Corporate cash was banned from B.C. elections. Developer's employees started donating
Credit to Author: Dan Fumano| Date: Fri, 13 Dec 2019 22:17:02 +0000
It’s the curious case of the cook, the construction manager and their colleagues.
Wall Financial Corporation, the prominent real estate and hotel company with $450 million in revenue and $1.2 billion in assets, and its affiliates have historically been major big-money players in Vancouver and B.C. politics, contributing hundreds of thousands of dollars to candidates and parties in provincial and municipal elections.
But with the companies unable to donate in last year’s municipal elections — the first after the B.C. NDP government banned corporate and union campaign contributions and set a $1,200 limit on personal donations — a new pattern emerged.
A review of Elections B.C. records, before and after the October 2018 election, reveals that Wall Financial’s founder Peter Wall and president Bruno Wall don’t appear to have donated to any party or mayoral candidate in last year’s Vancouver election. But at least 10 employees of Wall Financial, who work in roles as disparate as chef, events director, kitchen manager, director of construction and VP of finance made political donations of the personal maximum of $1,200 each before last year’s Vancouver election. None of them show up as having made personal donations in previous recent provincial and municipal elections.
What’s more, those records show that every one of those 10 Wall employees later had a significant political shift soon after Vancouver elected its new mayor and council. Before the October 2018 election, they all donated to either the Non-Partisan Association or the upstart Yes Vancouver, two parties considered friendly to business interests and the development industry.
A few months after the election was over and independent Mayor Kennedy Stewart had been sworn in, all 10 Wall employees donated $600 or $1,200 each to Stewart — a top rival of the parties these donors had supported just months earlier.
After independent candidate Kennedy Stewart, pictured celebrating his election win with wife Jeanette Ashe, was sworn in as mayor, several Wall Financial employees donated to his cause — despite having backed his pro-development rivals during the campaign.
There is no evidence of wrongdoing. And Elections B.C. said it is not investigating the donations nor has it contacted anyone at Wall Financial about them.
But some observers said the pattern of Wall employee donations is noteworthy when looked at as a whole, particularly in the new political landscape, after the B.C. NDP government introduced legislation in 2017 intended to get “big money” out of elections and, in the words of Attorney General David Eby, “end the Wild West of campaign fundraising.”
Peter Wall co-founded Wall Financial Corporation in 1969, and although he is no longer an executive with the corporation, he is described in recent regulatory filings as “a significant shareholder.”
Reached by phone, Wall said he was not aware of any employees donating last year, adding: “But I’m glad they’re donating, because they’ve seen the light. You have to donate to whatever party you need to donate to in order to basically get good government. Because we need good officials, right?”
Wall said no employees had been reimbursed or compensated for any political donations, calling it a “silly question.”
“We encourage people to donate to whoever they want to,” he said.
Wall suggested that political donations are not newsworthy and an inappropriate subject for questions.
Dermod Travis, executive-director of the non-profit political watchdog organization IntegrityBC, disagrees with that assessment, arguing there’s a good reason records of political donations are kept and made public.
“We want to know that when they (politicians) vote on legislation or on bylaws, they are voting in the public interest, not in the self-interest of their donors. And the only way you’ll be able to know that is to know exactly who their donors are,” said Travis.
There is no indication that the actions of Stewart or any other current Vancouver politician has been influenced by any political donations.
But after reviewing the donation pattern of the Wall employees, Travis said it’s noteworthy because the shift within a few short months from the centre-right NPA or pro-development Yes Vancouver over to Stewart, a left-leaning former NDP member of Parliament, is a big ideological and political shift. He described it a “road to Damascus” change.
Travis also said that after reviewing the records, which go back to 2005 for provincial elections and 2011 at the municipal level, he could find no evidence of any of these Wall employees making a previous personal campaign donation.
“So not only do we see a conversion on the road to Damascus, we suddenly see an active political interest that they had never had,” Travis said.
There is no indication that any of the Wall employees were directed to donate or compensated for their contributions. Speaking generally, it is illegal for an employer to compensate their employees for campaign contributions, or to direct an employee to make a donation and then reimburse them, said Elections B.C. spokesman Andrew Watson.
Joanne Liu, VP of finance for Wall Financial, donated $1,200 to Yes Vancouver last year before the election, and then $1,200 to Stewart in February 2019. Reached by phone, she said that she was not directed on how to vote by anyone at the company.
“We believe in making our own choices here,” Liu said. She said she was not compensated in any way for the donation, adding: “That would be nice, but no.”
Ainslie Lam is the Sheraton Wall Centre Hotel’s director of meetings and events. When asked about her history of making political donations, Lam replied: “I personally don’t. I’m not very active in the political community.”
But when advised that her name shows in records as having donated the $1,200 maximum last year to the NPA and then $600 to Stewart this past February, Lam said: “A lot has happened over the past year, so I honestly cannot recall that right now.”
She declined to answer other questions about her political donations, as did some other Wall employees contacted by Postmedia.
Stewart’s original disclosure form shows he spent $320,228 on the 2018 election, but raised $244,005, meaning the campaign ran a deficit of $76,223. But by the time Stewart’s team filed an amended disclosure in April 2019, they had raised additional funds, bringing their total revenues for the 2018 election to $320,228, and clearing their debts. It’s not uncommon for a campaign to run a deficit, and there is no time limit on how long after an election a candidate can raise funds to pay off their debts.
When Postmedia asked about the pattern of Wall employees donating in February, Stewart’s director of communications, Alvin Singh, explained the protocol for the supporters’ events Stewart has been holding, both before and after the election. At them, the mayor typically makes a brief speech and then mingles with guests.
The crowd could be a mix of volunteers, supporters and donors, any of whom might bring friends along with them, Singh said, and sometimes, if they “like what the mayor has to say, they decide to make a donation.”
“When somebody makes a donation, we have no idea where they work,” he said.
Stewart’s team doesn’t charge for attendance, Singh said, adding that “the vast majority of the people that come to these events never make a donation. … They’ll show up, listen to the mayor, and that’s fine. They’ll eat some cheese, and they’ll go home.
“Kennedy’s always been a small one-on-one fundraiser. He did it when he was an MP, he’s doing it now. We kind of want to do things a bit differently,” Singh said. “If you look at the financial disclosure, while there’s a bunch of wealthy folks giving $1,200, the vast majority of his donations are small. I think the average donation is less than $200, which, in the world of political fundraising, is pretty low, especially if you look at the history of Vancouver fundraising.”
Indeed, those amounts are dwarfed by some of the larger political donations in recent Vancouver elections. Before the 2011 election, Wall Financial and its affiliates gave more than $280,000 to Vision Vancouver, The Province reported, and that same year, local real estate developer Robert Macdonald donated $960,000 to the rival NPA.
Bruno Wall, right, of Wall Financial Corporation and then Vancouver mayor Gregor Robertson in 2009.
Stewart’s disclosure forms also show some other familiar — and not unexpected — names donated before the election, including fellow NDP politicians like Libby Davies, who donated $400, and organized labour figures like the Vancouver and District Labour Council president, Stephen von Sychowski, who gave $100.
Peter Wall and his donations were the subject of one of the major stories in last year’s municipal election, after the Globe and Mail revealed in September 2018 that he had paid $85,000 for a billboard campaign supporting Hector Bremner and Yes Vancouver.
But Wall explained to Postmedia this month that after funding last year’s billboard campaign for Bremner, he changed his views before the election and decided instead to support Stewart.
Bruno Wall, Peter Wall’s nephew and the president of Wall Financial Corporation, declined to be interviewed about his employees’ donations, but sent an emailed saying that during the company’s 50 years in business, they “have proudly supported and worked with a variety of political parties and civic leaders who share our commitment to making Vancouver an inclusive home for all Vancouverites.
“We encourage our over 1,000 associates to be engaged in their communities and civic discourse,” Wall said.
The Walls and their company continue to be active around town.
Stewart’s calendar shows that in February of this year, he met in the mayor’s ceremonial office at city hall with “B. Wall and P. Wall,” along with former five-term Vision Vancouver Coun. Raymond Louie. The meeting, on Feb. 8, 2019, is in the public record because Stewart has been releasing his calendars monthly through his website since his election, in the interest of transparency. Journalists seeking copies of the calendars of Stewart’s predecessor, three-term mayor Gregor Robertson, needed to file a freedom-of-information request.
Last month, when Stewart declared he planned to run for re-election in 2022, he made the announcement to a crowd of supporters — at an event at the Sheraton Wall Centre Hotel.
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