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Bob Mackin

The campaign manager for Keep the RCMP in Surrey (KTRIS) is scoffing at accusations that his group is breaking third-party election laws by actively supporting Coun. Brenda Locke for mayor.

Stephen Carter (Twitter)

Stephen Carter, the Calgary-based campaign manager for Surrey Forward mayoral candidate Jinny Sims, alleged Sept. 22 that the grassroots group against the Surrey Police Service is illegally colluding with Locke’s Surrey Connect party. If elected, Locke has promised to cancel the new police force, while Sims has promised to determine the cost of keeping the RCMP versus proceeding with the transition. 

Paul Daynes of KTRIS said his group is separate from Surrey Connect, registered, compliant and open to scrutiny from Elections BC.

“We’ve been a campaign for four years, we publicly endorsed, in front of TV cameras and all around media, Brenda Locke,” said Paul Daynes of KTRIS. “We organize flag-waving and events, and so on, and many of our volunteers are members of, or are supporters of, Surrey Connect and vice versa. We’re so intermingled, it would be difficult to say where one person’s allegiance starts and another ends.”

Carter said Surrey Forward is preparing a complaint to Elections BC, with evidence that includes social media photos of KTRIS and Surrey Connect campaigning together.  

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

“In a campaign where the current Mayor is facing significant criminal charges, a second candidate has been convicted of criminal activity in the past, it is amazing that a third candidate is willing to take these unlawful liberties with a third-party advertiser,” Carter said, referring to incumbent Mayor Doug McCallum’s Oct. 31 public mischief trial and Sukh Dhaliwal’s 2014 guilty pleas to Income Tax Act charges. 

Registered third parties must be independent of a campaign for a candidate or party or face a fine up to $10,000, according to Elections BC rules. 

“This means a third-party sponsor must not conduct third party advertising on behalf of, or together with, a candidate or elector organization,” said the guide for registered third parties. “A third-party sponsor and a candidate or elector organization cannot coordinate their advertising campaigns.”

Locke was not immediately available for comment. Locke’s campaign manager, Kristy Wawryk, denied the allegations. She said Surrey Connect is grateful for grassroots support and has complied with all laws. 

“While we understand that other campaigns seek to damage these grassroots community groups for their own political gain, Surrey Connect will continue to advocate for issues that make sense for our community,” Wawryk said.

Jinny Sims (NDP)

Daynes called Carter’s allegations “pure, rank hypocrisy” because Sims is running with the endorsement of the New Westminster and District Labour Council (NWDLC). The labour group is not on the Elections BC list of registered third-party advertising sponsors. 

“What’s good for the goose is good for the gander and this is another case of the kettle calling the pot black,” Daynes said. 

Daynes also denied Carter’s allegation that KTRIS has shared its petitions with Surrey Connect. “I don’t know what he’s got to back it up,” he said.

Carter said NWDLC is independent of the Sims campaign, with “no in-kind support, no coordination, and we have no data or access to data from any third-party, including the unions.”

KTRIS was involved in two petition drives, the most-recent in 2021 that was aimed at triggering a referendum on the Surrey Police Service. McCallum’s majority Safe Surrey Coalition established the force, with the blessing of the NDP government, after it came to power in 2018. 

Elections BC rejected the 42,942 signatures because they came from Surrey ridings only and did not meet the required 10% of signatures from registered voters in each of the province’s electoral districts. 

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Bob Mackin The campaign manager for Keep the

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Bob Mackin

A Township of Langley councillor hoping to become mayor in the Oct. 15 election says his star opponent is illegally hiding his assets from voters. 

Eric Woodward said Rich Coleman, the former BC Liberal leader and ex-deputy premier, is breaking the law by claiming on his statutory disclosure form that his investments are in a blind trust. 

Municipal politicians, Woodward said, have significant power to “create wealth with the stroke of a pen with rezoning decisions.”

“You cannot just say ‘blind trust,’ because you cannot sit at the council table and not have the public aware if you have a pecuniary interest in something at the table,” Woodward said in an interview.

Coleman, who leads the fledgling Elevate Langley party, has not responded for comment. 

Section 3(a) of the Financial Disclosure Act requires that a nominee or elected official must specify “the name of each corporation in which the person or a trustee for the person holds one or more shares.” Under section 5(1), a nominee must also disclose holding more than 30% of voting shares in a corporation, including shares that are held “by a trustee for him or her.”

“It’s completely outrageous that somebody would run for mayor of a municipality with the growth rates we’re seeing and not disclose if they have interests in land within that municipality,” said Woodward, who was elected to township council in 2018.

On his form, Coleman disclosed a residential address in Langley’s Routley neighbourhood and initially listed Aldergrove Credit Union as a creditor, but crossed that out. His sources of income are a B.C. Government pension and Canada Pension Plan. According to the Canadian Taxpayers’ Federation, Coleman’s 24 years representing Langley and Aldergrove in Victoria made him eligible for a $109,000-a-year pension. 

During his provincial career, Coleman fell under the Members’ Conflict of Interest Act, which requires annual filings and material change updates to the Conflict of Interest Commissioner. Rather than publishing those forms, the commissioner releases a one or two-page summary about each MLA.

Coleman’s last summary, released in November 2020, said his spouse received salary from Mobil 1 Lube Express, they had residential property, bank and other deposits, and investments held inside a Sun Life Financial RRSP “money on deposit and/or term deposits certificates.” Under the heading of “financial interests (member and spouse),” the summary said: “Member has a blind trust.”

Not reflected in Coleman’s publicly available municipal or provincial disclosure documents is that his son Adam’s company, Coleman Oil and Lube Properties Ltd. operates the Mobil 1 Lube Express in Langley. The B.C. corporate registry shows that Adam Coleman’s company amalgamated in February 2018 with 976440 B.C. Ltd., a numbered company registered to Kuldip and Bahadur Cheema of Vancouver. 

Bahadur Cheema is better known as Bob Cheema, the supporter of Surrey Mayor Doug McCallum’s Safe Surrey Coalition who was behind the scuttled 2013 South Surrey casino proposal. Then-Mayor Dianne Watts cast the tiebreaking vote against the Gateway Casino/B.C. Lottery Corporation project, after then-gambling minister Rich Coleman called two city councillors during the public hearing period in a bid to influence their votes.

Coleman announced his bid to replace the retiring Mayor Jack Froese in late August, more than two months after the final report of the Cullen Commission on money laundering in B.C. did not find political corruption. Commissioner Austin Cullen instead concluded that BC Liberal politicians did not fulfil their duty to protect casinos from dirty money. 

Councillors Michelle Sparrow and Blair Whitmarsh are the other candidates.

Woodward said Elections B.C. referred his complaint to the Ministry of Municipal Affairs, which was indifferent and suggested he complain after Oct. 15 to Elections B.C.

“I’ve been filing those disclosures every year, and I’m very familiar with the rules,” Woodward said. “I actually am personally offended that somebody would run for mayor and not.”

On his candidate disclosure, Woodward lists the Township of Langley as his only source of income and has liabilities with a branch of CIBC in downtown Vancouver. Attached to his disclosure are three additional pages with details of a mixed-use portfolio of 20 properties wholly owned by Fort Langley Properties Ltd. (FLPL), of which Woodward is a shareholder. He reported no holdings in his name, other than his personal residence in Langley’s Salmon River area. 

Woodward also shows that FLPL owes mortgage debt to Baywest Developments (2020) Ltd., First West Credit Union and Triple A Drywall Ltd., and operating debt to Statewood Properties Ltd. 

Woodward said that FLPL is a holding company that is bound to donate all ongoing rental and future development revenue from the Fort Langley Project to Greater Langley charities. 

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Bob Mackin A Township of Langley councillor hoping

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For the week of Sept. 18, 2022:

It’s MMA time again: Mackin-Mario-Andy.

theBreaker.news Podcast host Bob Mackin, ResearchCo pollster Mario Canseco and Simon Fraser University city program director Andy Yan, that is.

They look at the week that was:

The Green Party turfed a Park Board candidate for a privacy breach.

A judge allowed 15 of the 138 Vancouver candidates to add Chinese, Vietnamese or Farsi versions of their names to the ballot. 

And a homeless writer found a list of real estate tycoons helping fund Mayor Kennedy Stewart’s campaign.

Plus Pacific Northwest and Pacific Rim headlines and a virtual Nanaimo bar for a difference maker.

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For the week of Sept. 18, 2022:

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Bob Mackin

The Vancouver election candidates who claimed their usual names are in Chinese, Farsi or Vietnamese will be allowed to include them on the ballot.

Fifteen of the 138 candidates who registered by the Sept. 9 deadline included non-Latin characters on their nomination forms beside their legal names. Chief election officer Rosemary Hagiwara contested the nomination filings and referred them to the Robson Square Provincial Court for a judge to decide.

Judge James Wingham (Provincial Court)

On Sept. 16, Senior Judge James Wingham did not rule on Hagiwara’s application, but decided to adjourn it indefinitely because the city’s statutory 72-hour appeal period infringes his judicial independence and the rights of the 15 candidates.

“There are 15 respondents in this case, some are represented by counsel, some are self-represented and some wish more time to obtain counsel,” Wingham said. “Given the time limits, for service and hearing, they have not surprisingly been able to do so. To proceed with this application today would amount, in my view, to a denial of natural justice for those respondents.”

The adjournment means the lottery for the order of names on the ballot proceeds.

Bruce Hallsor, lawyer for NPA city council candidates Elaine Allan and Ken Charko, told court that he needed more time to prepare for the case and noted that the Constitutional Questions Act’s 14-day notice period conflicts with the city’s short window. He sought adjournment to Oct. 7, eight days before Oct. 15 election day. 

Wingham went one step further and granted an indefinite adjournment, just a day after adjourning the Sept. 15 hearing so that respondents could consult a lawyer. 

Susanna Quail (Allevato Quail and Roy)

Susanna Quail, the lawyer for Forward Together city council candidate Tesicca Truong and Vision Vancouver school board incumbent Allan Wong and city council candidate Honieh Barzegari, had asked Wingham to proceed for her clients’ sake. Wingham said all arguments and evidence should be heard together by the same judge “unless that judge, of course, reconsiders the issue of severance.”

“The result of an adjournment will be that the ballots will have the names of the candidates as they appear on their nomination document,” he ruled. “In that sense, there’s limited, if any, prejudice to the respondents, including Ms. Quail’s clients.”

Earlier, Quail told Wingham that she did not disagree with Hallsor’s analysis of the law, but questioned the motivation by nine of the 10 NPA candidates who are not Chinese to use Chinese characters.

“To say that someone who is not not usually known by a Chinese name, can invent a Chinese name and put it on the ballot as part of their campaign marketing strategy, that’s not appropriate,” Quail said in court. “To uphold the integrity of this election process, which is, of course, a cornerstone of our democracy, it’s necessary to put those boundaries in place.”

Hallsor argued that Vancouver is a multicultural city where there are ethnic Chinese people who don’t speak a Chinese language and don’t use a name in Chinese characters. 

“If somebody’s Caucasian and they have relations with Chinese people in ordinary life, and they use a Chinese name and they made this declaration and there’s no evidence yet entered to the contrary, then these people should have the same rights as anyone else,” Hallsor said. “It would be contrary to the ethnic and multicultural nature of the City of Vancouver to say otherwise.”

Bruce Hallsor (Crease Harman)

The ruling is a big win for NPA mayoral candidate Fred Harding, who will be the only mayoral hopeful to use Chinese characters beside his name on the ballot. After Park Board Commissioner John Coupar quit the mayoral campaign in early August, the party switched gears and is making a major effort to engage eligible voters and donors who originate from Mainland China. 

Harding moved to Beijing in 2017. When he finished sixth in the 2018 mayoral race for the Vancouver 1st party, he did not use Chinese characters on the ballot. The Mandarin speaker is married to Chinese singer Zhang Mi, a supporter of the Chinese Communist Party, and is often called “China’s son-in-law” in Chinese language media reports.

None of the candidates in the 2017 city council by-election used a name in another language and only in two previous elections did candidates list a non-Latin alphabet name on the ballot. In 2014, Audrey Siegl of COPE included an Indigenous name. In 2018, Brandon Yan of OneCity had Chinese characters beside his name. Neither was elected.

Vancouver appears to be an outlier, because senior governments do not allow names in other alphabets or scripts on election ballots. 

Matthew McKenna of Elections Canada said by email: “Currently, we can only print ballots with information in both English and French, as they are Canada’s official languages.”

Andrew Watson of Elections B.C. said the Election Act requires candidate names for provincial elections be shown on ballots in the Roman alphabet. 

“Other types of characters such as Chinese or Arabic characters are not permitted. The use of Roman characters allows candidate names to be sorted alphabetically by surname, which is a requirement of the Act,” Watson said.

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Bob Mackin The Vancouver election candidates who claimed

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Bob Mackin

A document from Mayor Kennedy Stewart’s team that lists local businesspeople as significant fundraisers for his re-election campaign contains the names of three lobbyists who target Vancouver city hall.

Vancouver Mayor Kennedy Stewart (Twitter)

Former NDP corporate fundraiser Rob Nagai, former NDP president Craig Keating and former Liquor Control and Licensing Branch general manager Bert Hick are among three dozen fundraising “captains” on the two pages, which were found by a Georgia Straight contributor.

The total fundraising goal is $783,500, of which Nagai and Keating’s goals are to each raise $12,500 and Hick $5,000. Last year, according to the document, Nagai brought in $3,100, Keating $950 and Hick $900. None responded for comment. 

TEAM for a Livable Vancouver mayoral candidate Colleen Hardwick complained to Elections B.C. and the city’s integrity commissioner about the fundraising method and the involvement of Stewart’s taxpayer-funded chief of staff Neil Monckton and communications director Alvin Singh, who is also a Forward Together candidate for city council. 

“We are reviewing a spreadsheet that was found by Stanley Woodvine and posted about on social media,” said Elections B.C. spokesman Andrew Watson. “At this point, the origins of the spreadsheet and the nature of the information contained in it are unclear and we have made no conclusions in this matter.”

After it came to power in 2017, the NDP government banned corporate and union donations. Individual donations to municipal parties and candidates are capped at $1,250 in 2022.

Nagai is president of federal government and regional affairs for Bluestone Government Relations. He spent 2011 to 2017 with the NDP where he boasted raising $7 million to fund the party’s election campaigns. He was also a member of Vision Vancouver and the Burnaby Citizens’ Association.

Last December, after eight years as party president, Keating joined the Vancouver office of Seattle-headquartered Strategies 360 as a vice-president and leader of the municipal lobbying practice, with a focus on zoning, permitting and regulatory matters.

On April 7, Keating registered provincially on behalf of client Tantalus Labs Ltd. to arrange meetings between the Maple Ridge greenhouse grower and officials in three ministries and the Liquor Distribution Branch’s non-medical cannabis arm. 

Documents released under freedom of information show that, on April 14, Keating arranged for Stewart to meet marijuana industry executives from Tantalus Labs, Pure Sunfarms, Muse and the Donnelly Group. 

Keating donated four times since 2019 to Stewart’s re-election campaign, totalling $1,350. 

Premier John Horgan (left), Minister Sheila Malcolmson and ex-party president Craig Keating (Horgan/Twitter)

Hick founded the Rising Tide Consultants firm in 1988 after heading LCLB and working in Premier Bill Bennett’s office. Rising Tide specializes in advising clients on hospitality business development, liquor and cannabis licensing, compliance and enforcement, and municipal permitting. Last July, Hick successfully lobbied city council to expand the Fountainhead gay bar on Davie Street.

In 2014, he donated $5,000 to the NPA and $1,635.96 to Vision Vancouver. 

When Stewart launched his successful campaign to become Mayor in 2018, he promised that, during his first 100 days in office, city council would enact a law to “require all lobbyists to declare details of their activities in an online registry, and make this information available for the public to view free of charge and levy fines for non-compliance.”

However, he did not follow through.  

Instead, on Dec. 5, 2018, city council unanimously passed Stewart’s motion to ask the NDP government to amend the Lobbyist Registration Act to cover Vancouver city hall or to amend the Vancouver Charter to allow the city to establish its own registry. Neither happened and municipal lobbying remains unregulated. 

City council, however, could have moved immediately on its own. Section 203 of the Vancouver Charter enables city council to regulate businesses, trades and professions, by deciding “the terms and conditions under which any group or class may or may not carry on the business, trade, profession, or other occupation.”

When she was Mayor of Surrey, Dianne Watts used a similar clause in the Community Charter to launch B.C.’s first municipal lobbyist registry for developers. 

Helping someone get elected can generate a real or apparent conflict of interest. 

Ex-NDP corporate fundraiser Rob Nagai with John Horgan. (Twitter)

There is no provincial or municipal code of conduct for lobbyists in B.C., but the federal one states that a public office holder who benefits from political activities may have a sense of obligation to those who held a senior position in a party or had significant interaction with candidates. 

“If you engage in higher-risk political activities, then you should not lobby any public office holder who benefited from them, nor their staff, for a period equivalent to a full election cycle,” said the federal code.

In an April interview, Daniel Gold, who studied the history and regulation of lobbying for a doctorate in constitutional law and public policy at the University of Ottawa, said lobbying and campaign financing work hand-in-hand.

“They’re both ways of influencing political figures and, in many ways, they work together,” Gold said. “So if you give a donation, then you get access to politicians. And once you have access to politicians, you can raise your concern. The politician [that] feels indebted to you is more likely to take your concerns seriously.”

Gold said lobbying is a core tenet of the democratic process. But it is also corrosive to democracy. 

“If you think about the interactions, you know, we elect a government every four years, whereas the lobbyists might be into the same office once a month, sometimes once a week, raising their concerns and, I’d say, massaging the output of government,” he said.

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Bob Mackin A document from Mayor Kennedy Stewart’s

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Bob Mackin

A Provincial Court judge adjourned a Sept. 15 hearing to decide whether Chinese, Vietnamese and Farsi characters can appear on the Vancouver civic election ballot to the next morning and may force city hall to delay printing the ballots. 

Several candidates who packed the courtroom for more than an hour told Senior Judge James Wingham at Robson Square that they did not have enough time to consult a lawyer after being served the city’s application on Sept. 14.

Vancouver city hall (Mackin). Four of them claimed they had not received the court filing.

Chief election officer Rosemary Hagiwara applied to the court before the city’s Sept. 13 deadline, triggering the statutory 72-hour period in which a challenge must be heard and decided. Her application emphasized she was not challenging any candidate’s entitlement to run in the Oct. 15 election, but whether they can use the “usual name proposed in their nomination documents.” The Vancouver Charter does not specifically require that a candidate’s full name or usual name be in the Latin alphabet. 

Fifteen of the 138 candidates registered by the Sept. 9 deadline included non-Latin characters on their nomination forms, declaring it to be their “usual” name. 

City lawyer Grant Murray told the court that the city’s election law sets a 4 p.m. deadline on Friday to finalize the list of candidates. A lottery draw is scheduled to begin an hour later to decide the order of names on the ballot. But Wingham said that may not matter. 

“I’m not an arm of the government. I’m an independent judicial officer,” Wingham said. “This legislation, in my view, may have the effect of impacting my judicial independence.

“I’m just giving you a heads up that if I’m hearing complicated arguments — to expect any judge to hear a complex argument which might finish at quarter to four tomorrow afternoon, and then give a decision in 15 minutes, is unreasonable.”

The judge sealed the court file after NPA candidates Melissa De Genova and Elaine Allan complained for security reasons about their home addresses being visible on their nomination papers. City hall keeps unredacted copies for public inspection during business hours, but the online versions are censored.

Ten of the 15 candidates subject to Hagiwara’s challenge are running with the NPA and added Chinese characters to their forms after a campaign worker noticed OneCity council candidate Iona Bonamis included Chinese characters on hers, translating to her maiden name, Tao Sie Wing. 

Bonamis was represented in court by retired lawyer Ruth Herman. Lawyer Susanna Quail appeared for candidates Tesicca Truong (Forward Together), Allan Wong and Honieh Barzegani (Vision Vancouver). Quail said her clients preferred to be heard immediately and was concerned the case wouldn’t be over by 4 p.m. Friday. “We’re here, we’re ready to go,” Quail said.

Fred Harding’s Twitter account, before the NPA hid it.

NPA school board candidate and divorce lawyer Rahul Aggarwal represented himself and sought an adjournment. He suggested the Charter of Rights and Freedoms could override the city’s election laws.

The NPA mayoral candidate introduced himself as “Harold Christopher Harding, also known as Fred Harding,” but he did not tell the judge his Chinese name.

“Had this been handled properly four years ago, we wouldn’t be in such a time crunch to bring Charter issues to the table,” said Harding, a Beijing-based business consultant. “There is no lawyer available to us who can discuss the Charter issues.”

None of the candidates in the 2017 city council by-election used a name in another language and only in two previous elections did candidates list a non-Latin alphabet name on the ballot. In 2014, Audrey Siegl of COPE included an Indigenous name. In 2018, Brandon Yan of OneCity included Chinese characters beside his name. Neither was elected.

Harding was one of several 2022 candidates who did not include Chinese characters in their 2018 nomination papers. He finished sixth place in the mayoralty contest. 

Vancouver appears to be an outlier, because senior governments do not allow names in other alphabets or scripts on election ballots. 

Matthew McKenna of Elections Canada said by email: “Currently, we can only print ballots with information in both English and French, as they are Canada’s official languages.”

Andrew Watson of Elections B.C. said the Election Act requires candidate names for provincial elections be shown on ballots in the Roman alphabet. 

“Other types of characters such as Chinese or Arabic characters are not permitted. The use of Roman characters allows candidate names to be sorted alphabetically by surname, which is a requirement of the Act,” Watson said.

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Bob Mackin A Provincial Court judge adjourned a

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Bob Mackin

The cost to British Columbia’s economy for a day to mourn Queen Elizabeth II could have been almost $280 million, had Premier John Horgan declared a statutory holiday.

Canada’s $20 bill with the face of the late Queen Elizabeth II (Bank of Canada)

But it won’t be cheap for the government to shut down for the solemn occasion. 

Horgan announced Sept. 13 that schools, colleges, universities, courts and most Crown corporations would be closed Sept. 19. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced a day earlier that federal government offices would close. Both stopped short of declaring a full, statutory holiday. 

“We encourage private-sector employers to find a way to recognize or reflect on the day in a way that is appropriate for their employees,” Horgan said in a statement.

Economic activity is bound to suffer while public sector employees will benefit. A briefing note produced before British Columbia’s first Family Day holiday in 2013, obtained under freedom of information, cited a formula developed by BMO Capital Markets first used when Ontario adopted Family Day in 2007. 

“The Ministry’s rough estimate is that a new statutory holiday could result in reduced economic activity in the range of about $198 million (i.e., the equivalent of approximately 0.1% of provincial Gross Domestic Product),” said the briefing note for the Ministry of Labour, Citizens’ Services and Open Government. “In addition, a February holiday would have a direct fiscal impact on government. The Public Sector Employers’ Council Secretariat has estimated this to be approximately $28 million in additional wage/salary and benefit costs for employers in the broad public sector (0.12% of the public sector compensation base of $22.9 billion).”

B.C.’s real GDP in 2021 was estimated at $279 billion, according to the Ministry of Finance. At 0.1%, that would be $279 million. The cost of government has also risen over the last decade. As of last April, B.C.’s public sector compensation base was $38.6 billion, which would peg the cost of additional wages/salary and benefit costs for a day off at $46.3 million during a period of high inflation.

While the costs are significant amid a pandemic and high inflation, the occasion is rare and historic. Queen Elizabeth II was head of state for 70 of Canada’s 155 years and the previous day off for a monarch’s funeral was Feb. 15, 1952, when King George VI was laid to rest.  

Vancouver city hall is closed for a civic holiday. Public services and the 3-1-1 hotline will continue operating. Park Board facilities will open as usual with added options for parents without childcare or youth support. Vancouver Public Libraries will also open. 

Richmond city hall and works yard will be closed, but community centres and associated programs will remain open and in place as scheduled, said city hall spokesman Clay Adams. 

Vancouver city hall at night (City of Vancouver)

“Garbage, recycling and green cart collection will also remain as scheduled,” Adams said. 

Burnaby city hall won’t open and the regular meeting of city council is cancelled out of respect to the Queen’s memory.

The federal government has declared a national day of mourning on the date of the Queen’s funeral, and the Province of BC and several other provinces are also observing this federal holiday. In BC this means that K-12 public schools, public post-secondary institutions and most Crown corporations will also be closed. 

TransLink’s communications director Tina Lovgreen said bus, SeaBus, West Coast Express and Canada Line will operate on a standard weekday schedule. SkyTrain will run standard weekday hours with reduced peak service. Bad news for seniors and people with mobility issues: HandyDART will operate on holiday-level service.

“The TransLink customer service centre, access transit customer care office and lost property will be closed. Regular fares will be in effect,” Lovgreen said.

Don Bradley of Metro Vancouver said the regional government will recognize the national day of mourning, “as if it were a statutory holiday, for 2022 only.”

“Our flags at our various sites are at half-mast and will remain so for several days,” Bradley said. “All essential services will continue to be provided to the region without disruption.” 

Maria Ladouceur of Canada Border Services Agency said administration offices will close, but border crossings will treat it as a regular Monday. 

“Our front line employees will continue their regularly scheduled shifts given that they deliver critical services to Canadians,” Ladouceur said.

Deborah Marshall of BC Ferries said there was already additional service on the Tsawwassen-Swartz Bay route planned prior to the announcement of the Sept. 19 funeral. “We are not planning to add any extra sailings beyond what was already scheduled,” she said.

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Bob Mackin The cost to British Columbia’s economy

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Bob Mackin

A man who threatened two corrections officers with a syringe before fleeing from Richmond Hospital two years ago was sentenced to time served on Sept. 12.

Richmond Hospital (Mackin)

Judge Derek Mah, in Richmond Provincial Court, gave Taymour Aghtai, 28, a nine-month jail sentence for assault and escaping lawful custody. Mah credited Aghtai with 270 days after serving 180 in custody, based on the time-and-a-half credit. Aghtai remains behind bars to await sentencing for making a hoax call to the Lynn Valley Care Centre in North Vancouver early in the pandemic. 

Court heard that Aghtai had been arrested Sept. 12, 2020 and taken from Richmond RCMP cells to hospital after he told police he had swallowed a bag of drugs. He had a bail hearing while at the hospital and was remanded until Sept. 15, 2020. Aghtai had been unshackled from his hospital bed to go to the bathroom, but took a needle from his arm, pointed it at one of the officers, and asked “do you want to get hep?”, in reference to hepatitis. “I’m getting back out of here, they’re after me,” he said before making a dash for the exit. 

The officers chased and shouted at Aghtai, hoping that hospital security would help. Chairs were thrown in Aghtai’s path to no avail. He left the hospital, but police found him a block away, holding a syringe containing blood. He did not resist police orders to drop the syringe.

The court heard that Aghtai has a lengthy criminal record, including a three-year sentence in March 2015 for break and enter, robbery, unlawful confinement and use of an imitation firearm within an indictable offence. Aghtai and another male committed an apartment invasion in April 2014 in which a knife was held to the throat of a victim. 

“The scene was quite chaotic and terrifying,” Mah said. 

The Crown sought one year in jail — or 243 days time served, which would have amounted to 365 days credit. Aghtai’s lawyer sought six months for the assault charge and two months for the escape from lawful custody to be served concurrently. 

Aghtai appeared via video from custody. He told court that he is apologetic and regretted his actions after spending time to think about his aging father and grandparents.  

“I haven’t done good and one of my main goals in life is to be good, be a law-abiding, productive member of society,” Aghtai said. “And I know that can’t happen at this second, I know that can’t happen in the next few months. But eventually it can.” 

Mah said he took into account the time spent by Aghtai in jail during the pandemic, his remorse, age and earlier diagnoses for obsessive-compulsive disorder and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. He banned Aghtai from possessing firearms for 10 years and ordered him to provide a DNA sample.

Last December, Aghtai pleaded guilty to conveying a false message with intent to alarm after making a hoax phone call to Lynn Valley Care Centre in March 2020 before it was the site of Canada’s first-known death from coronavirus. Aghtai pretended to be a public health officer warning the facility should be closed. His call led to a shift cancellation the next day.

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Bob Mackin A man who threatened two corrections

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The head of Vancouver’s civic election office is going to court Sept. 15 after 15 candidates applied to include their names on the ballot in Chinese characters or other languages.

Ten of the candidates are with the NPA, including Fred Harding, the Beijing-based mayoral candidate, and the party’s only incumbent, Coun. Melissa De Genova.

Chief election officer Rosemary Hagiwara (City of Vancouver)

Chief election officer Rosemary Hagiwara wants a judge to rule on the proper meaning of the term “usual name” contained in the Vancouver Charter. A morning hearing is scheduled for Robson Square Provincial Court. 

“This application is not a challenge to any candidate’s entitlement to be a candidate, but simply to use a usual name proposed in their nomination documents,” said Hagiwara’s affidavit. 

The court filing said 138 people submitted nomination documents between Aug. 30 and Sept. 9, and 15 of them submitted documents that claim they use a name that is not from Latin alphabet. Hagiwara’s affidavit said she is not aware of any judicial interpretation of the term “usual name” from the Vancouver Charter. 

“The Vancouver Charter does not specify that a candidate’s full name or usual name must be in the Latin alphabet, but section 78 of the Vancouver Charter does state that candidate names are to be ordered ‘alphabetically by their surname’.”

Candidates will not be listed alphabetically on the ballot for the Oct. 15 election. The order will be determined by lottery on Sept. 16. Hagiwara’s affidavit noted current and historical inconsistencies and omissions, and said that all candidates must swear “to the best of my knowledge, all information provided in these nomination documents is true.”

Harding did not include a name in Chinese on the ballot when he ran for mayor in 2018 for Vancouver 1st. A Chinese name was also not included on his Sept. 6 nomination form. 

On Sept. 8, NPA campaign worker James Letvinchuck emailed Hagiwara to ask why OneCity council candidate Iona Bonamis was using Chinese characters. Bonamis works as a transportation planner at city hall. On Sept. 9, the last day for nominations, Harding was among a group of NPA candidates who added Chinese characters to their forms.

Law Courts Vancouver (Joe Mabel)

According to Hagiwara’s affidavit, an election staff member fluent in Cantonese and Mandarin explained Bonamis’s name could be translated as Tao Sie Wing, her maiden last name and Chinese name. Hagiwara said that she instructed two other officials, deputies Tamarra Wong and Jessica Yee, to inform candidates proposing a “usual name” in another alphabet or language that it could be subject to challenge. 

None of the candidates in the 2017 city council by-election used a name in another language and only in two previous elections have candidates listed a non-Latin alphabet name on the ballot. In 2018, Brandon Yan of OneCity included Chinese characters. In 2014, Audrey Siegl of COPE included an Indigenous name. Neither was elected.

Hagiwara referenced an email from NPA co-campaign manager Mike Wilson, less than two hours before Friday’s fling deadline, that explained the meanings of Chinese characters for 10 NPA candidates. On behalf of Harding, Wilson wrote: “Fu is my Chinese last name, Ai – love and Dak – moral.”

Another NPA council hopeful, Ken Charko, ran for office in 2018 but did not seek to include the Chinese characters in that election. NPA council candidate Morning Lee ran for Coalition Vancouver under the name Morning Li in 2018. He did not seek to use Chinese characters then and, like Harding, only revised his documents just before deadline.

NPA school board candidate Milan Kljajic explained in an email to Hagiwara that he has used Chinese characters for his name while working at the Richmond Kiwanis Senior Citizens Housing Society, where many residents do not speak or read English and have a hard time pronouncing his first name.

Vancouver city hall (CoV)

Vision Vancouver school board candidate Allan Wong ran in 2014 and 2018 without Chinese characters, but included Chinese characters in his Sept. 7 nomination documents. Vision Vancouver council candidate Honieh Barzegari used a Farsi font on her form while Forward Together council candidate Tesicca Truong wants to use both Chinese and Vietnamese beside her name on the ballot. Hagiwara asked Truong for clarification, but Truong responded “can you help me understand what you mean by ‘indicate the meaning of the characters’?”

Meanwhile, in a virtual meeting on Sept. 10, Harding told campaign staff that the NPA would rely heavily on Chinese students, under direction from a Mandarin-speaking volunteer director. 

“A lot of our volunteers are going to be Chinese students, or families with Chinese speaking communities,” Harding said. 

Harding, who is formally Harold Christopher Harding, has lived and worked as a business consultant in Beijing since 2017, after retiring as a police officer and selling a residence in Burnaby. He replaced Park Board commissioner John Coupar, who quit the mayoral campaign on Aug. 4 in a dispute with the party board over support from developer Peter Wall. Harding claimed in his nomination papers that he resides in a Telus Garden condo, but property records show it is owned by a self-described homemaker from West Vancouver. 

Harding’s wife is Chinese celebrity singer Zhang Mi, who, after recovering from cancer last year, released a song in praise of the Chinese Communist Party in time for its centennial celebration. 

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Bob Mackin The head of Vancouver’s civic election

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Bob Mackin

A second man is accused of first-degree murder in connection to the 2020 killing of a key figure in B.C.’s casino money laundering scandal.

Law Courts Vancouver (Joe Mabel)

Yuexi “Alex” Lei, 37, was originally arrested March 10 on two counts of accessory after the fact and one count of accessory after the fact to murder. 

Lei was already in custody when he was served a new warrant for additional charges on Sept. 9. He appeared in B.C. Supreme Court Sept. 12 by video to schedule a one-hour bail hearing on Sept. 22. 

“Mr. Lei is now charged with first-degree murder, attempt murder and reckless discharge of a firearm for the September 18, 2020 incidents along with co-accused Richard Reed,” said Daniel McLaughlin, spokesman for the B.C. Prosecution Service. 

Last November, the Integrated Homicide Investigation Team announced the first-degree murder charge against Reed, 23, for the Sept. 18, 2020, fatal shooting of Jian Jun Zhu, 44.

Reed was also charged with aggravated assault; possessing a firearm with altered serial number; possessing a loaded, prohibited or restricted firearm; unlawful discharge of a firearm; and discharge a firearm with intent to wound/disfigure.

Zhu was shot at the Manzo Japanese Restaurant on Cambie and Capstan in Richmond and died the next day in hospital. A second victim, Paul King Jin, survived.

Zhu was well-known to Richmond RCMP as the man behind the underground Richmond bank Silver International Ltd. that was accused of laundering $200 million annually. A criminal case against Zhu and director Caixuan Qin collapsed in November 2018 and the charges were stayed when federal prosecutors inadvertently exposed the name of an informant.

Paul King Jin (BCLC/Cullen Commission)

Jin was banned from B.C. casinos in 2012, and the B.C. government alleged in a 2020 civil forfeiture lawsuit that he used proceeds of crime to buy a boxing and mixed martial arts gym at the south end of No. 5 Road.

The World Champion Club gym, a kilometre south of the Richmond RCMP headquarters, became the North American training base for China’s national boxing team, hosted social events with local allies of the People’s Republic of China consulate and the Chinese Communist Party, and even a 2019 provincial government news conference featuring then-BC NDP sport minister Lisa Beare.

Commissioner Austin Cullen, in his June-released final report on the B.C. money laundering public inquiry, said the predominant purpose of Jin’s money-lending activity was to facilitate high-stakes gamblers making large cash buy-ins at Lower Mainland casinos. Cullen also found that most, if not all, of the cash left at Silver International “was derived from profit-oriented criminal activity such as drug trafficking.”

Lei’s co-accused Reed was charged separately earlier this year on sexual assault, child pornography and imitation weapons charges stemming from incidents in December 2020 and January 2021.

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Bob Mackin A second man is accused of

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