The minutes of Nanaimo's City Council for April 6, 2009, reports the following:

19109 It was moved and seconded that “OFFICIAL COMMUNITY PLAN BYLAW
AMENDMENT BYLAW 2009 NO. 6500.004” pass third reading. The motion carried.
Opposed: Councillors Kipp, Pattje and Sherry

19209 It was moved and seconded that “OFFICIAL COMMUNITY PLAN BYLAW
AMENDMENT BYLAW 2009 NO. 6500.004” be adopted. The motion carried.
Opposed: Councillors Kipp, Pattje and Sherry

This bylaw converted some 21% of Nanaimo's available heavy industrial land into a resort category for the benefit of the Cable Bay Development scheme.   You may notice that while three Councillor's opposed this conversion, six supported it.  This situation raises questions about propriety and governance in the wake of political donations made at election time a few months ago.  Four of the six supporters received substantial campaign donations from the proponents of Cable Bay: Holdom ($500); Johnstone ($500); Unger ($1000) and McNabb ($1000) and these contributions made up a substantial portion for their total campaign spending.  

Is there any connection?  Who is to say?  Certainly questions may be unavoidable, but as they involve intent, there is no way to demonstrate whether this is simply a matter of a meeting of the minds between a developer and a candidate on a project; or of the generation of an expectation which, were it to be explicitlyexpressed, would definitely constitute a conflict of interest .  As I have noted before, when the question has previously been raised, candidates have simply noted that we should not think that they could be bought so cheaply.

This same group also gave funds to other, unsuccessful candidates.  One of these candidates, had he been re-elected might have raised the bar on this discussion considerably.  In addition to the $2,250 which the group provided directly to his campaign, another $10,557 was spent on his behalf by a "Campaign Organizer" outside his direct campaign.   Thus $12,807 was spent by the Cable Bay folks on one candidate, Mr. Korpan.  While, under the circumstances it remains hypothetical, what if he had won re-election and had voted for the Official Community Plan Bylaw Amendment requested by Cable Bay, what would we think then?  Is there any sum which one should automatically consider to constitute a conflict of interest?  What do you think?

 


Comments

Brian

Wed, 22 Apr 2009 10:32:04

Most of the City councillors in support of removing industrial land inside of the city sit on the RDN board. There is growing evidence that the RDN is accommodating "industrial sprawl" into the RDN electoral areas.

 

Eric Cameron

Thu, 23 Apr 2009 19:21:00


I believe a citizen has every right to support a candidate(s) with money and any other type of help. Certainly $500. is a nominal sum and I am fine with it. $12,000. seems like a blatant attempt to disproportionately sway an election but again I am fine with it - I don't like censorship or more rules!

I am totally opposed to the Cable Bay project.

It seems that most of our council view a developer's requests as synonymous with Nanaimo's best interests. We need improved infrastructure and revitalized industry before more urban sprawl.

 

James

Tue, 12 May 2009 10:16:13

I'd be surprised if $500 or $1000 would sway a council vote in favor, I highly doubt a councilor would risk his job for a small sum like that.
What about unions that donate hundreds of thousands to NDP during provincial elections. Should those candidates stay out of talks regarding unions, strikes, etc.?
I'm on the fence about Cable Bay, but I really don' believe in any conflict over donations. That could be said about almost any decision council makes and is really stretching.

 

Ron Bolin

Tue, 12 May 2009 12:05:53

The question which I put out for discussion was: Is there an amount of money (or a proportion of a total candidates budget) which one would feel was beyond the pale of ethical conduct.

You and I might both agree that both unions and business interests spend far too much money on elections supporting their particular ideologies -and attendant actions- to feel that democracy is being served, but where is the line.

We can also probably agree that "friends" will be more favourably received in political/administrative matters that "enemies". Certainly one way of being a "friend" is by donation. As indicated in my original piece we can never know the extent of this bias unless someone has been foolish enough to be overheard or to have left a film or paper trail. But do you wish to deny that such factors play a part in all of our decision making (Outside the hard sciences where experiments can be repeated, conditions held constant and the only real proof is to the effect that the theory has not yet been disproven).

 



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