A document from Mayor Kennedy Stewart’s team that lists local businessmen as major fundraisers for his re-election campaign names three lobbyists headed to Vancouver City Hall.
A document from Mayor Kennedy Stewart’s team that lists local businessmen as major fundraisers for his re-election campaign names three lobbyists headed to Vancouver City Hall.
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 that were discovered by a contributor on the Georgia Straight.
The total fundraising goal is $783,500, of which Nagai and Keating each aim to raise $12,500 and Hick $5,000. Last year, according to the filing, Nagai brought in $3,100, Keating $950 and Hick $900. No one responded for comment.
Vancouver livable mayoral candidate Colleen Hardwick’s TEAM has complained to Elections BC and the city’s integrity commissioner about the fundraising method and involvement of Stuart’s taxpayer-funded chief of staff Neil Monckton and communications director Alvin Singh. who is also a candidate for city elections on Forward Together Council.
“We are reviewing a spreadsheet that was found by Stanley Woodwin and posted on social media,” said Elections BC spokesperson Andrew Watson. “At this stage, the origin of the spreadsheet and the nature of the information contained in it are unclear and we have not reached any conclusions on this matter.”
After coming to power in 2017, the NDP government banned corporate and union donations. Individual donations to municipal parties and candidates are limited to $1,250 in 2022.
Nagai is Bluestone’s president of federal government and regional government relations affairs. He spent 2011-2017 with the NDP, where he boasted of raising $7 million to finance 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-based Strategies 360 as vice president and leader of the municipal lobbying practice, focusing on zoning, permitting and regulatory issues.
On April 7, Keating registered with the province on behalf of client Tantalus Labs Ltd. to arrange meetings between the Maple Ridge greenhouse grower and officials in three ministries and the non-medical cannabis division of the alcohol distribution branch.
Documents released under Freedom of Information show that on April 14, Keating arranged for Stewart to meet with marijuana industry executives from Tantalus Labs, Pure Sunfarms, Muse and the Donnelly Group.
Keating has donated four times since 2019 to Stewart’s re-election campaign, totaling $1,350.
Hick founded Rising Tide Consultants in 1988 after heading LCLB and working in Premier Bill Bennett’s office. Rising Tide specializes in advising clients on hospitality business development, alcohol and cannabis licensing, compliance and enforcement, and municipal permitting. Last July, Hick successfully lobbied the city council to expand the Fountainhead gay bar on Davie Street.
In 2014, he donated $5,000 to NPA and $1,635.96 to Vision Vancouver.
When Stewart launched his successful mayoral campaign in 2018, he promised that within his first 100 days in office, the City Council would pass a law that would “require all lobbyists to declare details of their activities in an online registry and make this information available to the public for free inspection and the imposition of fines for non-compliance.’
However, he did not follow him.
Instead, on December 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 amend
A Vancouver charter that allows the city to create its own registry. Neither happened, and municipal lobbying remains unregulated.
However, the city council could move immediately on its own. Section 203 of the Vancouver Charter empowers the City Council to regulate businesses, trades and professions by deciding “the conditions under which any group or class may or may not carry on a business, trade, profession or other occupation”.
When she was Mayor of Surrey, Dianne Watts used a similar clause in the Community Charter to launch BC’s first municipal lobbying registry for developers.
Helping someone get elected can create a real or perceived conflict of interest.
There is no provincial or municipal code of conduct for lobbyists in British Columbia, but the federal one states that a public office holder who benefits from political activities may have a sense of duty to those who have held a senior position in a party or had significant interaction with candidates.
“If you engage in higher-risk political activities, then you must not lobby for a public official who has benefited from them, nor for their staff for a period equivalent to a full election cycle,” the federal code says.
In an interview in April, 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 finance work hand in hand.
“Both are ways of influencing political figures, and in many ways they work together,” Gold said. “So if you make a donation, then you get access to politicians. And once you have access to politicians, you can voice your concerns. The politician [that] feels he owes you, he’s more likely to take your concerns seriously.”
Gold said lobbying is a fundamental 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 lobbyists might be in the same office once a month, sometimes once a week, voicing their concerns and, I would say, massaging the government’s results,” he said.
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