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Bob Mackin

A bronze medal on Sunday and a medal of any colour next summer.

That is the mantra for Howard Kelsey, a West Vancouverite who played on Canada’s Olympic basketball team when it fell six-points short of bronze against Yugoslavia at Los Angeles 1984. 

Canada’s top men’s hoops players already qualified for next year’s Paris Olympics tournament — a first since Sydney 2000, during the Steve Nash era — by overcoming a 12-point fourth quarter deficit to upset defending champion Spain on Sept. 3 at the 2023 FIBA World Cup in Jakarta.

(Canada Basketball)

They fell to Serbia in Friday’s semifinal, but will play for third place in Manila against the United States, which lost the other semifinal to Germany.

“I’m going to look on the bright side here,” Kelsey said. “Yeah, I’m sorry, we stubbed our toe today, but no offense, Serbia just outplayed us today, they deserve it.”

The intriguing matchup with the U.S. pits the two teams with the most NBA players on their rosters, playing an NBA-style game within the international rules in a potential preview of next summer’s Olympics. 

“People are very proud to be affiliated with Canadian men’s basketball because [point guard] Shai Gilgeous-Alexander is one of the top players in the world. He’s not just a good player from Hamilton, he’s the third-leading scorer in the NBA. He didn’t have the best game today, but he has been a candidate for the MVP,” Kelsey said. 

Kelsey wishes players of his generation had the payroll of the 2023 team. He also wishes today’s team had more “beef up front,” like centres Bill Wennington and Greg Wiltjer from his day. 

“We are getting out-rebounded, but overall their athleticism is much better than ours.”

A Canadian could still win the World Cup. Kelsey’s former national teammate Gordon Herbert, who was born in Penticton, is Germany’s head coach. Herbert’s players “have a silver medal in their hand right now and they may beat Serbia. So all systems go and all a lot of Canada’s fingerprints all over the FIBA World Cup.”

After Sunday, players turn their focus to the upcoming NBA season and later, the Paris tournament. Canada’s best Olympic finish was a silver at Berlin 1936. Canada’s first fourth-place finish was at Montreal 1976, under Kelsey’s mentor, Jack Donohue. 

Howard Kelsey during his playing days (NBTAA.com)

In 2024, with a talent-laden team of pros, it will be time for Canadians to raise their expectations. 

“We don’t care what colour it is, silver, gold or bronze, but it’s a medal, otherwise, we’re falling short,” Kelsey said. “But we’ve got a year to prepare for that. This was a big step.” 

It is undoubtedly the legacy of Nash’s double NBA MVP career, which turned more NBA scouts, general managers and coaches onto the Canadian talent pool. Kelsey also credits Canada Basketball’s past-president Glen Grunwald and current president Michael Bartlett for the program’s stability. Canada’s strongest showing at the FIBA World Cup comes in contrast to the disappointing performances at World Cups by Canada’s men’s and women’s soccer teams, both challenged by off-field conflicts with Canadian Soccer Association executives. 

Jerseys and balls from the bronze medal game could end up in a museum. Kelsey is a co-founder with David Turcotte and Misty Thomas of the Canada National Basketball Teams Alumni Association, which is behind a virtual Canadian basketball hall of fame project and a proposal for a physical hall of fame. Hockey and baseball have national shrines in Canada, so why not basketball? 

Kelsey suggests there could be three sites that share the distinction. One in Ontario, the province of basketball inventor James Naismith’s Almonte birthplace; an east coast location at St. Stephens, N.B., home of the world’s oldest basketball court; and a west coast location inside the B.C. Sports Hall of Fame and Museum. 

“Not only did we invent the game, we are the host of the first women’s basketball Olympics, 1976 in Montreal, and the person who invented the pea-less whistle. Ron Foxcroft, one of the premier reps in FIBA, Order of Canada. That’s another Canadian thing,” Kelsey said.

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Bob Mackin A bronze medal on Sunday and

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Bob Mackin

Mayor Ken Sim and one of his top aides charged Vancouver taxpayers more than $16,000 to travel to the South by Southwest music and tech festival in Austin, Texas for a week last March. 

It was ABC leader Sim’s first major trip on city business since becoming mayor by a landslide in last October’s civic election. He attended with senior advisor David Grewal as part of the B.C. delegation led by Brenda Bailey, the NDP Jobs, Economic Development and Innovation minister.

Mayor Ken Sim and Minister Brenda Bailey at SXSW 2023 (Frontier Collective)

Sim and acting chief of staff Mellisa Morphy charged almost $4,000 to travel to the Big City Mayors Caucus meeting in Toronto in May. 

The two trips comprised almost all of the mayor’s office’s $20,360.59 in discretionary travel costs shown in the city’s open data report for the first half of the year. 

In total, Sim and his staff spent $461,826.72, of which $365,711.50 was for political staff salaries. 

Sim also received a $3,863.72 auto allowance. 

Sim, the 10 councillors and their staff cost a combined $1.27 million out of the $3.05 million 2023 budgets, according to the spreadsheet. 

While Sim’s office spent nothing on consultant services (compared to $98,472 during ex-Mayor Kennedy Stewart’s last 10 months in office), there were 40 charges totalling $3,820.93 for food for meetings and almost $300 in meeting supplies since last November. The list also includes $2,042.41 for entertainment expenses in a hosting capacity from December to May. The spreadsheet includes dates, but not details about the meetings. 

The $1,231.63 for subscriptions to the Globe and Mail and Vancouver Sun was exceeded by $2,018.06 for red envelopes and candy handed out at the Lunar New Year Parade in Chinatown. In February 2022 alone, Stewart spent almost $9,700 from his communications budget on political ads carried by five Vancouver radio clusters. 

Meanwhile, ABC Coun. Sarah Kirby-Yung is the biggest spender so far on council at $22,486.24, just ahead of fellow caucus member Peter Meiszner’s $22,392.05. 

Kirby-Yung’s $5,697.90 in travel expenses are also the highest. That included $4,250.44 for the May Federation of Canadian Municipalities conference in Toronto and $1,327.46 for the Lower Mainland Local Government Association conference in Harrison Hot Springs. Coun. Lisa Dominato racked up $4,007.53 for attending FCM board meetings in March in Ajax, Ont., and the May conference in Toronto. 

OneCity’s Christine Boyle reported the least expenses at $5,050.87. 

Seven councillors claimed $12,500 each for a political assistant. 

Each one is allotted $30,000 annually for discretionary expenses and $9,858.58 for local expenses. Almost 70% spent on councillors so far ($557,926.24) is for their salaries.

Sim’s salary is $185,595. For councillors, their base pay is $91,879. Elected officials are also paid a $3,048 annual supplement and bonuses ranging from $1,237 per month when they serve as acting mayor to $3,402 per month for being deputy mayor or duty councillor. 

City hall is running on a $1.97 billion operating budget this year, after a 10.7% tax increase. 

In April, Sim appointed a budget task force to review operating and capital budgets and recommend efficiencies. It is supposed to report in October. 

The ABC majority city council’s standing committee on city finance and services is scheduled to receive a report from senior bureaucrats on Sept. 13 who propose adopting a laundry list of new or significantly increased fees for business licences, parking and other services. 

The estimated $15.2 million in new revenue would offset the increase in property taxes required to balance the 2024 budget. 

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Bob Mackin Mayor Ken Sim and one of

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Bob Mackin

The Richmond Conservative MP defeated almost two years ago after an alleged China-sponsored disinformation campaign called the long overdue Sept. 7 announcement of a public inquiry into foreign interference “better than nothing.” 

Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc named Justice Marie-Josée Hogue of Quebec’s court of appeal to act as the commissioner under the Inquiries Act. She will conduct public hearings about meddling by China, Russia and other state and non-state actors in the 2019 and 2021 elections, and must file her first report by the end of February 2024. Her final report is due at the end of December 2024.

Steveston-Richmond East runner-up Kenny Chiu before the election (Twitter)

The announcement came almost six months after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s failed appointment of former Gov. Gen. David Johnston as a “special rapporteur.” In late May, Johnston recommended against a public inquiry, claiming too many top secret files and not enough evidence of Chinese government interference. He quit two weeks later due to allegations of conflict of interest from opposition leaders. Negotiations on finding a judge to oversee a public inquiry and deciding terms of reference continued throughout the summer.

“A little bit of something is better than nothing,” said Kenny Chiu, who lost Steveston-Richmond East to Liberal Parm Bains in the Sept. 20, 2021 election. “For me, it’s like pulling teeth, every step of the way you have to push back, actively resist and we’re getting to where we are today. The next thing is, what about the registry, the foreign interference registry? [Ex-Public Safety Minister Marco] Mendicino, when he was in charge of that file, conducted, across the country, town halls and hearings and all that. Where is it? What is happening? We don’t know. It’s also constantly shrouded in secrecy.”

Before election day in 2021, Chiu went public with evidence of a disinformation campaign that falsely alleged his proposed foreign agents registry would make Chinese “second class citizens” in Canada if the Conservatives won. Chiu had also voted to condemn the Chinese government’s treatment of Uyghur Muslims as a genocide, for which he was sanctioned by Beijing.  

A video clip that circulated on WeChat showed supporters of an unregistered third party called the Chinese Canadians Goto Vote Association, which purported to be non-partisan, holding Bains’ campaign signs while meeting the Liberal candidate during the final days of the campaign. Two of the men were members of local groups related to the Chinese Communist Party’s United Front propaganda and influence program.  

Last February, the Globe and Mail reported on a leaked report from the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) that indicated Chinese diplomat Tong Xiaoling boasted of helping defeat Chiu. 

Chiu is also dissatisfied that Hogue’s first deadline is so soon, he worries that the focus could be shifted away from China and that the inquiry could be derailed by a collapse in the Trudeau minority government before the scheduled October 2025 election. 

“Not even six months, five months away,” said Chiu, who is attending the Conservative policy convention in Quebec City. “The scope is also expanded because the the NDP wanted to include Russia.”

Nonetheless, Chiu said, “if the commissioner deems my input is valuable, I’m more than happy to share. It’s important that we also hear from other Canadians across the country.”

Jenny Kwan at a 2019 Lunar New Year banquet, with Chinese diplomat Tong Xiaoling in 2019. (CACA)

After Johnston’s resignation, new RCMP commissioner Michael Duheme testified to a House of Commons committee that there are more than 100 foreign interference investigations ongoing, including one about the targeting of Conservative MP Michael Chong by Chinese diplomat Zhao Wei, who was expelled May 8. 

NDP Vancouver-East MP Jenny Kwan and former Conservative leader Erin O’Toole both went public about their meetings with CSIS agents who outlined the threats against them. The Commissioner of Canada Elections is also investigating foreign interference and Duheme pledged support from the Mounties.

In August, Kwan threw her support behind E-petition e-4534 that calls upon the House of Commons to pass a foreign agents registry law. One of the supporters, Mabel Tung of the Vancouver Society in Support of Democratic Movement, urged LeBlanc in a Wednesday letter to resist fearmongering and pass the foreign agents’ registry without further delay. 

“We sent out a letter to Minister LeBlanc yesterday without knowing there will be a public inquiry. It won’t change our message,” Tung said.

Tung’s letter said a law to require agents of foreign governments to register before lobbying the feds would help protect Canadian sovereignty and safeguard democracy and the welfare of Canadians of all ethnicities. 

“For too long we have seen China’s undue influence seeping into our community and it’s time to put a stop to that,” Tung wrote. 

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Bob Mackin The Richmond Conservative MP defeated almost

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Bob Mackin

BC United leader Kevin Falcon promised alumni of China’s flagship university that he would forge closer ties with China if he becomes premier after the next election. 

Falcon told an Aug. 27 meeting at the University of B.C., hosted by the Guanghua Vancouver Alumni Association of Peking University, that he would restore the standalone trade offices the NDP government closed in late 2019, according to a summary by the event’s host.

BC United leader Kevin Falcon (right) with Richmond-Centre candidate Wendy Yuan (Kevin Falcon/Twitter)

“He strongly praised the outstanding contributions made by Chinese in Canadian history, focusing on the Asia-Pacific Portal and Corridor Program he participated in, and was committed to maintaining and expanding Canada’s trade with the Asia-Pacific region, including China,” said a translation of Zhang Jiawei’s WeChat post. “At the same time, it regrets that the current British Columbia government has closed 13 offices in the Asia-Pacific region, including four Chinese offices, and promised that if BC United is in power, it will resume the establishment of these offices and play their due positive role.”

Zhang is a co-founder of the 1029 Cafe crowdfunding club in Richmond and the Chinese Canadian Heritage and Future Foundation.

Macdonald-Laurier Institute senior fellow Charles Burton, a former Canadian diplomat in Beijing, said Falcon’s speech was notable for two reasons: the audience and the message. 

“This kind of venue is designed to expand China’s influence in Canada through rallying alumni of Chinese institutions, of which I’m one myself, Fudan University,” Burton said. “This speech has been given to a certain audience and he did not suggest that, under his government, that B.C. would follow the Canadian government policy of expanding into the Trans-Pacific Partnership and following the Indo-Pacific policy of trying to diversify our trade exposure, away from possible Chinese economic coercion or monopoly of certain key elements in high tech.”

Falcon, Burton said, would have been more consistent with federal policy had he suggested that B.C. retain officers inside Canadian diplomatic missions in China and expand operations in other markets, “to try and prevent B.C. from becoming too beholden to [People’s Republic of China] political interests. So, I’m puzzled by by his assertion.”

Neither Falcon nor BC United caucus press secretary Andrew Reeve responded to interview requests. 

At the end of 2019, then-NDP Jobs, Trade and Technology Minister Bruce Ralston announced closure of B.C.’s contracted offices in 13 cities across Asia, in favour of embedding staff in Canadian embassies and consulates. 

B.C. now has four trade offices at diplomatic missions in China (Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Chongqing), four in India (Delhi, Mumbai, Chandigarh and Bangaluru), Tokyo, Seoul, Manila, Jakarta, Singapore, Ho Chih Minh City and Taipei.

When the BC Liberal Party, the predecessor of BC United, was in power, the government spent $8.4 million over three years to rent and resource an office in Beijing’s Kerry Centre. That was according to a 2017 paper by entrepreneur and podcaster Andrew Johns, based on freedom of information disclosures. From 2013 to 2016, Ben Stewart served as B.C.’s Beijing-based, special trade representative to Asia. Premier Christy Clark gave Stewart the $150,000-a-year salary plus expenses after he stepped aside so she could win the West Kelowna by-election and return to the Legislature after losing Vancouver-Point Grey to Eby in 2013.

During those three years, the B.C. government helped broker a research and development deal between Telus and Huawei, signed a memorandum of understanding to enable a Surrey logistics warehouse under Xi Jinping’s Belt and Road Initiative and lured an arm of state-owned conglomerate China Poly Group to open a Richmond office and Vancouver gallery. 

Poly Culture quietly closed its doors early this year and Telus’s Huawei partnership dissolved due to national security concerns in the wake of the Meng Wenzhou extradition saga. 

Analysis by the University of Alberta’s China Institute showed B.C. exports to China fell 4.53% to $8.66 billion last year, but imports grew 20.59% to $21.65 billion. The report noted the economic and geopolitical impacts of the Chinese Communist Party government’s “zero COVID” lockdowns until late November protests, Xi’s refusal to condemn ally Vladimir Putin’s war on Ukraine and ongoing threats to forcefully invade and annex Taiwan. 

In August, China left Canada off its latest list of approved destinations for tour groups. 

Aug. 27 event headliner Prof. Li Qi from Peking University’s Guanghua School of Management, gave a two-hour speech on “Global Change and China’s Development” to the 350 attendees. Falcon was not the only politician there. His Aug. 25-announced BC United candidate for Richmond-Centre, Wendy Yuan, and Burnaby Coun. James Wang, a former NDP candidate, were also in attendance. 

When Yuan’s candidacy was announced in Richmond, the crowd included James Wu Jiaming of the Canada-China City Friendship Association and Dawa News publisher Zaixin Ma, both frequent attendees of Chinese consulate events. 

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Bob Mackin BC United leader Kevin Falcon promised

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The Broadway Subway project continues to forecast that it will stay within the $2.83 billion budget, but the revised completion and service dates were quietly omitted from monthly reports. 

In the June project status report from the Transportation Investment Corporation, schedule topped the list of five “yellow light” items on the project delivery dashboard, requiring near-term action. The extension of SkyTrain’s Millennium Line already announced a delay last November from late 2025 to early 2026.

Arbutus Station construction site (Broadway Subway)

“The start of piling activities was delayed at some construction locations. Recovery measures have been implemented by Broadway Subway Project Corporation (BSPC) and are being monitored closely,” said the most-recently released report. “A five-week concrete supplier strike in June 2022 delayed the completion of the base slab at Great Northern Way, which impacted the start of tunnel boring. As a result, project completion has moved from late 2025 to early 2026.”

The report for last October included the previous schedule, which targeted substantial completion for Nov. 27, 2025, service commencement on Dec. 27, 2025 and total completion Feb. 28, 2026. The reports from November through February showed the target for substantial completion had been postponed until Jan. 8, 2026, service commencement to Feb. 7, 2026 and total completion to March 30, 2026.

Beginning with the April status report, the dates were omitted and the red flag project schedule icons moved slightly to the right.

The project reported spending $32.5 million in June for a total to date of $1.18 billion, including $382.7 million from the federal government so far and $100.3 million from the City of Vancouver. 

The 5 kilometre subway and 700 metre elevated guideway will connect six underground stations from Great Northern Way-Emily Carr to Arbutus. 

The report said there were six non-conformity reports in June about health and safety issues and construction quality processes. Of the 319 such reports during the project, 291 files were closed and 28 remained open. 

The project reported a lost time injury frequency rate of 0.21 to date, less than the 2021 WorkSafeBC rate of 0.90 for heavy construction.

Broadway Subway timeline excerpts (Broadway Subway)

Schedule was one of the five project dashboard items assigned a yellow light ranking. The remaining six were all green lights. None was red, which would have denoted requiring immediate action to resolve. 

Notes within the dashboard said discussions were progressing with B.C. Infrastructure Benefits, the Crown corporation in charge of hiring and supplying unionized workers, about workforce and permitting requirements. Discussions were also ongoing with TransLink and Canada Line about integration with their systems and developer PCI. Targets had been achieved for Indigenous contracting, but discussions continued about project agreements and Indigenous art and cultural recognition at stations. 

The second tunnel boring machine, nicknamed Phyllis, for Girl Guides of B.C. founder Phyllis Munday, broke through at Broadway-City Hall Station in late May. The June report said both tunnel boring machines were at the site under Cambie and Broadway. 

BSPC is the design/build joint venture between Acciona of Spain and Ghella of Italy. Acciona is also working on the Site C dam and Pattullo Bridge projects.

In early 2022, Metro Vancouver fired Acciona from the $1.058 billion North Shore Wastewater Treatment Plant in North Vancouver over project delays, sparking duelling lawsuits filed in B.C. Supreme Court. 

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Bob Mackin The Broadway Subway project continues to

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For the week of Sept. 3, 2023: 

Jack Nicklaus famously said that golf is 90% mental and 10% physical.

Sport psychologist Dr. Saul Miller, author of Winning Golf (Mackin)

North Vancouver sport psychologist Dr. Saul Miller agrees. Miller is the author of the new book “Winning Golf: The Mental Game” from ECW Press. 

“Golf is such a mental game,” Miller tells thePodcast host Bob Mackin. “Learning to manage your emotions, learning to manage your thought process, that applies to everything in life. So if you work on these techniques that I described, which is right focus, right feeling, and right attitude, if you work on that, to really improve your golf game, it translates into everything in life.”

Listen to Mackin’s full interview with Miller, who has counselled teams and players from across the professional and amateur sports world for over more than four decades.

Plus Pacific Rim and Pacific Northwest headlines. 

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

Have you missed an edition of theBreaker.news Podcast? Go to the archive.

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For the week of Sept. 3, 2023:  Jack

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Bob Mackin 

A developer who is a former District of Sooke councillor is questioning district hall’s relationship with a consultancy that was paid more than $600,000 for projects in the past five years.

Sooke district hall (Sooke.ca)

At their June 12 meeting, Sooke councillors chose Urban Systems Ltd. for a contract funded out of a $494,270 grant through the Union of B.C. Municipalities. The staff report said Urban Systems was hired to review “development approval processes, including the use of digital management software and web-based application submissions.”

Urban Systems, a municipal planning consultancy with 600 employees across Western Canada (including Victoria and Courtenay offices), proposed a $219,570 budget, the second-highest bid.

Three others were shortlisted: Channel Consulting and Spur Communications ($99,199), KPMG ($214,280) and J.R. Huggett and MABRI ($235,000). Urban Systems scored highest on the staff evaluation, followed by runner-up KPMG.

Haldane Homes owner Herb Haldane, who served on Sooke council from 2008 to 2014, said documents he received show that Urban Systems’ successful spring proposal may have benefitted from a smaller fall 2022 assignment for Sooke’s development office. 

The documents, released under freedom of information, include a Nov. 23 proposal from Urban Systems for a development approvals framework review contract under $40,000. 

“This initial phase will allow us to explore and identify key priorities to build a solid foundation for tackling other key tasks identified in your funding application,” said the email from Shaun Heffernan, Urban Systems principal and senior planner, to Sooke director of planning and development Matthew Pawlow.

Neither Heffernan nor Mayor Maja Tait responded for comment. Tait’s assistant said she is out of the office until Sept. 6. However, Tait spent Aug. 31 at a series of photo ops with federal NDP leader Jagmeet Singh in advance of her evening acclamation as the party’s candidate for Esquimalt-Saanich-Sooke. 

“Urban Systems submitted a proposal but staff did not enter into a contract with them for that work and instead completed the work with in-house resources,” said interim chief administrative officer Raechel Gray by email. 

“How did this happen?” Haldane asked. “They’re denying that there was even a paid contract to Urban Systems to build the referral process for the last contract that they got. They’re trying to say that was done in-house, and I’ve gotten numerous emails back saying, yep, we assure you it was done in-house done by our own staff. Well, I know, through the FOI process, that that’s not the case.”

One of the documents is Urban Systems’ Dec. 9 invoice to Sooke for $5,699.44 for “as and when planning services” rendered through the end of November. That work included a draft planning review of 13 building permits, and correspondence and bi-weekly team calls, involving a local government advisor, planning technician and two planners from Urban Systems. The invoice said billings-to-date totalled $48,017.49. 

Urban Systems worked on 17 Sooke projects between 2018 and 2022, worth $602,705.11. The as and when planning services project was its second biggest task of 2022, after the $124,268.67 for asset management plan.

Meanwhile, the contract for Paul Murray, who was hired to search for Sooke’s new chief administrative officer, was also released under freedom of information. 

In July, a majority of councillors accepted Murray’s recommendation to hire Jeremy Denegar, the chief administrative officer for District of Lillooet since December 2019. 

Murray’s proposal for the $16,900 contract included advertising the job, screening and shortlisting applicants, interviews, reference checks and optional “fit panels” and psychological assessments.

Murray has more than 35 years experience as a senior bureaucrat across municipal governments in the Capital Regional District, including chief administrative officer positions in Saanich and Central Saanich.  

The documents released included an email confirmation from Murray that he did not declare to Sooke that he had any personal or professional relationships with any candidates for the job, nor did Sooke ask for a declaration.

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A judge has agreed to expand the class action lawsuit against Gymnastics Canada, Gymnastics B.C. and five other provincial member associations. 

On Aug. 21, B.C. Supreme Court Justice Carla Forth allowed representative plaintiff Amelia Cline to amend the claim to include the associations in the four Atlantic provinces, plus the Yukon Territory and Northwest Territories.

Gymnastics Canada

In the original May 2022 filing, Cline named Gymnastics Canada and its subsidiaries in Alberta, B.C., Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec and Saskatchewan. She alleged gymnasts, including herself, had suffered physical, sexual, and/or psychological abuse while under the care and control of the provincial organization in their jurisdiction and Gymnastics Canada.

Gymnastics Canada, according to Cline, created a culture and environment where abuse could occur and the organization also failed to take appropriate steps to protect the athletes, many of whom were children when the abuse took place.

“The perpetrators of the abuse were often coaches, but in some instances also included staff, administrators, physiotherapists and other employees, agents or servants  of  Gymnastics  Canada,  [provincial member organizations],  and/or  member clubs  under  the jurisdiction and oversight of Gymnastics Canada and its PMOs,” said Cline’s filing.

The lawsuit proposes the class represent all gymnasts in Canada who claim they were abused while participating in a Gymnastics Canada, provincial member organization or member club program or event since 1978. In Cline’s case, she alleged suffering abuse, including training-induced physical and mental injuries, beginning in 2000 at the Omega Gymnastics Sports Centre in Coquitlam.

Cline and her parents complained to Gymnastics B.C. in March 2003 after coach Vladimir Lashin demanded Cline perform while she was rehabilitating a torn hamstring. Their complaint also alleged that Lashin screamed at Cline, brought her into his office, forced her to weigh herself and blamed her injury on being overweight. The lawsuit said Cline, then 14, weighed 80 pounds and that Lashin’s treatment caused her to immediately leave Omega and end her gymnastics career.

Vladimir and Svetlana Lashin were not reprimanded, but instead received awards and promotions within the sport. Vladimir Lashin eventually became Canada’s head coach at the Athens 2004 Olympics. 

Law Courts Vancouver (Joe Mabel)

Cline, who is now a lawyer, is represented by Camp Fiorante Matthews Mogerman in Vancouver and Howie Sacks and Henry in Toronto. 

None of the allegations has been proven in court. The online court file does not include a statement of defence. Hearings are scheduled for next February for defendants to argue that the matter should be heard in another jurisdiction outside B.C.  

In January, Gymnastics Canada released a report it commissioned by McLaren Global Sport Solutions. While most gymnasts reported positive experiences, “toxic examples of abuse and maltreatment persist at all levels; coaches, judges and staff have also reported maltreatment,” the McLaren report said. 

“Abuse and maltreatment of gymnasts appears most pronounced in women’s artistic gymnastics and women’s rhythmic gymnastics.”

Interim chair Bernard Petiot said at the time that Gymnastics Canada “heard loud and clear the cultural and behavioural wrongdoings that have hurt individuals and our sport. We acknowledge and respect the ripple effect of these wrongdoings and we are moving ahead — today.”

Cline is one of many athletes past and present who have campaigned unsuccessfully for the federal government to call a judicial public inquiry into abuse and corruption in the Canadian sport system.

Under Sport Minister Pascal St-Onge, the government introduced new checks and balances for federally funded sport organizations, including the new Office of the Sport Integrity Commissioner.

But St-Onge was transferred to Canadian Heritage in the late July cabinet shuffle. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau returned the sport portfolio to Delta MP Carla Qualtrough, who held the post from 2015 to 2017.

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A Vancouver Island retiree is asking the B.C. Supreme Court to overturn a judge’s order that he remove an accommodation barge from the sea floor off Quadra Island by Aug. 31. 

Douglas Rodgers of Black Creek and his formerly operating company Quadra Management Ltd. face the deadline set June 14 by Justice Gordon Weatherill.

Floating fishing lodge in Gowlland Harbour, before it sunk in September 2021 (supplied)

In the provincial government’s May 29 filing, it alleged that the barge was moored without authorization at Gowlland Harbour, the defendants ignored four trespass notices in 2021 before it sunk in September of that year and the partially submerged barge remains both a hazard and a nuisance. 

“The respondents have allowed the barge to trespass on the Crown foreshore for

approximately two years, interfering with, endangering, or damaging: Crown land, the use of the land by the We Wai Kai First Nation and the We Wai Kum First Nation, important archaeological sites including shell midden sites, many campers at Camp Homewood, and local businesses,” said the province’s May 29 action, filed in the Nanaimo registry. 

In his Aug. 18 affidavit, Rodgers explained that he did not initially respond to the lawsuit “due to my belief that I was not a proper defendant in this matter.” The province consented for him to file a late statement of defence on July 12.

Rodgers alleged that the actual ownership of the barge remained with Point Roberts Resorts LP. He explained that the barge was in transit and in the care and control of West Coast Tug and Barge of Campbell River, until delivered to Gowlland Harbour. 

Once there, the floating lodge came under the care and control of Seascape Resort and its owner, Wesley Kinsley, which had an option to buy the barge.

“The Seascape property by way of foreclosure then came under the control of Irene Wenngatz and her company who appointed Matthew Liang as receiver manager of the resort,” said the Rodgers’ affidavit. “As a result of the neglect of Matthew Liang to properly manage the property, bilge pumps that had kept the barge afloat were turned off, resulting in the sinking of the barge.”

Kinsley, Liang and Wenngatz are the other individual defendants named by the province. 

The Rodgers affidavit said that the raising of the sunken barge was “rendered unworkable” due to currents and water flow in the harbour, so it needs to be dismantled, rather than raised. 

Justice Gordon Weatherill (LinkedIn)

The province’s application said the Ministry of Forests sent a letter of non-conformance in March 2019 to then-Seascape owner Wenngatz. Wenngatz applied to the Ministry to amend the licence of occupation, but failed to meet the requirement to move the barge by the end of March 2021. 

Between May 2019 and June 2021, the barge was arrested under a federal court order, related to Point Roberts Resort LP’s breach of contract lawsuit against Rodgers and Quadra Management.

The petition by Rodgers said the matter should be handled in the Campbell River court because that is nearest his residence, and that neither he nor Quadra Management are the proper defendants. 

“Had these facts been before the Honourable Justice Weatherill, he would not have made the order that he did,” Rodgers claimed in the filing made by his lawyer, Tom Finkelstein.

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