my public calendar, so it would get attention.”

Tong had criticized Stewart publicly on more than one occasion, including for his exploration of closer trade and cultural ties with Taiwan, which Xi Jinping wants to annex. Stewart tells host Bob Mackin that he wonders why Tong was not expelled from Canada before her term ended last July. Stewart also said municipal nomination and election laws need strengthening, to guard against foreign interference. 

Port Coquitlam Mayor Brad West (Mackin)

Also on this edition, Port Coquitlam Mayor Brad West, who led a campaign against Chinese government influence operations at the 2019 Union of B.C. Municipalities convention. 

West called Trudeau’s “special rapporteur” appointment of former Governor-General David Johnston a delaying tactic.

“What more do you need to hear or confirm to make a determination as a Prime Minister that a full independent public inquiry is required?” West said. “To go from the top to the bottom of our institutions and ensure that they are free from foreign influence and the interests being served by our institutions are the interests of Canadian citizens.”

Plus headlines from the Pacific Northwest and the Pacific Rim. 

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

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thePodcast: Did the Chinese diplomat who boosted Trudeau's Liberals in 2021 propel Ken Sim into Vancouver city hall last year?
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For the week of March 19, 2023:  Prime

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Bob Mackin

Former Vancouver Mayor Kennedy Stewart wonders why the federal government did not order China’s consul general in Vancouver to leave the country.

Photo from Dawa News story on the Sept. 28, 2019 ceremony featuring Consul Gen. Tong Xiaoling and Coun. Sarah Kirby-Yung

Tong Xiaoling figures heavily in Canadian spy agency reports leaked to the Globe and Mail. According to the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, she boasted of helping replace two Conservative MPs in Richmond with two Liberals in the 2021 federal election. In early 2022, she allegedly discussed a strategy to replace Stewart with a Chinese-Canadian candidate. 

NDP MP Stewart edged businessman Ken Sim in 2018 by under 1,000 votes, but Sim registered a 36,000-vote landslide in 2022.

Stewart had rocky relations with Tong, beginning shortly after he was elected in 2018. 

She rebuked him and other officials at a Chinatown banquet more than a week after the U.S.-requested arrest of Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou at Vancouver International Airport for alleged bank fraud. 

Stewart suspended meetings with Chinese officials in April 2021. His friend, Conservative MP Michael Chong, was among those sanctioned in the wake of the House of Commons declaring China’s treatment of Uyghur Muslims a genocide. In November 2021, Tong publicly lashed out at Stewart for exploring a “friendship city” relationship with Kaohsiung, Taiwan. Stewart was already talking to Taiwanese trade officials and community members in Vancouver about closer ties with the self-governing island that Xi Jinping is eager to annex. Stewart also has a niece who is Taiwanese. 

“I thought, holy cow, this is way out of line,” Stewart said. “And this person should have been expelled a long time ago, but there was really no action taken. So our our relationship really deteriorated.”

Tong’s five-year posting in Vancouver ended last July, more than two months before the election. Her replacement, Yang Shu, arrived in September.

Stewart said he remembers the surprise when a staff member advised him at a daily briefing last spring that federal intelligence officers wanted to visit. 

“They said oh, CSIS has requested a meeting with you, and I thought CSIS, that’s weird,” said Stewart, now director of the Centre for Public Policy Research at Simon Fraser University. “I actually asked to see their badges and they showed me their badges that say they were CSIS and they said they had to brush them off, because they never did this. They don’t typically brief people.”

The meeting with two officers, including one from the China desk, lasted two hours. He was also surprised when they didn’t mind that the meeting would be disclosed on his publicly released May calendar. CSIS also met with city hall’s top election officials in the clerk’s office and counterparts from Elections BC.

Stewart admits he did not recognize any obvious foreign meddling during the rest of the spring and summer, mainly because he was juggling the jobs of mayor, candidate and party leader. 

“You’re kind of the hood ornament on the car, right? So you’re up every morning, you’re out either door knocking, or greeting people on the street or doing debates or prepping for debates or doing media.”

Just like he noticed when the invitations to events involving Tong and her allies no longer arrived, so too did he notice campaign support evaporated at the most-crucial time. 

“At one point, our fundraising dried up, maybe three weeks out from the election, and that was strange,” he said. “It’s hard to know why that happens.”

In the end, Sim’s ABC Vancouver ran a nearly $2 million campaign, almost double Stewart’s Forward Together. ABC scored supermajorities on city council and park board. Stewart’s slate was shut out.

Stewart supports Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s appointment of former Governor General David Johnston as a “special rapporteur” on foreign interference in elections as a first step, but “something more powerful needs to happen, something that you would, for example, be able to subpoena people.”

Ken Sim (left) and Justin Trudeau before the 2023 Lunar New Year Parade in Chinatown (@kensimcity/Twitter)

In the meantime, lawmakers in B.C. need to close whatever campaign finance loopholes exist, including largely unregulated nomination contests. Municipalities can no longer be treated as a “kid brother” to senior levels of government and Elections BC needs more power and more resources.

“Municipal elections are a tag-on to their real job, which is provincial elections. And they neither have the capacity nor really the mandate to do the kind of investigations,” Stewart said.

“These are big campaigns, and then, when you’re in control of massive assets, and you have access to all kinds of confidential information.” 

As an MP who ran in three campaigns, and won two, Stewart is familiar with the rigour of Elections Canada and its auditors, who trace donations down to the penny and find whether people actually live at the addresses given. Less attention is given to municipal campaigns, because donations are not tax-deductible.

“In B.C., for municipal elections, we just send in sheets of people we say donated to us, they’re never checked, they’re not verified. And then there’s no access to bank accounts. So this is wide open, it could easily be abused and provincial governments have known this forever and they really haven’t done much to fix it.”

On Friday, Premier David Eby said he asked his staff to arrange a briefing on foreign interference from CSIS, to find ways “to close any gaps that we may have.”

“Obviously, I am very troubled by the allegations related to British Columbia generally, and Canadians deserve a thorough and independent investigation that provides us with information about what’s going on,” Eby told reporters.

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Bob Mackin Former Vancouver Mayor Kennedy Stewart wonders

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Surrey city hall hired a veteran federal and BC Liberal insider for $20,000 to lobby the NDP government to keep the RCMP in Surrey. 

The contract with Mark Marissen of Burrard Strategy Inc., obtained via freedom of information, set the rate at $10,000 per month, from Jan. 5 to March 5. Marissen’s hourly rate was censored from the copy released by Surrey city hall.

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

“Anytime taxpayers are paying for lobbyists to lobby the government, it’s a slap in the face,” said Carson Binda, B.C. director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation. “Folks are having to tighten their belts right now and for insiders and lobbyists to be getting fat paycheques while the rest of us are struggling is unacceptable.”

The contract, signed by Donna Jones, Surrey’s general manager of investment and intergovernmental relations, said Marissen was expected to “reach out to relevant and influential senior officials at the Province to provide briefing information and to advocate for the retention of the RCMP as the police of jurisdiction in Surrey.”

Marissen’s orders included reviewing and understanding the history of the halted police transition and the Solicitor General’s authority over policing in the province, creating an outreach plan and fact sheet to be used as the basis for discussions and advocacy, and providing timely feedback to the city. 

On the surface, Marissen’s contract raises eyebrows because of his past campaigning against the NDP. Especially because his political collaborator and ex-wife is former BC Liberal Premier Christy Clark. But Marissen has a long acquaintance with one of the most-powerful officials in Premier David Eby’s office. 

The Lobbyist Registry contains one activity entry for a communication on Jan. 10 with Shannon Salter, Eby’s deputy minister, cabinet secretary and head of the public service. In 2005, when Paul Martin was Prime Minister, Marissen was the campaign director for the Liberal Party of Canada in B.C. and Salter was in charge of communications. 

Surrey city hall isn’t alone in spending on a lobbyist. The Surrey Police Union hired NDP-aligned labour lawyer Sebastien Anderson of Coquitlam in late February to plead its case to provincial officials. Anderson has so far arranged two meetings for his client with Farnworth and NDP MLAs from Surrey and neighbouring Coquitlam and New Westminster.

Surrey Mayor Brenda Locke defeated Doug McCallum in last October’s election on a promise to keep the RCMP and wind-down the Surrey Police Service. The leader of the Surrey Connect majority originally supported a new municipal force before quitting McCallum’s Safe Surrey Coalition caucus in mid-2019.

Keep the RCMP in Surrey campaigning with Surrey mayoral candidate Brenda Locke (Twitter)

Solicitor General Mike Farnworth had promised to answer the Surrey policing question in mid-January, but delayed the decision due to what he said were gaps in the proposals from City of Surrey, RCMP and SPS. 

Locke did not respond for comment. In January, she estimated finishing the cop swap would cost taxpayers another $235 million. During a rare Saturday news conference on Feb. 18, she announced a 17.5% tax hike for 2023. After receiving nearly $90 million from the province under a temporary municipal subsidy program, city council asked staff to revise the budget by April 3 with a tax increase of no more than 12.5%. 

When a reporter originally asked in January for the value of Marissen’s contract, Locke let her two communications staffers, Oliver Lum and Amy Jugpal, send the query and an interview request to the freedom of information office, which demanded payment of the $10 FOI application fee that McCallum imposed in February 2022. 

The documents were eventually provided this month, but not the interview. 

“Democracy dies in darkness and charging taxpayers to access public records is throwing democracy into a black hole,” said Binda. “Those public records should be publicly viewable. Everyone should get to see them and for government to be throwing pay walls and barriers in the way, it’s unacceptable.”

Locke’s election platform included a promise to eliminate $10 FOI application fee.

“The Surrey Connect team sees the fee as a barrier for the public. By eliminating the fee, residents will see we are serious about transparency and good government,” said the news release Locke issued on International Right to Know Day last Sept. 28.

Marissen finished fourth in the Vancouver mayoral election last October. His Progress Vancouver party’s Elections BC return disclosed receiving a prohibited $50,000 loan. He continues soliciting funds in order to repay the lender, businessman Jason McLean. 

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Bob Mackin  Surrey city hall hired a veteran

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Bob Mackin

A subsidiary of China Poly Group, one of China’s biggest state-owned enterprises, has quietly closed its North American office in Richmond and art gallery in downtown Vancouver.

Poly Culture’s downtown Vancouver gallery is for lease (Mackin)

Gallery and theatre manager and art auctioneer Poly Culture North America launched to great fanfare more than six years ago, before pandemic, economic and geopolitical headwinds.  

In late February, Colliers Canada agents Sherman Scott and Derek May listed the shuttered Poly Culture Art Center for lease. The vacant 4,117 square feet on street level at the northwest corner of West Pender and Hornby is marketed as a “high exposure retail space.” 

Poly Culture also vacated its seventh floor office at Richmond Place, east of Richmond city hall, at the end of last November, according to leasing agent Jeff Toews of Warrington PCI Development. 

Poly Culture’s local phone numbers are out of service, its website set to maintenance mode, and the WeChat account has been inactive since early January.  

Jiang Yingchun, Poly Culture’s vice-chair and a director of the B.C. subsidiary, did not respond to an email query before publication. 

The Richmond business licence for January 2015-incorporated Poly Culture North America Investment Corp. Ltd. said it employed 12 people full-time in the categories of investment company, management services and culture information exchange.

Poly Culture received an unspecified amount under the Canada Emergency Wage Subsidy job saving program during the height of the pandemic. 

It originally announced the trans-Pacific expansion in fall 2015 under an agreement with HQ Vancouver that was signed during BC Liberal Premier Christy Clark and International Trade Minister Teresa Wat’s trade mission to Beijing.

Poly Culture North America’s empty office in a Richmond tower (Jasmine Wang)

HQ Vancouver was a $6.5 million partnership between the federal Western Economic Diversification agency, B.C. Ministry of International Trade and Business Council of B.C. to promote Vancouver as a destination for Asia Pacific corporate expansion. 

HQ Vancouver’s advisors included Dominic Barton, then global managing director of McKinsey and Co. The CEO was Yuen Pau Woo, who quit in 2016 when Prime Minister Justin Trudeau appointed him to represent B.C. in the Senate.

Poly Culture’s gallery launched Nov. 30, 2016 with an exhibit of bronze-cast animal heads originally from China’s Old Summer Palace, the same day the Poly-sponsored China Philharmonic Orchestra began its North American tour at the Chan Centre. Poly Culture also promoted the 12 Girls’ Band’s 2018 Lunar New Year celebration and collaborated on the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra’s Tan Dun: Crouching Tiger and Beyond concert in 2019. 

During an interview before the 2016 grand opening, Jiang told BIV that Vancouver’s proximity to China, multicultural environment and favourable tax policies made it an attractive destination. 

“We will hold exhibitions free of charge to the local communities every year,” Jiang said. “Those exhibitions include some of those from China. We will also hold exhibitions for the local artists and Aboriginal people, so we hope it will be a cultural exchange platform to boost the cultural exchange from both sides.”

Jiang also said that other divisions of the China Poly Group were eyeing Vancouver for expansion.  

“For example, Poly Real Estate has sent people to come to visit Vancouver twice to know the environment here,” he said. 

The gallery was also known for private hospitality events. By coincidence, the Canada-China Business Council’s cocktail party with China’s Vancouver Consul-General Tong Xiaoling was the same December 2018 night that a B.C. Supreme Court judge released Huawei executive Meng Wenzhou to live under curfew and electronic monitoring at her Shaughnessy mansion. Partygoers included former Liberal Senator Jack Austin and former Conservative Public Safety and International Trade Minister Stockwell Day.

China’s Vancouver envoy Tong Xiaoling (right) with former international trade minister Stockwell Day on Dec. 11, 2018 (Mackin)

Tong’s Vancouver consulate posting ended last July, but she is in the news after leaked reports by Canada’s spy agency claimed that she meddled in both the 2021 federal election and Vancouver’s 2022 civic election.

The Land Owner Transparency Registry says the gallery landlords were Liu Shu of Vancouver, Zeng Chaolin of Shanghai and a November 2015-incorporated numbered company. The B.C.-registered Poly Culture subsidiary’s directors include Jiang, Chen Yi and Xing Mei of Richmond, and Guo Jianwei of Beijing.

China Poly Group originally began in 1984 as a People’s Liberation Army co-founded arms dealer. It now boasts 11 major subsidiaries, more than 2,000 wholly-owned or controlled enterprises and 110,000 employees. 

The Washington, D.C.-based Center for Advanced Defense Studies (C4DS) reported last year that it found evidence of almost 300 shipments of sensitive goods from Poly subsidiaries to Russian defence organizations between 2014 and 2022. 

“Poly Group’s significant size and industry breadth comingles international weapons trade with consumer electronics, art, and antiquities, and more, which complicates efforts to isolate the companies involved in defence trade and limits the effectiveness of sanctions targeted at only one company within the broader group,” said the C4ADS Trade Secrets report on China-Russia military trade. 

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Bob Mackin A subsidiary of China Poly Group,

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