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Bob Mackin

A consultant’s report for the District of Sooke said the municipal government’s lack of leadership, siloed staff and history of bullying and harassment were only magnified by the pandemic.

“As experienced by many organizations, the last three years have been a tumultuous time, and lockdowns, shortage of qualified job applicants, working from home and the like are taking their toll,” said the report by Jonathan Huggett, the veteran engineer that City of Victoria hired to oversee completion of the troubled Johnson Street Bridge project.

Sooke district hall (Sooke.ca)

The council in the capital region’s westernmost municipality, with a population of 16,000, retained Huggett last November. He interviewed senior staff, councillors and selected community members, determined strengths and weaknesses of the organization and its staffing, and submitted the report in February. In late April, District of Sooke published a summary on its website, but a the redacted version of the confidential Organizational Review was later released under the freedom of information law.

The report said there was a cascade of change within the organization, after July 2019-appointed chief administrative officer (CAO) Norm McInnis took ill and was replaced by an interim CAO, Don Schaffer, in May 2022. New director of planning Matthew Pawlow arrived in March 2020, just in time for the pandemic upheaval, and a new director of engineering and operations shortly after.

One of the report’s recommendations was to hire a new CAO as soon as possible. Huggett said the successful candidate must be readily available, experienced in motivating senior staff to work cooperatively with key stakeholders, and possess extensive experience in B.C. municipal government. 

Huggett also identified problems and delays in development permit and project approvals that jeopardized local investment, development revenue and employment opportunities. 

“My view is that neither council, staff or developers are at fault. The process is simply wrong,” Huggett wrote. “Both staff and developers have indicated to me that many of the bylaws are outdated or simply unworkable. Presumably that was one of the reasons why council and staff both wanted an amended [official community plan], which then drives revised bylaws.” 

As an example, Huggett mentioned the Mid America Venture Capital-proposed retail and office development, held-up by a difference of opinion over three metres of required road right of way. 

“This should be easily resolved between staff and the developer, but there appears to be no mechanism for compromise and negotiation. The District acknowledges a full 20 m right of way is not required and even 17 m is not required for at least 10 years and likely longer. The developer is also unwilling to move on this issue.”

In the planning and development department, Huggett said the official community plan process needs to be restarted, bylaws reviewed and more staff hired. 

“There are really two types of development applications: the minor work where a local person wants to do some minor applications, and then there are major projects like the proposed shopping centre, etc. Minor and major should likely be treated differently. A number of developers have indicated a willingness to fund planning consultants who would work under district direction to review applications for major projects.”

Sooke began reviewing its OCP in 2016-2017 during Mayor Maja Tait’s first term and the 2018-elected council committed to finish it before the 2022 election. Rather than updating the existing version, council decided to prepare a new one because of changes in legislation, projections and greenhouse gas targets. Huggett suggested Sooke look at the efficiency of City of Surrey’s 2013, four-step OCP process. 

“Restarting the OCP process would take considerable staff resources. Council and the CAO need to establish priorities. It is not possible with the existing staff to do everything such as restarting the OCP, revising bylaws, dealing with development applications in a timely manner and hiring additional staff. Priorities must be set.”

The report also recommended hiring an outside specialist to deal with bullying and harassment and require detailed business plans for every project from engineering and operations.

When Sooke published the summary of Huggett’s report, it said it had engaged a headhunting firm to find a new CAO and it was working on the other recommendations.  

“Mr. Huggett’s findings, while not surprising, provide value through a third-party affirmation of the direction of the District of Sooke operations,” said the Sooke statement. 

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Bob Mackin A consultant’s report for the District

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Bob Mackin

Lawyers for the former Mexican general who fled to B.C. four years ago may be allowed to present some new evidence that casts doubt on the Mexican government’s extradition case.

B.C.-arrested Eduardo Leon Trauwitz

Eduardo Leon Trauwitz, 56, was arrested in December 2021 and freed on bail conditions in March 2022. The Mexican government wants Canada to return Trauwitz to face trial on organized crime and fuel theft charges. It alleges that Trauwitz, while working as head of security for state oil company Pemex, facilitated theft of 1.87 billion litres of hydrocarbons from clandestine taps in Pemex pipelines. 

In a May 29 ruling, B.C. Supreme Court Associate Chief Justice Heather Holmes considered defence applications to include statements from a former Pemex worker and an architect. 

The case record said Moises Angel Merlin Sibaja told Mexican prosecutors in February 2017 and January 2019 that he was among workers threatened with firing if they did not follow orders from Trauwitz and four other public officials about a new December 2015 procedure to neutralize and not report clandestine taps.

Trauwitz’s lawyers asked to submit a three-page typewritten statement from March 2020 in which Sibaja expressed concern that “my version of events has been distorted, putting words in my mouth that I have not said, all this with apparent political motives.”

Sibaja’s statement came from a deposition in Mexico City in the presence of a notary public and Trauwitz’s defence lawyer, David Samuel Mejia Cruz. In it, Sibaja clarified that the new procedure was for the purpose of combatting theft of hydrocarbons. 

“Mr. Sibaja explains also, in the new statement, that he had reported the irregular procedure to the Mexican authorities only because of ‘labor discontent’,” Holmes wrote. “Dismantling clandestine taps was not the work for which he was hired, and he had never agreed to perform it. He carried it out only because of threats that he would lose his job if he did not.”

Lawyers for the Attorney General of Canada, on behalf of Mexico, questioned the authenticity of Sibaja’s statement and said it did not meet the standard for admission in the case. 

Mexico’s state oil company Pemex

Holmes gave Trauwitz’s lawyers leave to provide further evidence to correct the deficiencies, “particularly since at least two lawyers, with professional responsibilities and ethical duties, appear to have handled the statement and taken a part in placing it before an adjudicative body [the Immigration and Refugee Board],” Holmes wrote.

Trauwitz’s lawyers also wanted to include a short report and curriculum vitae from architect Ernest Perez Rodriguez, which had been submitted in June 2022 to the Immigration and Refugee Board by Trauwitz’s Toronto lawyer. 

Rodriguez’s report said that allegations by Mexican prosecutors in Trauwitz’s case are without substance. Despite Rodriguez appearing to be qualified to comment on the new procedure, Holmes ruled his report did not offer reliable or relevant evidence. 

Rodriguez’s report, she found, “reads more as a will-say than as an expression of expert or other opinion or fact, such that the reliability of its content cannot be assessed.”

Holmes concluded that if satisfactory evidence is tendered about the reliability of Sibaja’s statement, portions may be admitted “to make clear that Mr. Sibaja did not, and will not, state or imply that clandestine taps disabled in accordance with the new procedure could be reused, or say that he personally received orders from Mr. Trauwitz about the new procedure.”

Last Friday, Justice David Crossin granted an application to allow Trauwitz to move from Surrey to the Burquitlam area of Coquitlam. 

Trauwitz’s original bail conditions included a $20,000 surety, requirement to live with his daughter in Surrey, an 11 p.m. to 6 a.m. curfew, wearing of an electronic monitoring device around the clock and regular reporting to a probation officer. 

Trauwitz’s lawyer, Katherine Kirkpatrick, said that he would report daily to his bail supervisor by phone and once a week in person until a new technical suitability report is completed into the feasibility of electronic monitoring at his new residence.

Crown lawyer Ryan Dawodharry, on behalf of the Mexican government, consented to the application. 

Trauwitz’s lawyer told the court in December 2021 that he had been the victim of a politically motivated prosecution.  

“Mr. Trauwitz was the one who was trying to stop hydrocarbon theft and his actions actually prohibited other corrupt individuals from engaging in carbon theft,” Tom Arbogast said. 

The case was adjourned to June 20.

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Bob Mackin Lawyers for the former Mexican general

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Construction site signs from North Shore Wastewater Treatment Plant (Mackin)

Bob Mackin

The B.C. Supreme Court has ruled that Metro Vancouver’s top bureaucrat must be cross-examined over statements he swore about the leaked report that recommended firing the builder of a North Vancouver sewage plant. 

In court filings last December, Greater Vancouver Sewerage and Drainage District (GVSDD) said that Acciona Wastewater Solutions LP had learned that one of its employees, Anika Calder, took photographs of a confidential board report and shared it with at least four colleagues. Calder was visiting her father, Coquitlam city manager Peter Steblin, who used GVSDD chair and Coquitlam Mayor Richard Stewart’s log-in credentials to access the report. 

In his May 9 decision, published June 5, Master Terry Vos granted Acciona’s application to question Commissioner Jerry Dobrovolny under oath about his December 2022 and March 2023 affidavits. 

The confidential Jan. 17, 2022 report summarized facts and legal advice about Acciona’s alleged contract breaches and sought the board’s closed-door approval on Jan. 20, 2022 to end the contract, the same day Calder visited Steblin, who retired a year later.

“There is no dispute that the confidential closed meeting report was disclosed to the GVSDD board in confidence, and that it was misused by Ms. Calder when she photographed portions of the report on Mr. Steblin’s computer and provided it to Acciona,” Vos wrote in his decision.

On Jan. 21, 2022, when GVSDD issued the termination notice, Acciona became aware that an employee had received a forwarded email with photographs of the document attached. 

“Acciona recognized that the way in which the photographed document was obtained was unusual,” Vos wrote. “Acciona took steps to prevent further transmission of the photographed document and appointed a member of its in-house legal team to gather and securely store all emails or messages transmitting the photographed document.”

Just over two months later, Acciona sued GVSDD for more than $250 million. GVSDD countersued in June 2022, claiming more than $500 million in damages, costs and expenses. The case has yet to be scheduled for trial.

Last December, GVSDD applied for an injunction to ban Acciona from copying or sharing the confidential information and included the first affidavit by Dobrovolny. 

Law Courts Vancouver (Joe Mabel)

According to a letter from Stewart’s lawyer in January of this year to Acciona and GVSDD, Stewart reviewed materials in the GVSDD application and “became concerned that the materials do not accurately set out certain key events in this matter.” 

In an appendix to his letter, Stewart indicated that he met June 3, 2022 with Dobrovolny who showed him the photographs of his computer screen and told him the source was Steblin’s daughter Calder. The appendix also said that Dobrovolny was aware it was common practice for directors to share log-in credentials with senior staff at their municipal halls. Stewart confirmed he followed this practice and shared credentials with Steblin. He also mentioned an occasion in 2018 when GVSDD assisted Coquitlam administrative staff having difficulty accessing the web portal using Stewart’s log-in credentials. 

“GVSDD was fully aware that Mayor Stewart’s log-in credentials had been shared with City of Coquitlam staff, consistent with the aforementioned practice,” said the Stewart appendix.

Dobrovolny swore a second affidavit in March of this year, stating some of Stewart’s letter needed clarification.

Acciona’s March application said it wants to ask Dobrovolny about the breadth of circulation of the confidential report, the ease with which individuals other than board members could access the report and the extent that GVSDD “may have placed misleading affidavit evidence before the court when it initially relied on Mr. Dobrovolny’s Dec. 15, 2022 affidavit.”

GVSDD agreed in April 2017 for Acciona to build the North Shore Wastewater Treatment Plant. Less than five years later, GVSDD fired Acciona. 

In March, Metro Vancouver’s liquid waste committee heard that it will cost $85 million more for PCL Constructors Westcoast Inc. to fix Acciona’s errors, but the current budget could absorb the additional cost. 

The $1.058 billion project was supposed to cost around half that and be ready in 2020. The Metro Vancouver website now says it will be operational in 2024.

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[caption id="attachment_13290" align="alignright" width="1024"] Construction site signs

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Bob Mackin 

Nearly five percent of City of Vancouver-issued staff mobile devices included TikTok before city hall blocked the controversial, Chinese-owned video app in March. 

But city employees were allowed to continue using TikTok on their own devices, even when accessing city systems.

Vancouver city hall at night (City of Vancouver)

According to internal email obtained under freedom of information, the city’s chief technology officer initially expressed reluctance after the federal government announced Feb. 27 that it banned TikTok on federal devices. Tadhg Healy noted that Apple and Google extensively vet the apps they carry. 

“At this point we don’t have evidence pointing at TikTok being a security risk for the City of Vancouver,” Healy told city manager Paul Mochrie.

Later that day, B.C. Citizens’ Services Minister Lisa Beare followed the federal lead and banned B.C. government staff from using TikTok on provincial government devices. 

Mochrie mentioned Feb. 28 that B.C.’s information and privacy commissioner Michael McEvoy had announced a joint investigation with federal, Ontario and Alberta commissioners the previous week. 

“Are the Province or Feds sharing any more intel regarding their decisions on this? Is there something beyond ‘based in China’?” Mochrie asked on March 1. 

Healy told him that the issue was privacy, rather than cybersecurity, “given that TikTok harvests a lot of data about the user and their behaviours and that that data is potentially available to the Chinese government in a similar fashion to the data harvested by apps such as Facebook could be made available to the U.S. government.”

The city had 132 iPhones containing TikTok out of its fleet of 2,700 devices. The approximately 100 Android devices were deployed in a locked-down configuration, so that users could only choose from a list of approved apps. 

“TikTok is not one of them,” Healy wrote. “So it is only iPhones we need to worry about.”

On March 4, Healy told Mochrie that Delta, Maple Ridge and Metro Vancouver were implementing TikTok bans on all staff devices. “At this point I believe we should strongly consider this option,” he said. “Let me know if you want to have a quick chat on it.”

Before doing so, Mochrie asked Healy on March 6 to draft a note to Mayor Ken Sim and city council. 

“If there is any major heartburn for them, it would be good for us to understand before we implement,” Mochrie wrote. 

Mochrie sent the memo the next day, recommending the app be blocked from city-issued devices at 3 p.m. March 14, citing the data harvested from contacts, calendars and keystroke patterns.

Vancouver Coun. Lenny Zhou of ABC on Nov. 27, 2022 outside Vancouver Art Gallery (Twitter/LennyNanZhou)

“Can we also ban Twitter? :)” replied Park Board general manager Donnie Rosa on March 8. “I guess that’s wishful.”

Instead of “heartburn,” there was support for the ban and questions about the process from the only politician to reply, ABC Coun. Lenny Zhou. Zhou wondered about the technical feasibility and whether a council motion was necessary. 

Deputy City Manager Karen Levitt said that city technology-use policies allowed staff to act without council approval and that the city was not planning to follow Toronto’s example by issuing a news release.

“Our device management software allows us to block the app so once that block is in place its not possible to download it,” Levitt wrote. “Our technology services department can also run periodic scans to confirm that the app has not been downloaded to city issued devices.”

Zhou responded: “Great to see CoV takes leadership in protecting privacy and security of the use of mobile devices.” 

City hall notified the Vancouver Police Department (VPD), Vancouver Public Library and Vancouver Economic Commission (VEC) the day after the ban took effect.  

In response to Kyle Kennedy, the VEC senior finance and operations manager, Kyle Foster, the city’s acting director of infrastructure and operations, clarified that the ban “has no effect on city employees using city credentials on other devices.”

VPD information and communications technology director Raymond Lai told Healy that users in the force can only install apps from an allowed list. 

“TikTok is not on the list,” said Lai. “We also blocked TikTok from our firewall. We also supplied one standalone phone to public affairs for their TikTok needs.”

The Citizen Lab in the Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto studied TikTok in 2021. Director, Prof. Ron Deibert cautioned TikTok gobbles up a lot of personal data, just like other social media apps, and the company is not transparent about what it does with user data.  

“Our analysis was explicit about having no visibility into what happened to user data once it was collected and transmitted back to TikTok’s servers,” Deibert wrote in March. “Although we had no way to determine whether or not it had happened, we even speculated about possible mechanisms through which the Chinese government might use unconventional techniques to obtain TikTok user data via pressure on ByteDance.”

Benjamin Fung, a professor in the School of Information Studies at McGill University, said TikTok’s claim that data is housed on U.S. servers is hollow because workers in China are legally obliged under the National Security Law to co-operate when the Chinese government demands to see data.

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Bob Mackin  Nearly five percent of City of

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For the week of June 4, 2023:

Benedict Rogers came to Ottawa just in time for the latest chapter in Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s China Crisis.

Benedict Rogers (Facebook)

The author of “The China Nexus: 30 Years In and Around the Chinese Communist Party’s Tyranny” launched Hong Kong Watch Canada the same week that ex-Conservative leader Erin O’Toole and longtime NDP MP Jenny Kwan revealed that the Canadian Security Intelligence Service told them how the Chinese Communist Party targeted them for intimidation. Canada’s spy agency met with them after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau accepted David Johnston’s recommendation against a public inquiry into Chinese government interference, citing national security. 

“You can have an inquiry where not everything that is presented to the inquiry body is made public and I can’t see a reason why that principle couldn’t be applied here,” Rogers told thePodcast host Bob Mackin. “So it does seem like the government and the prime minister have have something to hide or at least want to control and manage the process for political reasons.”

Rogers spoke with Mackin on June 2, two days before the 34th anniversary of the June 4, 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre. Hong Kong is home to the biggest concentration of Canadians outside Canada, but Mainland China’s 2020 imposition of a national security law has spelled the end of the largest annual memorial for the victims.

Listen to the interview. Plus Pacific Rim and Pacific Northwest headlines. 

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

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Bob Mackin

The Pakistani climate change protester who pleaded guilty to repeatedly blocking traffic and reneging on his promises to stop must wait longer to be sentenced.  

Judge Reginald Harris reserved decision in March after Crown prosecutor Ellen Leno asked him to send Muhammad Zain Ul Haq to jail for 90 days and impose 18 months probation. Haq’s lead defence lawyer Ben Isitt argued for a conditional discharge.

Muhammad Zain Ul Haq, a Pakistani national outside the North Fraser Pretrial Centre (Save Old Growth)

On May 31 in Vancouver Provincial Court, Harris — citing his commitments to complex, ongoing trials — delayed sentencing Haq. Harris suggested he could have time to deliver his verdict in late June, but gave the 22-year-old permission to move from Vancouver to Victoria so that he can live with the fellow protester that he married last month. 

Haq pleaded guilty to five charges of mischief for his role in illegal Extinction Rebellion road and bridge blockades in 2021 and one charge of breaching a release order for the August 2022 Stop Fracking Around protest on the Cambie Bridge. Haq separately faces deportation to Pakistan and a one-year ban on returning to Canada for violating the terms of his visa to study at Simon Fraser University. 

Isitt told the court that Haq married Sophia Papp on April 29 in Vancouver and that the court and the Crown have no role in supervising who Haq marries. 

“He’s chosen Miss Papp as his life partner,” Isitt said. “They are going to be life partners, they will likely be talking about the climate crisis, they’ll likely talk about how to raise awareness.”

Haq has been residing in Vancouver with activists Janice Oakley and Quetzo Herejk, who posted a $4,000 surety to the court. Leno opposed the application and argued that arrangement should continue. 

“So the Crown’s concern is we’re taking him from a stable environment with some mature supervision that seems to have been working, and it would disrupt that and potentially put him in a different location with influences that are less positive,” Leno said. 

Protester Sophie Papp vandalizing the Gastown Steam Clock in August 2022 (Instagram/Stop Fracking Around)

Leno showed Harris photographic evidence of Papp with Haq at last August’s Stop Fracking Around protest where Haq violated the terms of his release from previous arrests. 

Also last August, Papp publicly poured molasses on the Gastown Steam Clock in another anti-pipeline protest. Last November, a judge gave Papp an absolute discharge after a mischief charge from a Victoria protest last June. 

In March of this year, Leno said, Papp helped videotape a protester pouring pink paint on the Royal B.C. Museum’s woolly mammoth for another climate change campaign. 

Harris approved Haq’s application because there is no evidence Haq had broken the conditions of his bail during the last eight months. 

“I’m satisfied that it could be amended, I’m satisfied it’s not going to upset the applecart, he’s just got too much to lose by non-compliance at all,” Harris said. 

In January 2022, Haq and four others incorporated Eco-Mobilization Canada, a federal not-for-profit behind the Extinction Rebellion splinter group Save Old Growth. Haq had boasted last August in a New York Times story that Save Old Growth received US$170,000 in grants from the California-based Climate Emergency Fund.

In March, the court heard that should Haq succeed in overturning his deportation on compassionate and humanitarian grounds, he has a job offer from environmentalist Tzeporah Berman at the charity Stand.earth.

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Bob Mackin The Pakistani climate change protester who

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Bob Mackin

Doctors at four Fraser Health Authority hospitals, including Surrey Memorial, have raised the alarm about a staffing shortage that they say is putting the lives of patients in jeopardy.

But the NDP-appointed chair, once the province’s most-powerful labour leader, isn’t talking about it. A reporter requested an interview last week with Jim Sinclair and the Fraser Health Authority communications department scheduled it for May 30 in the afternoon. But one of its employees cancelled late in the morning, due to unspecified other commitments.

Jim Sinclair at the 2015 BC Fed convention (BC Fed/YouTube)

Health Minister Adrian Dix appointed Sinclair in September 2017, two months after John Horgan’s Green-supported NDP minority government took over from the BC Liberals. 

Sinclair was the president of the B.C. Federation of Labour, which donated $1.4 million to the party from 2005 until 2017, when the NDP banned donations from unions and corporations. Sinclair has also made more than $18,000 in individual contributions to the NDP through 2022. 

During the year ended March 31, 2022, Sinclair received $29,000 in meeting fees and a $15,000 stipend as chair. He chairs a board that includes nine other government appointees, each receiving a basic $7,500 stipend plus $500 for each full-day meeting. 

Together, they oversee an organization that had a $5.14 billion budget last year, with 84% of the revenue directly from the Ministry of Health. 

But Sinclair is not the only board member with an NDP pedigree.

Opreet Kang was appointed at the same time as Sinclair in 2017. Kang, a $1,778 NDP donor since 2016, is also a director of the NDP-aligned Broadbent Institute political research and training charity who spent 2011 to 2018 on the board of Vision Vancouver. 

Inderjeet Hundal is an NDP supporter from Dix’s Kingsway riding. During the 1990s, the NDP appointed Hundal to the Workers’ Compensation Review Board. The $3,935 NDP donor since 2005 became the director of seniors’ care with the Progressive Intercultural Community Services Society in 2006. 

Opreet Kang (LinkedIn)

Ramya Hosak is a fundraising executive at the Kidney Foundation of B.C. and Yukon and co-founded the Young and Type 1 support group for people with type 1 diabetes. That’s where she met husband Mark Hosak, a former Vision Vancouver canvasser, aide to ex-NDP MP Fin Donnelly and campaign worker with ex-Mayor Kennedy Stewart’s Forward Together party. In February, Mark Hosak became an aide to NDP Housing Minister Ravi Kahlon. 

The name Manpreet Grewal appears in the Elections BC database for a $5,000 donation in 2009, but the Fraser Health director and Multicultural and Immigrant Integration Services director said by email that she has never made a donation to any political party. 

When Dix was the NDP leader, he was frequently critical of the BC Liberal government rewarding its donors, campaign workers and former caucus members. 

For instance, in May 2014, the year after losing the election, Dix called the $140,000-a-year earthquake preparation oversight job for ex-solicitor general John Les “a wasteful, extra superfluous, pork-barreling, double-dipping patronage appointment.” Premier Christy Clark withdrew Les’s job offer. 

A 2013 Carleton University thesis on the history of patronage called Canada’s system unique from the U.K. and U.S.

Inderjeet Hundal (Fraser Health)

“Patronage has a long and multifaceted history in Canadian politics,” wrote the author, David Banoub. “It has been used as a tool to reward party support, as a weapon to punish opponents, and as a strategy to extend party goals into the different regions across the nation. It has been supported as a legitimate form of governing and challenged as a form of corruption that stood in the way of bureaucratic progress.” 

Published documents for the most-recent public meeting of the Sinclair-led board from February include an update on creating a Fraser Health Regional Health and Safety Committee. The management and union group was scheduled to meet for the first time in April and then once every quarter. 

The board also received an upbeat report on its brand reputation, boasting nearly a million visitors to its careers website in the last quarter of 2022’s calendar year. It trumpeted a better than average rating on the Indeed job search site, just behind Vancouver Coastal Health. 

“Good news: All of our career channels (except Twitter) are trending upwards in audience growth,” the report said. “This allows our brand, jobs, and content to reach more potential candidates in the global market.” 

That reputation is now at stake, along with the lives of patients, at Fraser Health’s Surrey, Langley, New Westminster and Port Moody hospitals. 

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Bob Mackin Doctors at four Fraser Health Authority

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Bob Mackin

A Provincial Court judge in Vancouver banned a telecommunications installer on June 1 from organizing or participating in protest roadblocks for the next two years. 

Brent Eichler, 56, pleaded guilty to breaching his probation at an anti-natural gas protest last Aug. 15 on the Cambie Bridge.

Brent Eichler (right) with Muhammad Zain Ul Haq (Instagram/Extinction Rebellion Vancouver)

Eichler had received a conditional discharge and 200 hours of community work service in October 2021 after pleading guilty to mischief for his role in a February 2021 Extinction Rebellion protest that closed the Hornby and Smithe intersection for several hours. His probation stipulated that he must not block or impede any traffic for two years. 

Eichler, who gained media attention for hunger-striking with Save Old Growth in 2022, formed the Stop Fracking Around splinter group last summer and organized a protest march from Vancouver city hall to the CBC studios via the Cambie Bridge.

Crown prosecutor Ellen Leno said that Eichler was under the “simple condition to not block or impede the traffic,” but he marched on the bridge and was arrested on a warrant in September. 

“His moral culpability is at the highest end, it was planned and deliberate and he was an organizer. He was breaching a court order, and he has a history of breaching court orders, as evidenced by the criminal contempt conviction,” said Leno, referring to the 25-hour community work service sentence for breaching the Trans Mountain Pipeline protest injunction in 2018. 

Eichler’s defence lawyer Ben Isitt told Judge James Sutherland that Eichler followed the march on the Cambie Bridge in a vehicle so that he could assist elderly or physically infirm protesters. The group paused mid-span for about 20 minutes for speeches. Eichler got out of the vehicle with the intent to de-escalate a confrontation between a protester and a reporter. 

“That’s where the breach occurred and he regrets having done it,” Isitt said. “He was strongly inclined to try this allegation, but, ultimately, when he learned of the Crown’s position on sentence, he was able to enter a guilty plea.”

Leno said the bridge is critical infrastructure needed for police, fire and ambulance vehicles when “minutes matter.” She said the specific march delayed a police vehicle that was responding to an unrelated emergency. 

Eichler’s written statement to the court said he did not intend to break the law, but apologized to police and the courts, and for disrupting the public. 

Vancouver Provincial Court (courthouses.co)

After the joint Crown-defence submission, Sutherland sentenced Eichler to four days in jail, but gave him credit for three days served and waived custody for the fourth. Terms of his two-year probation include 40 hours community work service, a $100 victim surcharge fine and orders that he not intentionally block or impede traffic, cyclists or pedestrians on any B.C. road or highway and that he must not plan or organize any event that disrupts or interferes with the regular use of public or private roads, highways or bridges. 

“Ultimately, his motives were altruistic, in that he wasn’t gaining personally, as much as he was attempting to make a change collectively for society,” Sutherland said. “As misguided as those methods may have been, when they’re viewed in the context of the collective march.”

Earlier, Leno told the court that in 2021, police arrested 96 people and Crown charged 71 individuals for illegally blocking roadways during Extinction Rebellion protests. Eighteen of those charged had more than one court file. In 2022, Save Old Growth organized six roadblocks in January, eight in April and four in June. Save Old Growth briefly paused actions at the end of last June, but returned to block traffic on the Lions Gate Bridge in October. Forty-eight Save Old Growth protesters were arrested and 34 charged, with 16 of them having multiple files.

In a separate hearing on May 31, Judge Reginald Harris blamed his heavy schedule of trials for delaying the sentencing of Save Old Growth leader Muhammad Zain Ul Haq. 

Harris did give Haq permission to vary his bail so that he could move to from Vancouver to Victoria and live with fellow protester Sophia Papp. The couple married on April 29. 

Haq is facing deportation to his native Pakistan and a one-year exclusion from Canada for violating the terms of his visa to study at Simon Fraser University. 

In January 2022, Haq and four others incorporated Eco-Mobilization Canada, a federal not-for-profit company behind Save Old Growth. Haq had boasted last August in a New York Times story that Save Old Growth received US$170,000 in grants from the California-based Climate Emergency Fund.

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Bob Mackin A Provincial Court judge in Vancouver

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A dozen TransLink Mayors’ Council members and their executive director spent $46,000 on last month’s lobbying trip to Ottawa.

But the Mayors’ Council is already plotting at least one return to the nation’s capital this fall to continue the quest for billions of federal taxpayer dollars to expand TransLink.

TransLink Mayor’ Council members in Ottawa (TransLink/Twitter)

“Being present in Ottawa during the traditional pre-budget period will be important to ensuring our asks are heard and pressure for action felt,” said a report to the June 1 council meeting. 

The report said between May 15 and 17, the delegation met with 22 Members of Parliament, including Infrastructure Minister Dominic LeBlanc and his Parliamentary Secretary Jennifer O’Connell, Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre and six other Conservative MPs, NDP leader Jagmeet Singh and two other NDP MPs, and BC Liberal caucus chair Taleeb Noormohamed and seven other Liberal MPs. They also met with the chief of staff to Transportation Minister Omar Alghabra. 

The Mayors’ Council hosted a Parliament Hill reception for eight MPs, staff from the Prime Minister and Finance Minister’s offices, and representatives of the Federation of Canadian Municipalities and Canadian Urban Transit Association. 

The cost of the Metro Vancouver Transit Days in Ottawa was $45,857. It’s part of a $500,000 campaign coordinated by contracted lobbying outfit Earnscliffe Strategies. 

Executive director Mike Buda had previously declined to disclose the budget for the trip.

“At least one and likely two more trips to Ottawa are proposed in fall 2023 to leverage Ottawa’s focus on the fall economic statement (usually released at the end of October) and the pre-budget consultation period (late-September to February),” the report said.

Port Coquitlam Mayor and Mayors’ Council chair Brad West led the delegation, with mayors of Anmore, Burnaby, Langley Township, Maple Ridge, New Westminster, North Vancouver City, North Vancouver District, Pitt Meadows, Port Moody and Richmond. Delta was represented by Coun. Dylan Kruger, instead of Mayor George Harvie. 

Kruger also works as a senior associate with the Kirk and Co. communications and government relations firm, whose website lists TransLink among its clients.

The delegation went to Parliament Hill with a long wish list for help in funding TransLink’s $21 billion, long-term plan. That includes doubling bus service, matching SeaBus with SkyTrain service hours, building a bus rapid transit system, expanding SkyTrain to the University of B.C., planning for Metrotown to North Shore rapid transit, and building a gondola up Burnaby Mountain.

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Bob Mackin A dozen TransLink Mayors’ Council members

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Bob Mackin

At somewhere around a quarter-of-a-billion-dollars, hosting part of the FIFA World Cup 26 in Vancouver will be the most-expensive event to promote B.C. tourism since the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics.

B.C. Auditor General Michael Pickup (OAG/YouTube)

In the years before the “games of ice and snow,” the Office of the Auditor General regularly identified risks to B.C. taxpayers and gauged spending on construction and operations. 

Is the current Auditor General, Michael Pickup, thinking of doing the same before the biggest soccer tournament in history comes to B.C.? 

During a May 30 news conference in Victoria about his audit of $41 million of community tourism grants, a reporter asked Pickup whether he would examine World Cup spending over the next three years.  

Pickup said his office is always “keeping an eye to new programs where significant expenditures are occurring,” but chooses its targets. 

“If you look at government as being a 70 billion-plus organization, and our capacity to do X number of performance audits a year, clearly, it goes without saying, that we can’t be everywhere doing everything,” Pickup said. 

Pickup was pressed further, about how his predecessors followed the Olympic money, and asked whether he is concerned about the lack of transparency and the risk of fraud around the next mega-event. Instead of a direct answer, he launched into a lengthy commentary about the variety of work produced by his office, especially around pandemic spending and government-wide fraud surveys. 

“As I hit three years in this job at the end of July, we will at that point have tabled 32 reports in the three years, that’s close to 11 a year,” Pickup said. “That’s a huge volume of work, that the people in our office should be proud of having been able to achieve during a period of COVID, during a pandemic.”

He went on to say “Independence has never been an issue here, and nor is access to things that we need.”

“I have no concerns that if there’s something that we want to audit, and we make that decision based on our analysis of the environment to select a topic, we will share that in due course with folks, and that we will get what we need to be able to do that,” Pickup said.

Previous Auditors General Wayne Strelioff, Arn van Iersel and John Doyle each reported on Vancouver 2010 spending. Their reports included concerns about construction inflation, foreign exchange rate fluctuations, medical and security costs, and the size of the province’s contingency. 

In 2008, the Great Recession hit. Sponsors cut back, so governments came to the rescue with bailouts. 

By the time it wound-up in 2014, VANOC, the Vancouver Olympic organizing committee, claimed it balanced a $1.9 billion operations budget. 

FIFA’s 2026 World Cup logo for Vancouver (FIFA)

The Games were believed to have cost as much as $8 billion to build and operate.

Doyle never did a post-Games audit, the freedom of information law did not apply to VANOC and it shifted all of its files to the Vancouver Archives under the condition that board minutes and detailed financial reports be locked away from the public until the fall of 2025. 

At least five World Cup matches are coming to B.C. Place Stadium in June 2026. But the freedom of information offices at the Ministry of Tourism, Arts, Culture and Sport, B.C. Pavilion Corp., and Vancouver city hall have refused to release copies of the hosting proposal to FIFA, host city contract with FIFA and business plan. 

Almost a year ago on June 16, 2022, when Vancouver was named among the 16 host cities in Canada, U.S. and Mexico, the province said it would cost $240 million to $260 million. In January, it said Vancouver city hall was responsible for $230 million and gave it power to levy a 2.5% tax on accommodations until 2030. Security and safety, at $73 million, is the biggest anticipated cost. 

The province has not revealed how much it plans to spend at B.C. Place, which will need a temporary grass pitch. New broadcasting facilities and expansion of luxury suites are being discussed internally. 

Additionally, the Pacific National Exhibition is aiming to build its $65 million amphitheatre in time to be the centrepiece of the city’s $20 million FIFA fan festival party zone. 

All of this spending to subsidize the Zurich-headquartered FIFA, which reported record gross revenue of US$7.6 billion for the 2019 to 2022 cycle and forecast US$11 billion for the 2023 to 2026 period. 

Sports economist Victor Matheson’s “Mega-Events: The Effect of the World’s Biggest Sporting Events on Local, Regional, and National Economies” report found large sporting events tend to supplant, rather than supplement, the regular tourist economy. 

“In other words, the economic impact of a mega-event may be large in a gross sense but the net impact may be small,” Matheson concluded.

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Bob Mackin At somewhere around a quarter-of-a-billion-dollars, hosting

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