After being grilled for a while at a recent Globe Vancouver bureau interview, NPA mayoral candidate Kirk LaPointe called back after the meeting to say the party would release contributor lists after all. (Story here.)
That set off a domino effect with all the other parties.
The smaller ones have rushed to get their lists out. Greens, OneCity, and COPE produced theirs in the order listed.
Vision promised to have a list out by the end of the weekend, but then decided to delay — some party strategist must have realized at the last minute that they’d just get hammered all week and the media would have moved on by the time the NPA came out with theirs.
So now we’re waiting to see what they’ll reveal.
As regular readers of this blog know, I posted about the NPA’s fundraising dinner last May, when the NPA kindly emailed me the list of who had bought tables.
Vision declined to do the same for the fundraising dinner they held last week, so I had to do the tedious job of walking around to every one of the 110 tables.
Interestingly, there were relatively few mayor developers there. No Walls, Concord Pacific, Westbank (his company rarely shows up any time), Aquilini, etc. Instead, smaller companies like Bastion and Edgar Development (?) were there, along with some unusual entrants, like Beedie Group, Concert Properties, Bentall Kennedy. PCI (of Marine Gateway fame) did have a table, not for the first time.
But they were in the minority, with a mix of other table buyers like Brightlight Pictures (who didn’t actually shop up to the dinner), the marijuana dispensary operation MedPot (they did show up and looked really cheery), the taxi drivers, Buster’s Towing, and a mix of ethnic “friends of” tables — Latinos, Filipinos, Jewish, etc.
5 responses so far ↓
1 Internet made me obsolete // Nov 5, 2014 at 11:01 pm
Freudian slip: “there were relatively few mayor developers there”. In fact they were all mayor developers in a sense. But I’m sure you meant to say major, not mayor.
2 Pete Quily // Nov 6, 2014 at 1:30 am
Actually the Greens & Cope only released 1 of the 3 years worth of donations they’ve got. They have only told us about their 2014 donations have not disclosed their dark money donations of 2012 & 2013.
RJ Aquino’s One City has released all their donations since they’re a new party, but they are the first #vanpoli party to promise to be honest with voters and disclose ALL of their donations every single year in the future. Vs hide them from us like all other parties have.
Legally no BC civic party has to tell voters of their dark money donations in non election years i.e., 2012 & 2013 because of bcliberals corruption brought about by real estate industry being their number 2 big donors after resource industry. And as you’ve said here before there’s a lot of dark money raised & spent in Vancouver elections
“I’ve been told that the two big parties now spend probably $4 million apiece — $2 million on their declared campaign expenses and another $2 million in between elections.”
http://www.francesbula.com/uncategorized/developer-ian-gillespie-this-is-going-to-sound-arrogant-but-no-one-else-is-willing-to-do-what-im-doing/#comment-1615810580
So if a developer or a foreign oil company decided to give vision or NPA say $300,000 or Rob McDonald like $900k+ donation in 2012 or 2013 & the parties didn’t disclose that #darkmoney ?
We voters would never know.
3 Pete Quily // Nov 6, 2014 at 1:56 am
I asked all 3 Mayoral candidates, Robertson, La Pointe & Wong on Wednesday November 5th’s 1-2pm #cknwdebate if they would be honest with voters and disclose all 3 years including their 2012 and 2013 dark money donations before voting day nov 15.
Every single one of them tried to avoid answering the question.
Thankfully, Simi Sara wasn’t afraid to ask them follow up questions.
Here’s the CKNW news story on it,
http://www.cknw.com/2014/11/05/54604/
The audio of full debate is embedded at the bottom of the story, or on Soundcloud here. My question starts at 23.30.
https://soundcloud.com/cknwnewstalk980/the-simi-sara-show-wed-nov-5-3
After follow up questions to all by Simi Sara to get an answer:
COPE’s Meena Wong said she would “we will try our best” to put their 2 years of dark money donations online.
Vision’s Robertson on disclosing their 2 years of dark money “that’s the goal the team is working towards.”
NPA’s La Pointe says he’ll have all 3 years of donations by tomorrow i.e. Thursday November 6th.
Good on Kirk La Pointe & the NPA for showing real transparency by promising to disclose ALL 3 years of donations vs partial limited 1 year transparency.
Still no answer by Van Greens if they’ll release their 2012 & 2013 dark money donations.
Obviously COPE & Van Greens will have less dark money to declare than the two developer parties, but we voters still have the right to know who’s renting access to all our politicians and political parties.
I hope voters will ask parties & politicians in other BC cities also to release all 3 years of donations.
Dark money is even more important when now every politician and political party in BC will have up to 3 years of dark money to take in & hide from citizens in next election cycle vs the current 2 years because of moving from 3-4 year terms.
4 boohoo // Nov 6, 2014 at 8:39 am
Yet we think throwing out group A and replacing them with group B will change anything? It’s truly bizarre why anyone thinks that…
Don’t hate the players, hate the game as the saying goes. You want actual change, start with the Province. Good luck with that.
5 spartikus // Nov 6, 2014 at 9:49 am
Yep. (and as for the voluntary disclosure proposal, it goes like this: “I’m asking the people whom I vehemently distrust to voluntarily disclose information because, hey, I will trust them.”)
Only the weight of law will have actual teeth. And the province makes the law on this here.