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Bob Mackin

The Calgary Police Service came to the Lower Mainland on a recruiting mission, despite area forces already in the market for officers. 

The force in the “Stampede City” advertised on CKNW for its Oct. 3-4 attendance at a career fair in New Westminster’s Anvil Centre and an information session on the same day in Surrey, where job uncertainty remains for both RCMP and municipal officers. 

The Calgary Police Service did not make anyone available for an interview. Instead, Pam Lipsett in the media relations unit sent a prepared statement.

Calgary Police/Facebook

“It is common practice for organizations to attract candidates from across the country,” read the statement. “Policing is a niche career choice, and law enforcement agencies commonly recruit nationwide to broaden the talent pool to ensure that the most highly qualified people are selected for the role.”

The force’s website touts a starting salary of $67,885 rising to $104,439.24 after five years, plus a 25-year pension plan and health benefits package. 

Kash Heed, a Richmond city councillor, former B.C. Solicitor General and former West Vancouver Police chief, said Calgary is the most-assertive recruiter in Canada and credits Chief Mark Neufeld, a former Vancouver Police constable.

“It’s a common practice, the applicant pool is so shallow in Canada, that we’ve got every major police agency across the country that’s recruiting all across Canada and not necessarily just in their home jurisdiction,” Heed said. “So I’m not surprised that they’re coming here. In the past Vancouver has actually gone to Alberta to recruit people for the police department. So Calgary coming out here is par for the course.”

Heed said Calgary can obviously offer a lower cost of living than Vancouver, but the force’s management philosophy and equipping of officers is more-advanced than other cities. 

In July, Brian Sauve, president of the RCMP officers’ union, the National Police Federation, wrote an open letter to Premier David Eby, calling for a hiring spree because the Mounties were 242 shy of its 2012 quota of 2,602 officers.

Surrey Police Service, which got Solicitor General Mike Farnworth’s nod in July to eventually take over from the RCMP in Surrey, has 389 officers and 58 civilian staff. 

“Canadian police agencies are looking for good people to join. Many including Surrey Police Service look to recruit from out-of-province and across Canada, as well as locally,” SPS media liaison Ian MacDonald said. “Ultimately, we support policing and individuals who have chosen policing as a profession. We understand that each agency will look for individuals who will be the best fit for them, regardless of where they currently work or reside.”

Vancouver Police Chief Adam Palmer told the police board that his department had hired 100 new officers as of its Sept. 21 meeting date. Palmer said he had sworn-in 70, while 24 had been lured from other police forces.  

“I just want to dispel some myths that you hear about police recruiting because they hear people always talking all around North America, how they can’t get applicants and they can’t find people and all this kind of stuff,” Palmer said. 

Palmer said applications from new officers are up over 50% and applications from experienced officers from other departments across Canada are up over 700%. 

“So we’re definitely bucking trends,” Palmer said, adding that the VPD also hired 40 special municipal constables for its “farm team,” to act in community safety, jail guard and traffic authority roles. 

ABC Mayor Ken Sim, who also chairs the police board, ran on a platform in the 2022 election to hire 100 new officers. 

VPD public information officer Sgt. Steve Addison said the current authorized strength is 1,483 sworn officers and the force expects to hire dozens more to account for retirements. 

“We’ve traveled around the province this year to connect with new recruits and have hired a number of exempt officers from other agencies within B.C. and around Canada,” Addison said. 

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Bob Mackin The Calgary Police Service came to

Business, News, Opinion, Sports

For the week of Oct. 1, 2023: 

Will Canada’s men’s basketball team turn its bronze medal at the FIBA World Cup into a medal at next summer’s Olympics in Paris?

Howard Kelsey during his playing days (NBTAA.com)

Which teams with Canadian stars are the ones to watch during the upcoming NBA season? 

And what about a Canadian Basketball Hall of Fame? 

B.C. Sports Hall of Famer Howard Kelsey, a former national team player, is Bob Mackin’s guest on this week’s edition of thePodcast, to answer those questions and more.

Plus, headlines from the Pacific Rim and the Pacific Northwest and commentary on Canada’s latest foreign affairs embarrassment. 

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

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For the week of Oct. 1, 2023:  Will

Business, News

Bob Mackin

The federal government has spent at least $120,000 to contest five orders from the Office of the Information Commissioner, according to documents submitted to the House of Commons. 

In June, MP John Nater (Conservative, Perth-Wellington) asked the Liberal government for statistics on binding orders issued since June 2019, by government institution, how many orders were abided by, ignored, appealed or challenged in court and how much the government spent on lawyers.

Justin Trudeau on July 29, 2019 at Kitsilano Coast Guard base (Mackin)

June 2019 was when the minority Liberal government amended the Access to Information Act to allow the Information Commissioner to make orders to compel government institutions to respond to applicants and release documents. 

The Sept. 18 response from Attorney General Arif Virani said total legal costs for the files amounted to approximatively $120,000.

“The total amount mentioned in this response is based on information contained in Department of Justice systems, as of June 14, and does not include amounts incurred directly by government departments who have contracted legal counsel outside of the Department of Justice,” said the response to Nater’s question made via the House of Commons’ order paper process. 

Two of the Information Commissioner’s orders are about access to information requests to the Privy Council Office, which works closely with the Prime Minister’s Office, and another two involve Public Service and Procurement Canada, the government’s buying and contracting arm. The other was directed to Export Development Canada. 

Three of the five cases concern delays and another is about refusal of disclosure. Litigation is ongoing in three of the cases, including one in which the applicant sought records from March 1, 2020 onward about the potential use of the Emergencies Act as a tool to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Over the course of four years, the Office of the Information Commissioner has issued 214 orders, according to the response to Nater. National Defence led the way with 22 orders received, followed by 17 each for Transport Canada and Public Service and Procurement Canada. 

Others in double digits: RCMP (16), Canada Revenue Agency (14), Privy Council Office, Innovation, Science and Industry and Environment and Climate Change Canada (12 each), and Global Affairs Canada (11). 

Twenty-one government institutions received one order, including Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp., Canada Post, Canadian Security Intelligence Service, Public Health Agency of Canada, Trans Mountain Corporation and Vancouver Fraser Port Authority. 

Notably, the response to Nater’s questions emphasized that the Information Commissioner, Caroline Maynard, does not monitor compliance with her orders. 

“The commissioner has no power under the Act to force the institution to implement all aspects of her order. Once the commissioner issues her final report with her findings and order, she has exhausted her powers to investigate the allegations in the complaint,” said the response from the Office of the Information Commissioner.

“Institutions are legally obliged to abide by an order from the commissioner unless they apply to the Federal Court for a review of the matter that is the subject of the order.”

In June, Maynard was encouraged by recommendations to overhaul access to information from the House of Commons’ Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics. However, she noted Canada’s Access to Information Act is nearing its 40th anniversary and “definitely showing its age.”

The United Nations’ International Day for Universal Access to Information, also known as Right to Know Day, is Sept. 28. 

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Bob Mackin The federal government has spent at

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Bob Mackin

British Columbia’s Labour Code can apply at the Parliament Buildings, a B.C. Supreme Court judge ruled on Sept. 22. 

Justice Bruce Ellwood rejected the Legislative Assembly of B.C.’s petition that sought to overturn a B.C. Labour Relations Board (LRB) decision in favour of a union’s application to bargain for special provincial constables at the seat of government. 

The LRB ruled in late 2021 that applying the code to the constables would not impede the Legislative Assembly’s ability to carry on its constitutional functions. The Legislative Assembly argued that parliamentary privilege prevailed due to the necessity to protect the assembly and members at all times. 

Ellwood noted that the LRB “was not persuaded of another method by which special constables could exercise their constitutional right to collective bargaining.

Cupola at the B.C. Parliament Buildings (Mackin)

“The privilege claimed by the assembly would exclude all of the provisions of the Code, including the duty to negotiate in good faith and the unfair labour practice provisions, regardless of whether the parties agreed to negotiate under a voluntary recognition model,” Ellwood wrote. 

In 2019, constables working for the Legislative Assembly Protective Services (LAPS) division of the Office of the Sergeant-at-Arms formed the Legislative Assembly Protective Services Association (LAPSA) and applied for Labour Code certification. 

LAPSA and the all-party Legislative Assembly Management Committee (LAMC) both agreed to put the application on hold while they negotiated a collective agreement. But talks broke off and LAPSA resumed the certification bid in May 2020. A majority of LAMC members are NDP MLAs. The committee’s chair is Speaker Raj Chouhan, who helped establish the Canadian Farmworkers Union and formerly directed bargaining for the Hospital Employees’ Union. 

Edward Illi, who was elected president of the union, was put on administrative leave in August 2020 and fired in December 2020, just four days before the LRB originally agreed that parliamentary privilege applied. He was a respondent with the LRB against the Legislative Assembly’s petition. 

At the start of February 2021, union members voted to dissolve the association. Illi filed an application with the LRB a month later, alleging unfair labour practice. 

“I do not agree with the assembly that the board ‘subordinated’ parliamentary privilege to the Charter rights of the special constables. Rather, the board found that the assembly had not made out its case for a privilege based on the governing law, which required consideration of those rights,” the judge wrote.

The B.C. decision came five years after the Supreme Court of Canada’s 2018 ruling on a case in Quebec, that found the national assembly’s speaker could not use parliamentary privilege to avoid the grievances of three fired security guards.

“The Code is the only existing statutory scheme by which the special constables can access an enforceable process of collective bargaining,” Ellwood wrote. 

At a meeting in July, LAMC announced the beginning of a transition to what Clerk Kate Ryan-Lloyd called “a new hybrid model of layered security.” The first group of 10 unarmed safety officers was brought in for orientation and training. 

The move came three years after Alan Mullen, the chief of staff to Speaker Darryl Plecas from 2017 to 2020, had recommended transforming LAPS into a security department with unarmed officers. His report determined LAPS officers were overqualified and the department’s police force model was not necessary when compared to day-to-day operational requirements. 

Mullen found that the force protecting just 5.9 hectares was costing taxpayers $5 million a year and had become more expensive than the police forces in Victoria suburbs Oak Bay and Central Saanich. 

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Bob Mackin British Columbia’s Labour Code can apply

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Bob Mackin 

The purchase price for Quest University’s campus has been censored from a contract released by Capilano University. 

On Aug. 16, NDP Post-Secondary Education and Future Skills Minister Selina Robinson appeared in Squamish to announce the province had provided $48 million to Capilano for its $63.2 million purchase of the 18-acre campus. Quest suspended operations in April. Capilano plans to reopen the former private university next year. 

Under the freedom of information law, Capilano released three, heavily redacted agreements. The North Vancouver university’s risk management and privacy officer Jacquetta Goy said “redactions have been applied on the grounds of disclosures harmful to the business interests of a third party… and on the grounds of disclosures harmful to personal privacy.”

“We are not able to provide you with correspondence related to the contract as requested as it is excluded on the grounds of solicitor-client privilege,” Goy wrote.

Quest University Canada in Squamish, B.C. (Quest)

Adjudicators with the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner and B.C. Supreme Court judges have repeatedly decided in favour of disclosing contracts between public bodies and private entities.

“We’re looking at an expenditure of around $100 million — $60 million for the campus and Capilano has options to buy four residences which will be at least another $40 million,” said researcher Vivian Krause, who has analyzed the history and taxation implications of Quest land deals. “It’s shocking to see such a heavily redacted document, it’s shocking to see dates and amounts blacked out, it’s shocking to see the names of law firms blacked out.”

One of the documents, called the Superseding Purchase Agreement for the Quest Campus Lands, is between nominee Primacorp, beneficial owner New Quest Land Holdings LP and Capilano University, the purchaser. New Quest, registered in 2016 and formerly known as Vancouver Career College LP, is another of Primacorp chair Peter Chung’s companies.

Primacorp paid $43 million for the land and university buildings to rescue Quest out of court protection from creditors in December 2020 and agreed to provide student recruitment, marketing and fundraising services for Quest. Quest’s biggest lender, the Vanchorverve Foundation, had demanded repayment of $23.4 million at the start of 2020.

Definitions of deposit holder, deposit, Excise Tact Act, purchase price and the related payment schedule were blacked-out. So were the Quest chattels, or equipment, machinery, furnishings, inventory or supplies in which the vendor and/or nominee has any right or claim, pursuant to the lease. 

On another document, an agreement about assignment and novation, Capilano blacked-out the assignor’s name and the names and signatures of the parties.

That contract refers to an original agreement of purchase and sale made March 30, 2023 between Primacorp, New Quest and the secret assignor. The only hint about the identity of the assignor is that it is incorporated under Alberta laws. 

The supplemental “Amended and Restated Agreement to Assign Purchase Contract,” included the nine-digit property identifier for the entire 55.67 acre Quest property. B.C. Assessment Authority valued it at $88.9 million in July of 2022. The assessment authority’s database said the most-recent transaction was Aug. 9 and worth $60.88 million. That is close to the price announced by the province a week later. 

“Taxpayers deserve to know who is getting the tens of millions of dollars the government is spending in Squamish,” Krause said. “Government should provide an unreacted copy of this agreement, if there is nothing to hide, why is the information blacked out?” 

The deal announced last month did not include the student dormitory buildings. A spokesperson for Robinson said the government was looking at an opportunity to acquire the student housing buildings, which would accommodate 450 beds. 

“Further feasibility analysis about this potential acquisition will be required,” said a statement from the ministry. 

While Primacorp owns the land under the four vacant buildings, the buildings that contain 416 student residential units belong to the company that built them, Southern Star Developments. 

In an affidavit in November 2020, Southern Star president Michael Hutchison said his company spent $41.7 million to build the residences specifically for student use, with financing from a Bank of Montreal mortgage. 

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Bob Mackin  The purchase price for Quest University’s

Business, News, Opinion

For the week of Sept. 24, 2023: 

Torrential rains and floods devastated the Interior and Fraser Valley during November 2021’s parade of pineapple expresses.

But provincial, regional and municipal authorities were not prepared. They could have and should have been. 

A researcher with the B.C. office of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives used the freedom of information law to investigate dike inspection reports from 2017 to 2021. 

Ben Parfitt collected more than 5,000 pages from the Ministry of Forests and communities at risk of flooding, Abbotsford, Chilliwack, Merritt, Princeton and Richmond. 

He found no evidence that B.C.’s inspector of dikes issued any orders to improve protection for people and property. 

Hear the interview with Ben Parfitt on this week’s edition of thePodcast. 

Plus, headlines from the Pacific Rim and the Pacific Northwest and commentary on the latest in Canada’s year of foreign interference. 

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

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For the week of Sept. 24, 2023:  Torrential

Business, News, Uncategorized

Bob Mackin

Surrey Mayor Brenda Locke calls it awkward that the provincially appointed facilitator for the Surrey policing transition is also a director with the company that holds the city’s lucrative garbage-hauling contract. 

In July, NDP Solicitor General Mike Farnworth ordered Surrey to proceed with rolling out the Surrey Police Service, despite opposition from the majority of city council that wants to keep the RCMP. Farnworth appointed former BC Hydro CEO Jessica McDonald as the strategic implementation advisor to deal day-to-day with the city, municipal force and Mounties.

Christy Clark (left), Brad Bennett, Bill Bennett (no relation) and Jessica McDonald, during McDonald’s BC Hydro days. (BC Gov)

In February 2022, McDonald joined the board for GFL Green For Life Environmental, two months after Surrey city council voted to award the publicly traded Toronto company a seven-year, curbside residential waste collection contract beginning April 2023. Emterra and Waste Connections were the other bidders. The contract is worth at least $17.6 million a year.

“This strategic advisor, we never had any input on the person and we had no input on the terms of reference,” Locke said in an interview. “If we had, I’m sure that our our staff would have done a review, but we weren’t brought into that loop, ever.”

McDonald has not responded for comment after email and phone messages to GFL chair and CEO Patrick Dovigi. Neither has Farnworth’s office. 

Locke said she has discussed the matter with city manager Rob Costanzo, but not directly with Farnworth or McDonald.

McDonald earned $120,597 in cash fees and $190,584 in share-based awards last year from GFL, according to its 2023 information circular. 

“I’m going to be talking more with with our own city legal and our city manager just to make sure that all those T’s are crossed, and I’s are dotted because we take our lobby registry in Surrey pretty seriously,” Locke said.

Despite Farnworth ordering Surrey to replace the RCMP with SPS, Locke said little has been done since then. Coun. Pardeep Kooner’s Sept. 14 memo to the finance committee estimated the SPS budget had ballooned by $112 million, which would require a 26% tax increase. The Surrey Police Board countered Sept. 16, saying it had spent $45.42 million through Aug. 31 and projected it would reach $75 million by year end if it is asked not to resume hiring until 2024. 

Earlier in the summer, the board projected spending $125 million to immediately resume the transition and hire, equip and train 133 police officers during 2023’s second half.

Locke said she met with Premier David Eby at the Union of B.C. Municipalities convention and told him the city is in an untenable position, without a detailed plan to proceed with the Farnworth-preferred SPS. 

“I needed him to know where we sat,” she said. “Certainly, besides the issue around India, our concern is money, there’s no getting away with it. I mean, when you use all the numbers that came out from Councillor Kooner, and the inability of the Surrey Police Service to give us numbers that made sense, or at least they’re confusing numbers.”

Locke said that, like Eby, she had been briefed on foreign interference by India, but she declined to provide details of what she learned. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau revealed Sept. 18 that intelligence pointed to Indian government involvement in the June murder in Newton of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, the Guru Nanak Sikh temple leader and Khalistan separatist. 

“These challenges in Surrey are not new and the RCMP have been managing them for a very long time,” Locke said. “I have no reason or confidence that the SPS can do that. Not just for the very reason that they just haven’t been in this position, they don’t understand Surrey.”

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Bob Mackin Surrey Mayor Brenda Locke calls it

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Bob Mackin 

Vancouver Coastal Health Authority (VCH) has made a stalking horse bid for Seymour Health Centre Inc. that could be worth around $11.5 million. 

The stalking horse bid sets a floor price for the assets of the company behind VCH’s City Centre and North Vancouver urgent and primary care centres.

Law Courts Vancouver (Joe Mabel)

The Sept. 14 application from court-appointed receiver Ernst and Young proposed soliciting offers for the entire business or each of its five segments, with a goal of closing a deal by March 1.

“The stalking horse bid will provide certainty that the clinics will be able to continue operating with minimal disruption,” said the application. “The receiver is of the view that the stalking horse offer and the proposed sale procedure will result in a greater recovery to VCH and the other creditors than other methods of sale.”

Seymour Health owed VCH at least $6.8 million as of May, when it defaulted on a loan. B.C. Supreme Court appointed Ernst and Young on June 26.

Justice Shelley Fitzpatrick heard lawyers for the health board, company and receiver on Tuesday afternoon and approved Ernst and Young’s proposed sales and solicitation process. 

According to Ernst and Young’s first report to the court, dated Sept. 13, VCH made the bid to acquire all of the business segments as an asset purchase for $6.8 million, bidding its secured debt as a credit, less $280,960 for medical equipment. Virtually all of Seymour Health’s staff would be retained to work at its three clinics, along with a diagnostic imaging lab and Burnaby sleep lab license. 

“Accordingly, the final value of the credit bid, while not yet known, is contemplated to be approximately $11.5 million if the receiver’s borrowing charge is fully borrowed, calculated on a draft and preliminary basis, and is conditional on the approval [of the court],” said the Ernst and Young report. 

The cashflow forecast from Sept. 4, 2023 to March 3, 2024 in the receiver’s report contemplates $3.05 million in receipts and $7.123 million in disbursements. After the receiver’s borrowing of $3.5 million, it would leave a $32,638 cash balance. 

Fitzpatrick also agreed to Ernst and Young’s request to increase the receiver’s charge from $2.5 million to a maximum $5 million. 

“It’s clear that the operations are operating at a loss and they need to be covered, one way or another,” Fitzpatrick said.

Seymour Health’s Sept. 18 reply said the company had not enough time to prepare a full response to the application, but took issue with the proposed orders, including the VCH stalking horse bid. 

The receiver’s report said Seymour Health’s problems began around July 2019 due to an inability to generate positive cash flows to meet obligations. In May 2022, it closed a $10 million equity investment from BDC based upon a $30 million enterprise valuation. That resulted in BDC owning one-third of shares in the parent company of Seymour Health. A numbered company owned equally by Gurasahib Binning and Sandeep Kaur Parmar holds the remaining two-thirds. 

Despite the transaction, Seymour Health continued to have difficulty paying doctors, staff and medical suppliers. In June 2022, VCH agreed to loan Seymour Health to carry on its operations, but Seymour defaulted almost a year later. 

Ernst and Young’s report said that it learned, immediately upon appointment, that Seymour Health laid-off 37 employees on June 21, including 17 technicians, assistants and licensed nurses located at the City Centre clinic and eight x-ray technicians and one ultrasound technician at City Centre and North Vancouver. 

The clinics, a major initiative of the NDP government, were critically understaffed and would have to either close on weekends, reduce operating hours or a combination of both in order to maintain staffing efficiency, the report said. 

“The closures and/or reduced hours of operation would compromise and adversely affect the quality of health care provided by the clinics.”

Ernst and Young contacted the laid-off employees to rescind their pink-slips and retained 32 of them. Seymour Health has seen a net increase of five physicians since the receivership date, with an additional seven anticipated to join in January. 

“Since its appointment, the receiver has maintained open and clear lines of communication with the Seymour staff, including: attending monthly departmental head meetings, attending bi-monthly physician meetings, holding weekly calls with Seymour’s medical directors, and created a dedicated email for Seymour staff, responding diligently to all questions posed.”

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Bob Mackin  Vancouver Coastal Health Authority (VCH) has

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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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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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