Sunday, May 9, 2010

BC Hide-ro won't say who used its Olympic luxury box

What do...



Pia Nagpal, Brook Thalgot, Elin Aasen, Geoff Henshaw, Paul Seto, Paul Kennedy, Jennifer Thompson, John Thomas, Arien Korteland, Jeff Chiu, Simon Vickers, Michael Newland, Rob Klovance, Debra LeRose, Brianne Rusk, Greg Stanway, Harper Hadden, Michael Wenzlaff, Simi Heer, Sylvia Von Minden, Gareth Clarke, Margo Longland, Oscar Ceron, Kyle Horwood, Mike Brandson, Steve Hobson, Darren Richter, Scott Janzen, Carmelina Sorace, Ron Matromonaco, Brent Billey, Sunny Sharma, Christopher Roberts, Kevin Wallace, Melodie Bell, Wayne Cousins, Jeff Whitson, John Hougan, Cam Matheson, Ken Bell, Tiffany Kask, Pat Mathot and Walter Greeley.




...have in common?

They’re all BC Hydro employees. They’re also the only people that BC Hydro is willing to admit went to its $264,000 luxury suite in GM Place for Olympic hockey in February. That's where BC Hydro spent $46,600 of your money on burgers and booze... hey, just mere blocks from soup kitchens on the Downtown Eastside! Read the story here. See the documents here.

The public power company that is raising your electricity rates by about $100 a year (to pay for the VANOC power bill, perhaps?) says it cannot release the names of the invitees and their guests. They claim doing so would harm the personal privacy of those who got tickets for the luxury suite! That includes corporate clients from near and far and residential customers who won contests.

You mean, contest winners’ names must be kept secret? How can those who didn’t win tickets be satisfied that the contest was held fairly? Was the contest rigged?

Though, the documents are woefully lacking key information, BC Hydro is the first Crown corporation to provide me documents. I’m still waiting for B.C. Lottery Corporation and Insurance Corporation of B.C. to tell me what they spent during the Games.

Finally, it should be noted that the chairman of BC Hydro is VANOC executive vice-president of construction Dan Doyle. Neither VANOC nor Doyle are shining examples of public disclosure. VANOC is not subject to Freedom of Information and its board meetings are held behind closed doors. They had fun playing with your money at the Olympics, but they’re also arrogant enough to think that you don’t deserve to know!

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