Spendthrifts Ballem and Hayden exposed by Canadian Taxpayers' Federation

So what if the Ottawa Senators are out of the Stanley Cup playoffs? 

Their logo is that of a Centurion and they play in Kanata, not Ottawa. 

Anyways, the lockout-shortened 2013 NHL campaign is being played under a big, fat asterisk. 

In a matter of days, the worst-kept secret will be made official. The Kanata Centurions will be the opposition for the Vancouver Canucks at B.C. Place Stadium in the NHL’s Stadium Series of shinny gargantuan gimmick in 2014. An NHL advance crew was in B.C. Place earlier in May to plan logistics for the event, expected to draw up to 59,000. They even measured where the temporary rink will go on the synthetic turf surface. 

"Petro Penny"

Who was more entertaining and productive than Daniel Alfredsson this week? Jordan Bateman of the Canadian Taxpayers’ Federation's B.C. office. He scored a pair of hat-tricks on the Freedom of Information front against spending sprees by Vision Vancouver and B.C. Pavilion Corporation bigwigs.

First he scored expense reports for Vancouver city manager Penny Ballem, chief of staff Mike Magee and Mayor Gregor Robertson’s sidekick Kevin Quinlan.  

Among Ballem’s expenses are tanks of gas purchased in Whistler, where she has a cabin with her partner Marion Lay. 

Mayor Gregor Robertson was not interested in answering my questions about Ballem's spending when I saw him at the media-invited opening ceremony of the Society for Information Display convention on May 21 at the Vancouver Convention Centre. Robertson claimed he had to get to a tour of the convention floor and didn't have time to answer my lone question about Ballem's spending. Luckily, CKNW's Janet Brown cornered Robertson a day later, but his answers were a tad weak.

Then Bateman notched a hat-trick and a bonus marker over the expense reports of PavCo poobahs. 

CEO Dana Hayden bills taxpayers $2,200 a month for her Vancouver accommodation and spent $50 on fuel to travel to Langley to meet with PavCo chair and Langley City Mayor Peter Fassbender (the Surrey-Fleetwood Liberal MLA-elect). 

"Harbour Air Hayden"

Fassbender’s city hall claims to be environmentally sustainable. Instead of using a phone or Skype, Hayden drove all the way to Langley. 

In September 2012, when Coal Harbour neighbours were meeting with PavCo officials to complain about floatplane noise and fumes, Hayden was commuting to Victoria.

“Harbour Air” Hayden’s expense report shows flights on Sept. 10, 13, 17, 20, 24 and 27. The first three were for $160.82 each and the other three $168.32 each.

Howard “Was He Pushed Or Did He Jump?” Crosley became B.C. Place Stadium’s ex-general manager on May 21. Hayden sent a memo to staff a week after the provincial election to announce Crosley’s departure after 15 years at the helm. 

Crosley’s expenses include $115.65 on June 11, 2011 for maintenance at Morrey Nissan, $42.46 for tire repair for a Nissan Rogue on March 22, 2011 and $224.48 for tire purchase for a Nissan Rogue on March 26, 2011. 

Crosley was replaced by Ken Cretney, the Vancouver Convention Centre general manager who was elevated to chief operating officer of PavCo. 

Warren Buckley’s departure from the CEO role in summer 2012 opened the door for Hayden. 

His expense report shows a $41.54 meal on Sept. 6, 2011 for a peacemaking meeting with Josh Blair of Telus and then-CEO Paul Barber of the Bell-sponsored Vancouver Whitecaps. 

Bateman 

That was three weeks before the reopening of B.C. Place, which was supposed to become Telus Park. The government eventually paid the Liberal-friendly telecom $15.2 million.

A $69.55 meal expense on March 25, 2011 shows Buckley lunched with John Christison of the Washington State Convention Centre. During the 1990s, Buckley and Christison were partners in a consultancy that was called, wait for it, Buckley-Christison. 

Buckley said he was invited to visit the Seattle Sounders and met Christison for a tour of his facility, and to discuss convention business and industry trends, “but certainly no connection to Buckley-Christison.” 

“I never participated in the practice and earned no fees at all," Buckley once told me. "He did continue however to use my surname.”

Regime change: T-minus 104 days?

A desperate governing party is looking at the calendar and the opinion polls and just might be realizing its stranglehold on power is running out. Better do something, anything. Quick! 

The Christy Clark BC Liberals are where the Bill Vander Zalm (and Rita Johnston) Social Credit was in 1991 and the Ujjal Dosanjh NDP was in 2001. Running out of ideas, detached from voters, hungry for just one more election win. 

Despite what the deluded pom-pom wearers and hired spinners will tell you, the Liberals could wake up on May 15 as a spent political force. 

Oh, they’re spending millions of dollars to tell you Canada Starts Here, when Cape Spear, Nfld. actually gets the first sun rays every day and Charlottetown in 1864 was where historians say the Dominion of Canada was conceived. And the B.C. Jobs Plan means B.C. is standing tall, like a big, old, white iPod that cannot be toppled by many smaller, old black iPods. Even if the jobs statistics don't stand up to scrutiny.

Then there’s the Concerned Citizens for B.C., the political action committee otherwise known as Jim Shepard’s Christy Clark Fan Club. Shepard and his flock want to remind you NDP leader Adrian Dix backdated a memo in 1999 when he was Premier Glen Clark’s stepandfetchit and that the NDP ordered the three-vessel fast ferry fleet that cost more than $200 million higher than the original budget and didn’t have a proper business plan. 

Shepard is blind to the fact the Liberals have bigger, newer skeletons in their closet. Such as the memos to file by Dave Basi which seem to implicate Clark in the leaking of confidential cabinet documents to a bidder for BC Rail. Clark is under investigation after a conflict of interest complaint by ex-Liberal MLA John van Dongen. The saga of B.C. Place Stadium is like a bookend. The Liberals were pondering a $100 million pre-Olympic spruce-up and roof replacement in January 2008. The final cost was $514 million and included a German-engineered retractable roof that is rarely opened. Taxpayers weren't consulted and they weren't even shown a business plan. Roof contractors are inching their way to a 100-day B.C. Supreme Court trial scheduled to begin Oct. 21. On Jan. 30, a lawyer for Canam disclosed before a judge that the company's claim against Freyssinet would be increased by $13 million to $39 million. 

Remember the infamous NDP fudge-it budget of 1996, when an $87 million surplus became a $350 million deficit after Glen Clark won election? The Liberals don’t want you to remember their 2009 faux pas when they promised a $495 million deficit during the election but delivered a $2 billion deficit budget just months after Gordon Campbell won his hat-trick. Lest you think dirty thoughts that the Liberals are going to fudge the numbers in their Feb. 19 pre-election budget, Finance Minister Mike de Jong has found another "independent" Maritimer for hire. 

Remember Stanley Cup riot investigator Doug Keefe, the former Nova Scotia mandarin who collaborated with ex-Olympics boss John Furlong and got paid $174,000? Meet Dr. Tim O’Neill, a Prince Edward Island economic consultant who is being paid at least $25,000 to look over de Jong's shoulder until budget time and give a passing grade. 

Message to Premier Clark: save money, call the Office of the Auditor General. 

But all is not lost. There are actually tiny rays of light showing through the fog that suggest someone in the Liberal party has realized the writing is on the wall. 

But is it too little too late? Just for show? 

On Jan. 30, BC Hydro announced it won't force smart meters on those customers who are holdouts, the thousands of people who are refusing to allow Corix crews on their property to install the iTron devices. 

On Jan. 31 at the Vancouver Art Gallery, Community, Sport and Cultural Development Minister Bill Bennett will announce the creation of a new agency for B.C.'s film, arts and creative industries -- a merger of the B.C. Film Commission, B.C. Film + Media and the B.C. Arts Council. They'll combine to form a new body similar to the Ontario Media Development Corporation. A one-stop shop for the creative industries. 

Bennett was at North Shore Studios for the #SaveBCFilm rally that drew 4,000 people on Jan. 22 and heard one of the many suggestions to revitalize an industry purposely left out of Clark's B.C. Jobs Plan.

William F. White's Vancouver general manager Garin Josey was spotted at the Canada Place Starbucks preparing for a Jan. 30 meeting in the Premier's Vancouver Office. Josey boosted the We Create B.C. social media campaign during the Jan. 22 North Shore Studios rally. He didn't tell me who he was meeting, but I confirmed independently that it was Bennett and Citizens’ Services Minister Ben Stewart.  

The Liberals are trying to looking kinder and gentler, but it’ll take more action to convince me of their sincerity. Here is my five-point, modest proposal for the Liberals to prove they're worthy of staying in office beyond May 14.

1. Notwithstanding Chief Justice Robert Bauman's Jan. 29 verdict, how about waiving the solicitor-client privilege and delivering the Basi-Virk indemnity agreement to John Doyle so he can finish his audit? 
2. Why not hire a retired judge and give him or her a one-year mandate and reasonable budget for a BC Rail public inquiry? 
3. Perhaps publish the B.C. Place renovation business plan and ask the Auditor General to launch a full-blown value-for-money audit? 
4. Possibly reveal the real reasons for the cancellation of the Liquor Distribution Branch logistics privatization? 
5. Maybe rescind all those the Freedom of Information delay letters that everyone’s getting these days? 

PavCo loses another director

Will the last person left please turn out the floodlights?

Another director has left the board of B.C. Pavilion Corporation, the taxpayer-owned company that operates B.C. Place Stadium and the Vancouver Convention Centre.

Peter Brown's February departure wasn't confirmed until March. The Howe Street tycoon, Order of B.C. recipient and Liberal bagman (right) claimed he wants to slow down, but the real reason was his disgust over Premier Christy Clark turning down the $35 million to $40 million B.C. Place Stadium naming rights deal with Telus.

Now joining Brown on the outside-looking-in is Derek Brindle. Brindle (below) is a lawyer with the Vancouver firm Singleton Urquhart, has a Queen's Counsel designation, and his bio states he "acts as an arbitrator and in mediations involving construction and insurance disputes. Derek advises Crown institutions and industry on risk mitigation strategies in major procurement."

UPDATE: 8:33 p.m. April 12

PavCo chairman David Podmore has emailed me this statement:

"Derek left the board in February 2012.

"He joined the Board at my invitation in 2007 to be available to provide construction legal expertise as PavCo proceeded through completion of the VCC West expansion and the BC Place Refurbishment.

"With completion of both major construction efforts PavCo is moving to a focus on business development to ensure that the business potential of these assets (VCC West, VCC East, and BC Place) are maximized, consequentially the business focus will gradually shift away from construction and more emphasis will be placed in sales and marketing as well as operations.

"Derek's advice and expertise has been most helpful through the past years where the focus has been on completion of the new facilities and the BC Place upgrade.

"Derek has been exceptionally helpful through these stages, and has resigned to allow PavCo to move to the next stage where the focus must be on business development to maximize utilization of these exceptional assets which he helped deliver, and recruit the Directors that will have the appropriate expertise to provide the guidance and advice to maximize the utilization of the exceptional facilities created during Derek' s participation on the PavCo Board."

UPDATE: 10 a.m. April 13

Brindle responded to my phone message via email:

"I resigned in February after nearly 5 years on the Board.

"I initially joined at the Chair's invitation as someone with experience and interest in construction. My preferred area of practice was, and is, in construction law. It was not my intention to overstay the construction projects to be undertaken.

"After the completion of the final construction project near the end of 2011, it was timely to move off the Board to allow for an orderly transition and focus on marketing and operations.

"Any further questions can be directed to Pavco."

UPDATE: 12:41 p.m. April 13

Here is the response when I asked if Brindle might have a few minutes to answer questions about whether his departure from the board was affected by the government-nixed Telus naming rights deal and the lawsuit by two roof contractors:

"Thank you, however, I have nothing further to add to my earlier e-mail response to your questions."

Questions persist, I say. Why no public announcement of Brown and Brindle's departures? Can one call it an "orderly transition" when there is no immediate replacement for directors who leave before the May 27 end-of-term? Why do taxpayers have to wait until a reporter gets a tip?

PavCo, coincidentally, is one of the parties named in a $6.5 million lawsuit filed by steel cable installer Freyssinet. Steel contractor Canam Group filed a $26.15 million countersuit against Freyssinet. The messy dispute, which may ultimately tell the story of this difficult renovation, could be settled in a marathon court trial to begin in October 2013.

We still have no update on the cost of the B.C. Place renovations, which were budgeted at $563 million. The government is not likely to tell us the truth while it's contesting by-elections in Port Moody and Chilliwack, for fear of losing two seats in the Legislature.