Oh my: 'Deceit and favouritism'

Over in Vancouver Courier land, my esteemed colleague Mike Howell appears unimpressed that Vision Vancouver refused to show him an advanced copy of their 2008 election financial statements.

"Your dedicated scribe’s efforts to get an early look last week at Vision Vancouver’s campaign finance documents was blindsided by deceit and favouritism," Howell writes, with a certain degree of tongue planted in cheek.

"I’m, apparently, not in the party’s good books."

It seems Howell asked the Visionites for their campaign records. Instead, the party chose to pass it on to the no-less-esteemed Frances Bula, who wrote up a story in Friday's Globe.

"Political parties playing favourites is not news, folks. It happens all the time," Howell writes.

"Vision did this during the campaign, handing over its election platform to the Vancouver Sun - the same paper that had a reporter call up the party in the fall and ask if it had a mayoral candidate."

(I'll leave that point alone.)

"My point here is that I was jerked around," Howell concludes.

Reporters always face a bit of a dilemma when a politico phones up offering an "exclusive" on a story. You find yourself balancing the interests of the story itself, which contain some kernel of intrigue, and the interests of the person offering the story, who undoubtedly benefit from its publishing in some way. If reporters published every "exclusive" offered to them in this city, there would be a whole lot more misinformation flying around.

With that said, no reporter I know earns their keep purely on strategic party leaks. It's a dangerous game, as Howell points out on his blog, one that does no one (except, perhaps, the party themselves) any favours in the long run.

At the same time, I don't begrudge political parties from playing favourites, as it were. Particularly during an election, media coverage is at a premium. As was the case with the election platform leak to the Sun, parties have to juggle pissing off other reporters vs. the benefits of giving an "exclusive." In this case, Gregor Robertson held the front page of the Sun, as did Peter Ladner when the NPA leaked their platform to the Sun one week earlier.

However, I think it's fair to say there were a few reporters who had been covering the political scene all year - including all those weekend AGMs and leadership votes - that were a little miffed when both parties chose to release platforms to a paper that, at that point, had paid little attention to the campaign.

Read the rest of Mike's post here.

'I'm not trying to re-fight the election': Ladner

There will now be two parallel investigations into Vancouver’s $100-million Olympic Village loan saga, after council unanimously voted to hire its own lawyer to explore how sensitive city information was leaked.

It extends a controversy that exploded in the middle of the civic election campaign and threatens to drag on as a new council begins its term. The investigation was pushed by NPA Coun. Peter Ladner, who lost a bid for the mayor’s seat this month.

“I'm not trying to re-fight the election here or suggest that this issue was a determining factor in the election. I don't believe it was,” Ladner said.

“But I do think there was an ethical breach here, the likes of which I have never seen since I've been in this council chamber."

Opposition councillors, however, called the move “sour grapes” while voting to support it.

Click to read more ...

As the World Turns: Election Edition

This is just getting silly now.

Thursday's update from the Olympic Village loan saga is Vision Coun. Raymond Louie's terse reaction to a Global TV report that stops just short of blaming him in this political Whodunnit.

“Someone at city hall is maliciously putting out false information to the media in an attempt to destroy my reputation,” Louie told a Thursday afternoon news conference, as reported by my esteemed colleague Monte Paulsen at The Tyee. [Myself, I was at my desk ostensibly trying to work on a story about light rail. How foolish.]

“The story that aired at 6 p.m. last night on Global TV casts aspersions on me that are completely untrue,” Louie said. “I am considering legal action over the insinuation that I had any involvement with regards to Coun. Ladner’s in-camera document.”

Monte will have more on The Tyee tomorrow. The no-less esteemed Frances Bula also opines on this "bizarre twist."

"City managers are clearly leaking negative information about Vision councillors to the media," she writes. "Now city staff are getting embroiled.

"This can’t end well."

It can, however, end.

Who are you voting for?

Firefighters endorse Robertson, not Dhaliwal; union thinks Geller swell too

Vancouver's firefighters union is endorsing Gregor Robertson for mayor, as well as every single Vision council candidate - but one.

Vision candidate Kashmir Dhaliwal is the only council candidate who didn't get the thumbs up from the union. Instead, IAFF local 18 endorsed the NPA's Michael Geller as its only NPA candidate.

Dhaliwal's omission came down to "familiarity," said union president Rod McDonald.

"We weren't too sure about where we were on him so much," MacDonald said. "We had much more familiarity with the other candidates."

On the other hand, McDonald said firefighters were hopeful that Geller wouldn't be governed by political ideology.

"He seemed to be an open-minded free-thinking type of person," McDonald said. "He just gave us a strong indication that he would vote on issues, rather than by party lines."

Here's a list of the union endorsements:

For Mayor:
Gregor Robertson (Vision)
For Council:
David Cadman (COPE)
George Chow (Vision)
Heather Deal (Vision)
Michael Geller (NPA)
Kerry Jang (Vision)
Raymond Louie (Vision)
Geoff Meggs (Vision)
Andrea Reimer (Vision)
Tim Stevenson (Vision)
Ellen Woodsworth (COPE)

In 2005, the union decided not to back Chow, instead picking the NPA's Kim Capri. Both councillors were elected and are running for re-election.

Firefighters have been without a contract for almost two years now.

"The morale in our department with our members, I have never in my 29 years on the job seen anything like it," McDonald said.

"It's all about our labour relations and the fact our radios don't work properly and we don't get any training ... It goes on and on and on. We're not happy about it."

$100 million problem: VPD investigating "alleged theft"

What was a leak is now an alleged theft, with the Vancouver Police Department wading into the city's ongoing $100-million bailout saga.

The VPD today confirmed it will conduct an investigation into an Oct. 14 meeting in which city council reportedly authorized a $100-million loan to the developers of the city's Olympic Village.

"The Vancouver Police have been asked to investigate the alleged theft of documents from an October 14th meeting at Vancouver city hall," VPD Const. Tim Fanning wrote in a short news release today.

Vancouver Mayor Sam Sullivan says he asked VPD Chief Const. Jim Chu to investigate “the internal theft of an important classified document.”

“I’m quite concerned that this document may have been leaked to try to affect the election,” Sullivan said.

On Monday, mayoral candidate and NPA Coun. Peter Ladner confirmed his copy of a sensitive city document had been found on the desk of his colleague, Coun. B.C. Lee, two days after the in-camera meeting.

That document is believed to be a source of a Globe and Mail story that alleged council had authorized the $100-million loan, which is still unconfirmed by the city.

"B.C. Lee and I have been set up," Ladner told reporters Monday.

All those involved in in-camera meetings, including the mayor, city councillors and senior city staff, are expected to keep discussions private.

Instead, some details were leaked to Globe columnist Gary Mason, who wrote an anonymously-sourced story that, with just days to go before the Nov. 15 election, has overshadowed the campaign.

The NPA's Ladner, as chair of the city's finance committee, appears to have taken the most punches after the controversy emerged. The NPA-led council has refused calls to publicize details of the meeting.

On the other hand, opposition party Vision Vancouver appears to have benefited most from the story by calling for full public disclosure of the meeting, although the decision made at the Oct. 14 meeting was unanimous and Vision Coun. Raymond Louie sits as the vice-chair on the finance committee.

However, former Vision/COPE mayor Larry Campbell and former NPA mayor Philip Owen have both defended the decision being made behind closed doors.

"[The public thinks] it's been a secret deal. And it's not," Owen told TheTyee.ca Tuesday. "It's a standard process when you are dealing with property in the Property Endowment Fund."

Said Campbell, "If I was mayor, I'd be asking for a criminal investigation" into who leaked the document to the press.