Larry, did ya lie?

Pivot Legal Society is blaming all three political parties -- NPA, Vision, and COPE -- for keeping the big secret.

Pivot issued a press release yesterday announcing that they have complained to the Provincial Ombudsman that the City of Vancouver did not have "legal authority" to conceal information from the public about the $100m Olympic village loan guarantee. “This complaint targets all three major municipal parties represented on council right now,” said Laura Track (pictured at left of above photo taken this year), housing campaigner with Pivot. “To our knowledge, not one councillor stepped up and voted against holding the meeting in secret or insisted on public debate.”

The Pivot press release leaves me wondering if former Vancouver mayors Larry Campbell [Vision] and Philip Owen [NPA] lied to us on Remembrance Day. The two ex-mayors held a press conference at Olympic Village to announce that the public should not be suspicious, that a secret in-camera meeting about a $100M deal is the way things are supposed to be done.

But Pivot tells it differently. Pivot claims in their complaint that City of Vancouver bylaws allow in camera meetings only when discussion of the “acquisition, disposition, or expropriation” of land or improvements would harm the interests of the City -- and the $100m loan guarantee raised none of those issues.

Larry, did ya lie?

Track says there are better ways to spend this $100M and other guarantees for developers which will come out of the City's Property Endowment Fund. “We’re told that the Property Endowment Fund has now been emptied to support the development of luxury condominiums. If the City can use the PEF to subsidize private Olympic developers then it can certainly use it to finance social housing."

“We need public debate on how the Property Endowment Fund is spent, not secret meetings and bailouts for Olympic developers”, says Track.

To get a link to the original complaint, go to davideby.blogspot.com

NPA Promises "Mobile Foot Washing" on Vancouver Streets

Photo: All Candidates Meeting at Carnegie Centre on Monday (left to right) Raj Hundal, Vision Parks Board candidate; Andrea Reimer, Vision Council candidate; Michael Geller, NPA Council candidate; Leanore Copeland, NPA Council candidate

Leanore Copeland, NPA candidate for Vancouver City Council, reminded the audience at an All Candidates meeting in the Carnegie Center theater on Monday that she is a "human being and a citizen". And she recognizes that people need "clean feet, clean socks, and clean shoes".

She has been working with unions and other organizations, she said, to bring "mobile foot washing" to the streets of Vancouver. People would be given "clean socks and clean shoes twice a year".

I don't know about you, but I want New Balance. I saw an article on the front page of the National Post about a prisoner doing life in Canada for triple murder and he got New Balance runners. He claimed he had injured himself when deprived of New Balance and the soft landing they provide.

NPA. A soft landing.

Remembrance Day

A good crowd came out to Victory Square this morning to remember fallen soldiers on Remembrance Day. This photo was taken as the crowd was thinning and people were getting a closer look at the wreaths.

Peter Ladner Hears Raymond Louie Discussing $100M Loan on CKNW and Angrily Phones In

My guess is that Peter Ladner will lose the Mayor's race over the scandal involving a secret promise of a $100 million loan from the City to keep developers of the Olympic Village afloat. Add the $100 million to guarantees already given to the developers by the City and you're looking at roughly $300 million, in turbulent economic times. The Globe & Mail reports that early voting is more brisk than expected due to people being upset over this issue.

When people were just getting wind last week of the $100M loan that City councillors were apparently going to hide from us until after the election, I heard Vision Councillor Raymond Louie and NPA's Peter Ladner on CKNW's Christie Clark show. Ladner wasn't scheduled to appear but he heard what Louis was saying on the radio and he was madder than hell and phoned in. The two men were both excited and talked over each other at times.

Louie had been saying that although HE VOTED FOR the deal, he now felt that he had not been given all of the information he needed to make an informed decision. He had since learned that Estelle Lo, the City accountant, had concerns about the deal. She was apparently not at the meeting. There is a rumor, which Clark couldn't get confirmation on, that Lo had resigned over this matter.

Louie said that he had made requests for relevant documents on the case but he has not been given what he's requested. [Vision is the pot calling the kettle black. I'm currently covering a case in which Vision's Eleanor Gregory -- who is very close to Vision mayoral candidate Gregor Robertson -- failed to turn over a key document that a Vancouver woman requested about her own case at the Vancouver School Board, a copy of which the VSB has already acknowledged she has a right. Vision's Andrea Reimer is implicated in secrecy and an alleged cover-up -- supported by documentation -- in this case as well, which dates back to Reimer's time on School Board. Reimer's conduct contributed to the fact that there is now an Int'l Boycott of VSB diplomas. But that's a different scandal.]

Ladner then phoned in to CKNW. He was not at his most composed. He argued that Louie had been at the same meeting as him, the one in which the decision had been made, and that there had been nothing new on the issue since. His point was that Louie knew as much as he did. But Louie retorted that being Chair of the Finance Committee, Ladner was privy to more information than he was.

Ladner mentioned at one point that Estelle Lo is currently in Hong Kong, where he said she goes at this time every year to visit her mother. He claimed that words were being put into Lo's mouth "which is scandalous in my opinion".

It is no coincidence, Ladner noted, that at a time when Gregor Robertson's unpaid skytrain fine is front page news, Vision goes public with this issue.

Ladner was asked again by Louie if he would agree to a public meeting to bring this out into the open. Ladner did not agree, saying that to work on this type of negotiation requires a confidential setting and that the public knows that's the way it is always done.

Shortly after this radio exchange interview, CKNW News reported that Gregor Robertson had held a a press conference on the issue. None of the Vision Councillors who had voted for the potential $100 million loan to developers showed up at the press conference to answer questions.

Both Vision and the NPA deserve blame for the $100M scandal as all councillors voted for it. This weekend there was speculation in the Globe & Mail that the new man Gregor Robertson would be hardest hit if voters responded by staying home on election day. But the voter turnout for the early polls indicates they're not staying home. I think Ladner's finished.

"Obamanation" Author Willing to Give Obama Presidency "a Chance"

Last night, I listened to Gerri Corsi on Coast to Coast radio talk about the US election results. I had read Corsi’s book, Obamanation, in which he made a case against supporting Obama for President. It left me uneasy about an Obama Presidency. But Corsi said that now that the election results were in, he was ready to "give Obama a chance".

Corsi was asked if he was now “retracting” his claims about Obama. Nothing was being retracted, said Corsi, who had last month accepted an offer from Coast to Coast to appear with someone from the Obama camp to defend his claims – Obama’s camp did not accept the offer.

Corsi, who supported neither the Republicans or the Democrats but the Constitution Party, anticipates that some of the issues about Obama raised in his book will be raised again in a different context. “But not by me”.

Corsi said that in tackling the immense problems facing the U.S., this may be a time for "new ideas" from Obama.

Vision's Eleanor Gregory ‘Pulls a Sarah Palin’ by Using her Private Email to Conduct Potentially Explosive Government Business

When it comes to conducting government business on her private email account, rather than on her official government account that would put the email on public record, Vision Vancouver’s Eleanor Gregory is beginning to look as much like Sarah Palin as Tina Fey.

Just as hackers exposed Palin for conducting business as Alaska’s governor on her private Yahoo account, Gregory, an elected Vancouver School Board trustee, has been exposed for using her private email account for communication on a potentially explosive government issue.

Gregory (pictured above) has a government email address, eleanor.gregory@vsb.bc., which she gives out publicly. Yet when Gregory was contacted at that government address by a victim of alleged illegal “political psychiatry” at the VSB — Canadians Opposing Political Psychiatry have identified the VSB as practicing Soviet-style political psychiatry and “as an absolute last resort” organized an International Boycott of Vancouver School Board Diplomas — Gregory immediately switched to her private email account egregory@gregoryandgregory to respond. “That’s the email of the law firm she runs, I think with her husband,” says the alleged victim. “But that firm isn’t involved in this case.”

The alleged victim received two emails from Gregory, both via her private account. At the end of the body of each email, Gregory’s private email address was re-stated as her contact address. “There was no mention of her vsb address”, says the victim.

Criticism directed at Palin for using a private email account to perform business in her role as Alaska governor could also apply to Gregory in her role as an elected VSB trustee: “E-mail that’s public business ought to be done on public accounts that can become public record”, Charles Davis, executive director of the National Freedom of Information Coalition in the U.S., told Alaska’s Juneau Empire newspaper during the furor over Palin’s private email.

If government communication on an issue is being investigated, emails sent through a private account will not be readily available. Dave Jones, an assistant attorney general in Alaska told the Juneau Empire, “The difficulty is finding out they exist.”

The use of private email for government communication also increases the risk of confidentiality breaches. The victim of alleged VSB political psychiatry is concerned about who may have had access to Gregory’s private email account at Gregory & Gregory. “I have no way of knowing who has access to the email at her office. Maybe her secretary does, or maybe her husband.” The victim would also like to know whether Gregory used her private email account to communicate about her case with other Board members or staff. “I wrote to the Board last year”, says the victim, “and I said that because of the amount of libel generated by the VSB in this case, extra precautions should be taken to preserve confidentiality.” In fact, the victim had directed Gregory to that written communication addressed to Board Chair Ken Denike, when she first wrote to her at her VSB email. “That was before she switched to her private email.”

Not only Gregory’s switch to a private email account but the content of email she sent through that private account – the content will be examined in a separate article – led the alleged victim to conclude that Gregory was not acting in good faith.

Just as Palin’s conduct reflects on Presidential candidate John McCain who endorsed her, Gregory’s conduct reflects on Vancouver mayoral candidate Gregor Robertson who has been praising her on his campaign website. Robertson presented Gregory to the public as his ally, even after she was exposed for having done nothing as a trustee to ensure a criminal investigation into the practice of political psychiatry at the VSB, political psychiatry which evidence suggests was intended to deter freedom of information requests and election campaigning about VSB mishandling of bullying complaints. Robertson and his Vision Vancouver party face an election in two weeks.

A press release from Robertson’s campaign office quotes Gregory as saying that her “priority is to do what I can to assist his campaign.” It may be assistance he can do without.