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Bob Mackin

One of the newest parliamentary secretaries appointed by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau could find himself very busy divesting from dozens of stocks he owns. 

Vancouver Granville Liberal MP Taleeb Noormohamed was named parliamentary secretary to Canadian Heritage Minister Pascal St-Onge on Sept. 15.

Taleeb Noormohamed with Justin Trudeau in 2011 (Vincent Chan/Facebook)

Among his 67 public company holdings, reported last month to the Office of the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner, are big tech and media companies that fall under the regulation of Canadian Heritage, including Alphabet Inc., Amazon.com Inc., Apple Inc., Comcast Corp., Meta Platforms Inc., Microsoft Corp., Netflix Inc. and Telus Corp. 

Meta blocked Canadian news on Facebook and Instagram earlier this summer in protest of the Liberal government’s Bill C-18, the Online News Act which would impose a tax on news links.  

But, an independent watchdog said Noormohamed could simply wrap them all into a blind trust and still be within the law. 

“As parliamentary secretary, he is not allowed to own stocks directly. No members of cabinet are, nor cabinet staff and or deputy ministers and assistant ministers and associate deputy ministers,” said Duff Conacher, co-founder of DemocracyWatch. 

But, Conacher called a blind trust a “charade,” because top elected and appointed officials could simply shift their holdings into the convenient misnomer.

“There’s no such thing as a blind trust, because you know what you put in the trust,” Conacher said. “The trustee may sell it, but you can give instructions to the trustee.”

Neither Noormohamed nor a spokesperson for St-Onge responded for comment.

Under Part II of the Conflict of Interest Act, public office holders, including parliamentary secretaries, must recuse from discussions, debates or votes where they would be in a conflict of interest; file confidential disclosure reports detailing assets, liabilities, income and gifts received; file public declarations detailing certain kinds of assets, liabilities, and gifts received; and divest certain kinds of assets—such as publicly traded shares—by selling them at arm’s length or putting them in a blind trust.

Conacher said the way the rules are written it is legal for cabinet ministers, parliamentary secretaries and other inside officials to “have investments in companies that they make regulatory decisions about and, as a result, to profit from their decisions in secret, without any public disclosure.

“That is how much of a joke the Conflict of Interest Act is. It really should be called the almost impossible to be in a conflict of interest act.”

Noormohamed was sent to Ottawa by a slim 431-vote margin in the September 2021 election to succeed the retiring former Liberal Jody Wilson-Raybould. Noormohamed became embroiled in a surprisingly heated race with the NDP’s Anjali Appadurai, after Noormohamed’s real estate speculation became the dominant issue of the local campaign. 

His Aug. 17 summary on the Office of the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner’s website mentions nominal interest in real estate developer Immeubles Q-Mont (II) Industrial Properties L.P., sole ownership of rental properties in Vancouver, sums owed under two loan agreements and a personal loan receivable from an unnamed individual, stock options in e-e-commerce company Farfetch Ltd., and undisclosed quantities of the cryptocurrencies bitcoin, ethereal and stacks. 

Noormohamed’s stock portfolio is diversified, with shares in big pharma (AstraZeneca PLC ADR, Johnson and Johnson and Merck and Co.), beverages (Diageo Plc), retail (Home Depot Inc. and Walmart) and food (Doordash Inc., Mondelez International Inc., and Nestle). 

One of the lower-profile investments is under the name Kraneshares CSO China Internet, an exchange traded fund that includes shares in Tencent Holdings Ltd., the parent company of the WeChat app. 

Global Affairs Canada recently revealed that the Chinese government-controlled social media network was used for a disinformation campaign against Conservative MP Michael Chong. 

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Bob Mackin One of the newest parliamentary secretaries

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Bob Mackin

Premier David Eby tried to explain why construction seemed to be over as soon as it had begun on the site of the new Surrey hospital. 

Premier David Eby and Surrey NDP MLAs on Sept. 12 at the new Surrey hospital photo op (BC Gov/Flickr)

Witnesses shot photographs on Sept. 15 of a crew hauling an excavator away, leaving an empty, fenced area where Eby, Health Minister Adrian Dix and six of the NDP’s Surrey MLAs posed in hardhats and turned sod on Sept. 12 in front of cameras. The event included signs that said the hospital was “under construction.”

“So we reached out, EllisDon had some heavy equipment on the site to do some pre-work. It was necessary, they needed the equipment somewhere else, they moved it,” Eby said to reporters in Richmond on Sept. 18.

“Today on the site, geotechnical work is going ahead, the hospital construction process is underway. The hospital will be built, and the commitment we have from the contractor under the contract is that construction will be complete by 2029. And I think everybody is looking forward to that, the people of Surrey that deserve and need health care, most of all.”

None of the equipment had returned to the site Sept. 18, but personnel from Pro-Tech Surveys, wearing hardhats and high visibility vests, were in the area with surveying equipment.  

The hospital is scheduled to open in 2030 for $2.88 billion, two years later and costing $1.16 billion more than previously estimated. 

Surrey Board of Trade has campaigned for better services at Surrey Memorial Hospital, which doesn’t have emergency facilities to treat heart attack, stroke or trauma patients. They are transferred elsewhere, mainly to Royal Columbian Hospital in New Westminster. 

CEO Anita Huberman said healthcare needs to be depoliticized because it is a life and death matter for residents in Surrey who are being forced to wait longer for the new hospital. She is disappointed in the delay to 2030 and unhappy that construction did not really begin at the time the NDP said it had.

Excavator hauled away Sept. 15 from site of future hospital (submitted)

“Every single day construction costs escalate,” Huberman said. 

When they were in opposition, the NDP criticized then-BC Liberal Premier Christy Clark and Environment Minister Mary Polak for holding a climate leadership plan news conference in August 2016 inside a warehouse, amid artificial greenery and a nature scene on a screen behind them.

“I’ve said repeatedly that this is an NDP government of flashy announcements, press releases, staged photos and endless re-announcements. Everything but actual results,” BC United leader Kevin Falcon tweeted. “British Columbians are taking notice of David Eby’s political theatre. They want action, not photo-ops.”

Healthcare is bound to be a ballot box issue for the next election, which must be held by October 2024. 

Doctors held a protest on Sept. 9 outside Surrey city hall about delays and conditions at Surrey Memorial. Dix tried to get ahead of the story with a pre-emptive news conference at the hospital a day earlier, but said that demand for hospital treatment in B.C.’s second-biggest city is outstripping supply and that may be the “new normal.” 

In May, Dix announced B.C. would send as many as 50 cancer patients weekly across the border to clinics in Bellingham, Wash. for radiation treatment under a temporary program. 

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Bob Mackin Premier David Eby tried to explain

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Bob Mackin

A report published Sept. 19 about the feasibility of reopening the football program at Simon Fraser University said the Red Leafs have no future in an American league. 

But if the April-cancelled team does return to play against Canadian universities, a consultant concluded that competition atop Burnaby Mountain is unlikely before 2025. 

After spring training camp, SFU administration suddenly sacked the 1965-founded team instead of letting it play its last season in the NCAA Division II Lone Star Conference. The Texas-based league had decided not to extend SFU’s membership beyond 2023 and athletics department executives claimed they did not have enough players to field a competitive squad for another losing season.

Bob Copeland (McLaren Sport Solutions)

Players unsuccessfully appealed to the B.C. Supreme Court and campaigned to join the U.S.-based NAIA or Canadian U-Sports circuit or play an exhibition schedule this fall. The SFU Football Alumni Society even raised $3 million in pledges, contingent upon the team’s return. 

SFU President Joy Johnson did not budge. As an olive branch, she retained Bob Copeland of McLaren Global Sport Solutions in May as a special advisor. Athletics director Theresa Hanson, who spearheaded the decision to close the program, left SFU Aug. 2 by mutual agreement, according to vice-provost Rummana Khan Hemani.

In his 136-page report, Copeland said continuing a football team that is not competitive in a U.S. league is inconsistent with four of the SFU athletic department’s five pillars from its 2022 strategic mandate, including student-athlete success, reputation, organizational culture and financial sustainability. He found that NCAA membership rules preclude Division II member SFU from moving up or down a division. The NAIA, SFU’s former league, is also not a viable option.

“SFU football has the potential to build a competitive and sustainable program in Canada through membership in Canada West and U Sports,” Copeland wrote. “This emerged as a strong theme amongst SFU football alumni and many others who consider Canada West and U Sports to be the optimal fit for SFU football.”

However, it would not be without obstacles. 

“Membership rules in Canada West and U Sports preclude membership in only one sport. As a result, SFU must initiate an application and request an exemption from existing rules. Such an exemption would require two-thirds support from U Sports members and seventy-five percent support from Canada West members. Any alternative to a one-sport exemption would require SFU to repatriate some or all of its NCAA varsity sports to U Sports.”

Moving to the domestic league would not be cheap. Copeland said one-time U Sports and Canada West conference application fees total $368,000, which may be prohibitive at a time when the athletics department is running a deficit. External fundraising or a budget boost from the university would be necessary. 

(SFU Football)

“If an application to Canada West and U Sports is successful, a return to play earlier than 2025 is highly unlikely given the rigorous application requirements and timelines outlined in the new member application processes set forth by both organizations,” he wrote.

Application fees are not the only challenge. Bureaucracy and logistics are another matter. Copeland said it would be inefficient for SFU football to enter U Sports while all other varsity sports remain in NCAA Division II. 

“Student-athletes would be subject to markedly different rules and opportunities which has the potential to negatively impact culture within the department,” he wrote. “Program equity concerns about how varsity sports are supported at SFU emerged as an important theme amongst staff and this must be carefully considered as it relates to how football is supported and operated moving forward.”

Additionally, Terry Fox Field would require major alterations to accommodate a larger Canadian football field, which would then force removal or reconfiguration of the surrounding running track, thus impacting the SFU track and field teams. 

Copeland also found that the Department of Athletics and Recreation operations are not sustainable, which is consistent with a 2022 Deloitte benchmarking report. Its capacity to support and service all student-athletes’ needs, including medical, academic and scholarships “has been stretched in recent years” according to both department staff and varsity athletes. Almost 60% of football players polled called their experience as a student-athlete at SFU “average” (18%), “poor” (29%) or “terrible” (18%).

Copeland concluded that collaborative funding from the university, student fees, alumni, businesses and the community would be the most sustainable approach for SFU football, which cost $1.056 million to operate last year. 

“Base funding through SFU including student ancillary fees can be augmented through private donations and more aggressive fundraising targets including sponsorship and other forms of business development.”

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Bob Mackin A report published Sept. 19 about

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Bob Mackin

The Parksville-Qualicum MLA ejected from the NDP government caucus on Sept. 17 for an unspecified human resources misconduct billed taxpayers more than $1,800 earlier this year for legal fees, according to expense reports.

Adam Walker (AdamWalker.ca)

Premier David Eby announced that Adam Walker, a former Qualicum Beach town councillor who was elected in the 2020 provincial election, was out of the caucus after an internal investigation, but did not provide details. 

Speaking to reporters in Richmond on Sept. 18, Eby said an employment relationship complaint received in late July triggered the investigation under the collective bargaining agreement with the B.C. General Employees’ Union (BCGEU). 

“Based on the conclusions of that investigation, I felt I had no choice as leader to remove Mr. Walker from our caucus,” Eby said. “This is not a happy day for us, it was a very difficult call to make to Mr. Walker and also understanding the implications for the people of Parksville-Qualicum.”

Eby said the matter is not criminal and does not involve a sexual harassment complaint, but he stopped short of providing details. “I wish I could share more about this, but I can’t.”

Walker did not immediately respond to email and a phone messages.

Walker also lost his post as Parliamentary Secretary for the Sustainable Economy. 

Walker’s fourth quarter expense report includes two, heavily censored invoices from Fulton and Company LLP in Kamloops, regarding an “Employment Matter.”

Premier David Eby on Nov. 18 (BC Gov/Flickr)

The first, on Jan. 30, for $1,141.04, mentions telephone calls and emails with Walker about reviewing “multiple discipline and grievance and medical documents,” the medical leave for someone whose name was censored and for reviewing a completed Short Term Illness and Injury Plan form. 

The second invoice, on Feb. 24, totalled $665.20, and mentions reviewing more emails and attached documents about a BCGEU review, grievance and possible staff layoffs. BCGEU represents workers in the NDP caucus and at NDP-run constituency offices.

The Fulton and Company invoice referred to an email to Walker “regarding investigation and implementation of workplace impairment policy.”

The Legislative Assembly has a legal indemnification policy that allows employees to apply confidentially for up to $5,000 “to enable the employee to obtain legal counsel in respect of a legal proceeding. An employee may make a subsequent application for an increase if the need arises.”

An employee is ineligible and must return all amounts paid if a judgement or decision is given against an employee in a legal proceeding or if a decision is made against the employee by the Legislative Assembly with the benefit of information that may become available to it.

Parksville-Qualicum had been represented by a BC Liberal MLA since the 1996 election until Walker upset Paralympian and former Minister of Social Development and Social Innovation Michelle Stilwell almost three years ago by more than 2,000 votes. 

Walker’s departure from caucus means he will sit as an independent when the Legislature reopens on Oct. 3. The NDP caucus falls to 56. 

The move comes less than a week after Abbotsford South’s Bruce Banman, who was also elected in 2020, quit the BC United caucus to join the Conservative Party of B.C. under leader John Rustad. That left the Kevin Falcon-led BC United official opposition with 25 seats.

The Conservatives are now tied with the Greens with two seats each and have tentatively achieved official party status, which results in more funding and privileges at the Legislature. 

Walker’s public disclosure to the Office of the Conflict of interest Commissioner shows that he has income from egg and flower sales on a family hobby farm and assets include 100% ownership of a technology services firm (0865647 B.C. Ltd.) and 50% ownership of a marketing services company (CGM Marketing Ltd.).

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Bob Mackin The Parksville-Qualicum MLA ejected from the

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For the week of Sept. 17, 2023: 

Bill Vigars was right there with Terry Fox during the summer of 1980. The “summer of hope,” as the White Rock, B.C.-resident calls it.

(Sutherland House)

Vigars was working for the Canadian Cancer Society in Ontario when he was sent to join Terry’s team in New Brunswick. He has written about the highs and lows of what became the most-important Canadian road trip in a new memoir called “Terry and Me: The Inside Story of Terry Fox’s Marathon of Hope.” 

Forty-three years later, the foundation named for the late Fox has raised $850 million from the annual community and school walks, runs and rolls across Canada. 

Hear the second part of a two-part interview on this edition of theBreaker.news Podcast with Bob Mackin.

Plus, headlines from the Pacific Rim and the Pacific Northwest. 

Plus, commentary on the long-awaited foreign interference public inquiry and headlines from the Pacific Rim and the Pacific Northwest.

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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thePodcast: More from "Terry and Me" author Bill Vigars, Terry Fox's wingman from the Marathon of Hope
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For the week of Sept. 17, 2023:  Bill

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Bob Mackin

West Vancouver senior Barb Burton was looking forward to joining the crowd on Centennial Seawalk on Sept. 17 for the annual Terry Fox Run.

It was supposed to be the second year of a return to normal, after the nationwide cancer research fundraiser went virtual in 2020 and 2021 due to the pandemic. 

But Burton was surprised to learn that there will not be an in-person walk, run or roll between Dundarave and Ambleside this year.

Terry Fox during the Marathon of Hope (Terry Fox Foundation)

“I really admire him and everything that he did,” said Burton, who remembers jogging in the first Terry Fox Run in 1981 in Stanley Park. “It is a great disappointment, because he had such a fine character and he was selfless, not selfish. He only thought of others and not himself.”

West Vancouver is not alone. 

North Vancouver, Port Moody, Squamish, Surrey’s Cloverdale and Newton, and UBC Vancouver are also among 18 B.C. locations listed on TerryFox.org as virtual for Sept. 17.

The reason is simple: A shortage of volunteers. 

“Volunteers, they are like gold for us,” said Martha McClew, the Terry Fox Foundation’s vice-president of community and school programs. “So it’s hard to come by, people have really busy lives. More and more charities are finding a bit of a volunteer drain.”

McClew encourages runners, walkers and rollers to search online for their municipality. If they do not have a set time and place in their community, then they can choose their own route and still donate in memory of the late Marathon of Hope hero. 

By advertising virtual runs, the cancer-fighting charity can still raise money, but it also sends a message to potential volunteers for next year. 

“If you can, list those communities, and say that the Terry Fox Foundation would love the run to come back, and we’ll support volunteers in any way,” McClew asked a reporter. 

B.C.’s other virtual locations in 2023 are: Abbotsford, Anmore, Central Saanich, Chase, Golden, Kamloops, Maple Ridge/Pitt Meadows, Nelson, Salmo, Trail and Vernon. 

In its 43rd year, the Terry Fox Foundation has raised $850 million. McClew said there are about 550 runs registered across the country this year, down from 2019’s 600. 

Port Coquitlam is where Fox grew up and its annual “hometown run” is backed by city hall. 

Port Coquitlam Mayor Brad West (left) and Hometown Run organizer Dave Teixeira (Twitter)

“I can’t think of anything that brings a community together like a Terry Fox Run,” said Mayor Brad West, who says non-PoCo residents are also welcome. 

“In the absence of anything else, yeah, it’s great to do it virtually. But there’s something to be said for doing it as an event with a bunch of other people who are going through the same range of emotions that you are, and that’s how we build community connection,” West said. “That’s how we build the fabric of our society.”

West declared this Terry Fox Week in his city. Registration begins at 8 a.m. on Sept. 17 before the 10 a.m. start for the 2 km, 6 km and 8 km routes. 

When online registration opened nationally on April 12, the anniversary of Fox beginning the Marathon of Hope in 1980 in Newfoundland, so did shipping for the “Dear Terry” T-shirts co-designed by Vancouver-born actor Ryan Reynolds. More than $1.7 million worth of the shirts have been sold so far and McClew expects the fundraiser to hit $2 million by year-end. 

“That has been a great part of the story,” McClew said. “[Reynolds is] a really lovely gentleman. I’ve never met him, but he seems very kind of fun and low key and I always feel like that’s very representative of who Terry was.”

Burton has one of those shirts and plans to wear it for her Sunday walk in Fox’s memory and hopes to see others of like mind out in the late summer sunshine.

You are guaranteed to see plenty of those shirts in Port Coquitlam and other in-person events around the Lower Mainland, including Ceperley Park in Vancouver’s Stanley Park, Swangard Stadium in Burnaby, Garry Point Park in Steveston, and River Market in New Westminster. Start time is also 10 a.m.

The Terry Fox Foundation’s impact report for 2021-22, the most-recent year available, said 119 community runs and 1,385 school runs in B.C. raised $2.7 million. Only Ontario, which held 224 community runs and 13,877 at schools, raised more money ($11.7 million). 

Go to Run.TerryFox.ca to find your nearest in-person or virtual event or to make a donation.

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Bob Mackin West Vancouver senior Barb Burton was

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The sign at Premier David Eby and Health Minister Adrian Dix’s Sept. 12 sod-turning ceremony for the second Surrey hospital in Cloverdale said “under construction.”

However, three days later, on the morning of Sep. 15, an excavator used as a prop for the event, which featured NDP government and Fraser Health Authority officials, was hauled away from the site beside the campus of Kwantlen Polytechnic University’s Tech Campus.

Excavator hauled away Sept. 15 from site of future hospital (submitted)

“Why hasn’t construction already started?” asked Anita Huberman, the Surrey Board of Trade’s CEO. “Why were construction equipment being taken away from the facility when it should be beginning immediately? Every single day construction costs escalate.”

Huberman said healthcare needs to be depoliticized because it is a life and death matter for residents in Surrey who are being forced to wait longer for improvements. 

Eby, Dix and six of the NDP’s seven MLAs from Surrey had posed for photos with the orange heavy duty vehicle in the lot, which is surrounded by blue fencing and a banner for construction contractor EllisDon. They wore hardhats amid signs emblazoned “under construction” in white letters on a red diagonal bar across a “Surrey H” sign.

When they were in opposition, the NDP criticized then-Premier Christy Clark and Environment Minister Mary Polak for holding a climate leadership plan news conference in August 2016 inside a warehouse, amid artificial greenery and a nature scene on a screen behind them.

Mike Starchuk, the NDP’s Cloverdale MLA, has not responded for comment. Likewise for the communications departments at the Ministry of Health and Fraser Health. 

“I’ve said repeatedly that this is an NDP government of flashy announcements, press releases, staged photos and endless re-announcements. Everything but actual results,” BC United leader Kevin Falcon tweeted. “British Columbians are taking notice of David Eby’s political theatre. They want action, not photo-ops.”

In July of last year, when the NDP government shortlisted PCL Construction Ltd. and EllisDon Design Build Inc., construction was scheduled to begin in summer 2023 and the facility was scheduled to be “ready for patients in 2027” with an estimated capital cost of $1.72 billion. 

Sept. 12 B.C. government photo of the site of the future hospital, where politicians gathered for a photo op. (BC Gov)

However, at the Tuesday photo op, Eby and Dix revealed the hospital is now expected to cost $2.88 billion and not open until 2030. 

That is $1.16 billion more expensive and three years later.

Surrey Board of Trade has campaigned for better services at Surrey Memorial Hospital, which doesn’t have emergency facilities to treat heart attack, stroke or trauma patients. They are transferred elsewhere, mainly to Royal Columbian Hospital in New Westminster. 

Doctors held a protest on Saturday outside Surrey city hall about delays and conditions at Surrey Memorial. Dix tried to get ahead of the story with a pre-emptive news conference at the hospital a day earlier, but said that demand for hospital treatment in B.C.’s second-biggest city is outstripping supply and that may be the “new normal.” 

In May, Dix announced B.C. would send as many as 50 cancer patients weekly across the border to clinics in Bellingham, Wash. for radiation treatment under a temporary program. 

On Wednesday, Eby and Starchuk held a “cash for access” party fundraiser in Firehall 1271, the Surrey Firefighters’ union hall, where tickets were being sold for $150. Attendees included former party president Craig Keating, who is now registered to lobby the government for the Cement Association of Canada, B.C. Federation of Labour president Sussanne Skidmore and Nicola Hill, a partner at lobbying firm Earnscliffe Strategies. Hill’s clients include the B.C. General Employees’ Union, MakeWay Charitable Society (formerly Tides Canada), United Way B.C. and North Island-Coast Development Initiative Trust. 

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Bob Mackin The sign at Premier David Eby

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The People’s Republic of China government has conducted operations to target people in at least 36 foreign countries, according to a University of B.C.-educated researcher who testified Sept. 12 to senators and congressmen in Washington, D.C.

Yana Gorokhovskaia IUBC)

Yana Gorokhovskaia of Freedom House, who earned a doctorate in political science at UBC in 2016, told the Congressional-Executive Commission on China that China accounts for almost a third of the 854 cases in the pro-democracy organization’s database from 2014 to 2022. Victims of foreign interference, also known as transnational repression, include pro-democracy activists, journalists, students, human rights defenders, artists, former insiders, civil society organizations, as well as ethnic and religious groups. 

“Beijing’s transnational repression toolkit is diverse,” Gorokhovskaia said during the same session in which Conservative MP Michael Chong testified about being targeted by the Chinese government.  

“It continues to rely on well-practiced tactics of intimidation such as forcing family members to call their relatives abroad in order to urge them to stop engaging in activities, like protest or human rights activism, objectionable to the PRC. Members of the diaspora are sometimes recruited or coerced into informing on each other.”

Gorokhovskaia called China one of the “least free countries in the world,” which consistently ranks at the bottom of the 195 countries Freedom House assesses annually. Any freedoms that did exist deteriorated rapidly over the last decade, especially since 2017, under Xi Jinping, China’s most-powerful leader since Mao Zedong. 

China’s effort to abuse Internet freedom includes mass-trolling, smear campaigns, threats and intimidation, spoofing accounts and doxing of personal information. Such tactics “are meant to intimidate critics and journalists, drown out reports of human rights abuses, and apply psychological pressure on the targets,” she said. “These tactics are also often gendered; women face not only violent but sexualized digital threats in response to work that shines a critical light on the PRC.”

China also contracts retired police officers who have become private investigators. Their specific skills and networks of contacts make them valuable to “harass, coerce, stalk, and surveil people living in the U.S. and Canada”

Former New York Police Department sergeant Michael McMahon was convicted in June of acting as a Chinese agent after stalking a New Jersey man wanted by the Chinese government. 

In July, former RCMP undercover cop Bill Majcher was charged under the Security of Information Act. The Globe and Mail reported in August that Majcher is accused of targeting real estate investor Kevin Sun and using former law enforcement contacts to help gain the release of Huawei’s Meng Wenzhou.

“This is an extremely dangerous practice, and probably speaks to the need for more regulation of private investigators and transparency about where that work is coming from on behalf of whom they’re collecting this information.”

She said the influence of Confucius Institutes to promote Chinese language and culture has waned, but not disappeared. 

“This sometimes gets wrapped into a language of anti-Asian hate, that this is sort of harassment or racial profiling, and that is that’s also to the PRC’s advantage because it pits people against each other and it delegitimizes the voices of people who are speaking out for freedom,” Gorokhovskaia said. 

To combat foreign interference, she suggested bipartisan support for better training for government officials and law enforcement officers, cultural sensitivity outreach to communities at risk, and deploying sanctions against Chinese officials responsible for foreign interference. 

Gorokhovskaia’s UBC dissertation in 2016 was titled “Elections, Political Participation, and Authoritarian Responsiveness in Russia,” and based on interviews and fieldwork in Russia in 2013.

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For the third time in just over 11 years, Abbotsford South’s MLA has caused a B.C. political earthquake. 

Bruce Banman announced Sept. 14 that he had left the Kevin Falcon-led BC United opposition to sit as a member of the Conservative Party of B.C. under leader John Rustad. Most-recently, Banman was the Falcon-appointed shadow minister for emergency management, climate readiness and citizen services.

Bruce Banman (far left) and Kevin Falcon (far right) from Twitter.

A Conservative-issued statement from Banman said that he made the decision in order to keep his promise to represent his constituents’ best interests. He gave a ringing endorsement to Rustad and his party, saying nobody else in Victoria “stands for what’s right in the legislature, rather than rather than what’s politically convenient or politically correct.”

“As a Conservative MLA, I’m looking forward to having the opportunity to speak honestly and openly on behalf of my constituents,” Banman said. 

Banman’s defection means the Conservatives are tied with the BC Greens at two seats apiece and the former BC Liberals are down to 25. The NDP, under Premier David Eby, maintains a comfortable majority with 57 seats. 

In reaction, a BC United statement from Falcon said that Banman’s departure was “not entirely unexpected due to ongoing internal management challenges with Banman.”

“His decision betrays the Abbotsford constituents who elected him as a member of our team,” Falcon said.

Banman, a chiropractor, was Abbotsford’s mayor from 2011 to 2014 and returned as a city councillor in 2018. He won the riding for the BC Liberals in 2020, succeeding the twice-elected criminology professor Darryl Plecas.

Falcon ejected Rustad from his caucus more than a year ago after Rustad promoted someone else’s Twitter and Facebook post skeptical of carbon impacts on climate change. Although, former BC Liberal forests and Indigenous relations minister Rustad emphatically said he believes in climate change. He joined the Conservatives and became leader by acclamation last March. 

In 2012, former BC Liberal cabinet minister John van Dongen defected to the Conservatives under then-leader John Cummins. Van Dongen accused Premier Christy Clark of conflict of interest related to the BC Rail privatization and intervened in the auditor general’s lawsuit seeking the deal to pay $6 million to the lawyers of former BC Liberal aides Dave Basi and Bob Virk, the only two convicted in the BC Rail corruption case.  

The BC Liberals recruited Plecas, who went on to beat van Dongen in the 2013 election. Four years later, after the BC Liberals lost power to the Green-supported NDP minority, Plecas triggered Clark’s resignation when he threatened to quit the party and sit as an independent. 

Later that summer, Plecas became an independent MLA and was elected Speaker of the Legislature. A year later, he blew the whistle on corruption in the offices of BC Liberal-appointed Clerk Craig James and Sergeant-at-Arms Gary Lenz, who both resigned in disgrace. James was found guilty last year of breach of trust and fraud, and sentenced to house arrest. 

Banman’s statement said the Conservatives “don’t support Trudeau-backed policies like the punishing carbon tax that hurts everyday people; we refuse to condone the ideological NDP education agenda that teaches students what to think instead of how to think; and, we will never support the myth of safe supply that kills British Columbians and poisons our communities with hard drugs.”

The Legislature reconvenes Oct. 3 for a fall sitting that ends Nov. 30. The next election is scheduled for Oct. 19, 2024. Eby has repeatedly denied plans to go to the polls sooner. 

The BC Liberals rebranded as BC United in April and its candidates in two June by-elections in safe NDP ridings failed to achieve 9% of the popular vote. 

Mike Harris, the Conservative runner-up to the NDP’s Ravi Parmar in Langford-Juan de Fuca, had nearly 20% of the popular vote. 

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Bob Mackin For the third time in just

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Bob Mackin 

After the torrential rains and floods that devastated Interior and Fraser Valley communities in November 2021, a researcher with the B.C. office of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA-BC) tested the regulatory regime.

(City of Abbotsford)

Local authorities are responsible for maintaining dikes, but must file annual inspection reports to Victoria, which has the power to investigate and order repairs under the Dike Maintenance Act. 

Ben Parfitt applied under the freedom of information law to five municipalities with extensive dikes, Abbotsford, Chilliwack, Merritt, Princeton and Richmond, seeking their statutory inspection reports from 2017 to 2021. He also asked an office inside the Ministry of Forests for its responses to those reports, including any orders written by the provincial Inspector of Dikes to improve flood protection. It was a classic tale of deluge and drought.  

“In those 5,300 pages, there is but one single page from the provincial government, which is a single email running to less than a page,” Parfitt said in an interview. “And that’s it for the provincial record.”

Three professional engineers occupied the Inspector of Dikes position since changes to the law introduced by the BC Liberal government in 2003, Neil Peters, Mitchell Hahn and Yannic Brugman. Parfitt could find no evidence that they had issued any orders to the local governments and he said the province told him that no such order had been written in recent years.

Parfitt’s research for the left-leaning think tank found that, beginning in 2018, Merritt’s reports from a professional engineer with Interior Dams showed its dikes were a failure waiting to happen. No major repairs occurred. The 2021 disaster caused at least $150 million in damage.

Parfitt also found Abbotsford and Princeton did not properly report to the province. Princeton even used its own staff, rather than hiring a professional engineer. While it is allowed by law, it is not a best practice.

Parfitt said the root cause appears to be the amendments in 2003 by the BC Liberals, to shift reporting responsibilities to local authorities. Premier Gordon Campbell’s government was fond of cutting red tape and offloading.

Ben Parfitt (CCPA/Twitter)

“So while it is true, that there may have been more and more reliance placed on outside professionals to make certain calls, oversight was to remain with the province and this is where I think we’re seeing problems,” he said. 

The CCPA-BC wants the province to assume authority for all dikes, something Union of B.C. Municipalities members endorsed at their September 2022 convention, and provide more funding to upgrade dikes. The Auditor General should also be called upon to review provincial dike regulation.

While Parfitt said he was not troubled by significant delays or costs — “it was not as painful an FOI process as others have been for me” — he was taken aback by an answer to one of his followup questions to the Ministry of Forests about who is actually in charge. The government’s online directory showed only one person with the word “dike” in the job title. 

“I was told I would have to file a Freedom of Information request just to find out the names of these individuals,” he said. “It was at that point that I wrote the ministry back and I said, ‘look, this is ludicrous, you and I can do a Google search under B.C. government directory, and when you get to the B.C. government directory, it spits out any one of a number of names of public servants.’ So I pointed this out to the ministry and I said, ‘all I’m asking for here are the names, and I hope you’re not going to make me report that I have to FOI this. At which point, the next day, suddenly I had a list of names.”

Ultimately, Parfitt said, copies of the annual dike inspections should not be subject to FOI requests. They should simply be published proactively by each municipality or the province itself.

“Especially when we’re talking about matters concerning public health and safety,” he said.

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Bob Mackin  After the torrential rains and floods

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