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Elections BC has assessed penalties of nearly $12,000 against the financial agent for Vancouver Mayor Ken Sim and his ABC Vancouver party for breaking campaign finance laws ahead of the 2022 municipal election.
The penalties were among several Elections BC revealed Wednesday as it wrapped up investigations it announced more than a year ago.
A seven-page letter from Elections BC director of investigations Adam Barnes to Corey Sue, the financial agent for Sim and ABC Vancouver, includes penalties for accepting prohibited contributions and for failing to return two prohibited contributions.
“Accepting prohibited contributions gives an elector organization an advantage in that they had access to money during the campaign period that they were not entitled to,” says the letter from Barnes.
ABC Vancouver provided a statement from Sue via email.
“While we are disappointed in the ruling, as we believe we made every effort to correct the inadvertent errors within the appropriate time frame, we respect the decision,” Sue said. “ABC has used this as an opportunity to further strengthen our internal procedures.”
The errors represented a small number of the nearly 3,100 transactions the party processed and the $2.4 million it collected during the 2022 campaign, he said.
“The findings in the report show that ABC Vancouver fully co-operated throughout the process, did not intentionally attempt to circumvent campaign finance rules and took prompt action to return any inadvertent donation errors to the contributors once they were identified.”
Sue has previously been quoted in the Vancouver Sun saying most of the prohibited contributions were due to ABC Vancouver’s “unique situation with four independent candidates doing their own thing before joining ABC.”
Under provincial laws governing local elections, donations can come only from individuals who are Canadian citizens or permanent residents and who live in British Columbia. There are annual caps on the amount a donor can contribute to an elector organization and all of its endorsed candidates. In 2022 that limit was $1,250.
When Sim and councillors Rebecca Bligh, Lisa Dominato and Sarah Kirby-Yung joined ABC they had each already been raising money, and when those accounts were merged it put several donors over the annual limit for either 2021 or 2022.
In total, according to Elections BC, the prohibited contributions included more than $14,000 given to Sim and another $13,000 donated to the party. There was also $2,400 that the party failed to return within the legal time limit.
The penalty could have been up to double the prohibited amounts, nearly $60,000, but Elections BC took into consideration that the prohibited contributions “were honest mistakes and not intentional,” ABC had been responsive to the investigation, and Sue had not been penalized previously.
Another party, Mark Marissen’s Progress Vancouver, and its financial agents were assessed penalties totalling $13,740.
Offences included accepting contributions that didn’t come through a financial agent, accepting a prohibited loan, accepting prohibited contributions and failing to return prohibited contributions.
Among the prohibited amounts was a loan to Marissen from his ex-wife, former B.C. premier Christy Clark.
Elections BC previously announced it had barred Marissen, who came fourth in the mayoral race, and seven Progress Vancouver candidates from running again until after the 2026 local elections. The party was deregistered for failing to meet the legal requirements to disclose its campaign financing.
The financial agent for Forward Together, Louise Onarheim, was penalized $7,392 for “failing to repay campaign debt within six months of it becoming due.”
And Namrata Takkar, the financial agent for Vision Vancouver, was fined $750 for accepting a prohibited contribution and for failing to return a prohibited contribution. ![[Tyee]](/design-article.thetyee.ca/ui/img/yellowblob.png){kind=small}
Read more: Municipal Politics
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