9 replies to this topic

[Concerned Citizens]

CCC

Victoria Mayor Alan Lowe has been reported as being away in China and Thailand during the recent historic suspension and investigation of his Chief of Police.

Members of the Concerned Citizens Coalition question whether it is appropriate for the mayor to be away in foreign countries when pressing City of Victoria problems such as homelessness, the library strike and a disgraced police chief investigation are left unattended.

We wonder if any VV readers are able to tell us what the mayor is doing on these trips, how long he was away most recently, and whether it is true or not that the frequency and length of these trips seems to be getting longer as he approaches the end of his mandate?

We anticipate that his defenders at this site will try to come to his defence, somehow.

However, we also hope that others, perhaps even someone in the City bureaucracy itself who is fed up with the incompetence of this present administration, might help us out here.

Do it in the public interest, as we say in the CCC!

In the meantime, the CCC will be issuing FOI request letters to the Mayor and Victoria City Council seeking this and related public information pertaining to the mayor's expense accounts on all trips he has taken while in office.

The text of these letters will be released to the VV website as they are released to the general media in the coming days.

We will also of course publicize the City's response after an anticipated lag of at least 2 months...standard procedure last time we went through this ordeal.

The CCC does not know the identity of the secret client who hired the Liberal Party-associated lawyer David Mulroney to send FOI letters seeking information on the former Chief of Police.

We encourage both the mayor and Mr. Mulroney's secret client to be more forthcoming and public about their concerns with respect to Mr. Battershill. Certainly the least the latter should do is to identify his or her self.

The public interest in these matters is best served by more accountablity and transparency of all parties.

So as to avoid a perception of a conflict of interest, pending the rest of his term, the mayor should also resign as Chairman of the Police Board, owing to the controversial nature of the Chief of Police's own rubber-stamped outrageous expense accounts and over-generous severance packages paid to six former employees, expenses for which the Mayor is ultimately answerable as the Chair.

Gregory Hartnell, founding member
Concerned Citizens' Coalition

CCC

[Caramia]

I have no idea why the Mayor was in China or Thailand. I don't really care. He is Chinese - maybe, like most of us, he likes to go visit relatives sometimes? Or maybe he was on official business representing us to one of our sister cities, as Mayors must do from time to time. The man has been Mayor for how many years? Do you really expect him to never leave the city or have a holiday in that time?

Resigning would be completely irresponsible given that we've already lost our police chief. The last thing we need is a leadership vacuum. He's already stepping down, giving you a chance to show us all why you would make a better mayor. So far all you've managed to do is fling mud, which casts a poor light on your character. How about trying to offer some simulation of leadership instead of just sniping from the sidelines? I am sure that would get you more votes than your current strategy.

Gerald Hartwig is allegedly the name of the fellow who pulled the FOI smear on the police chief. I see you are following in his footsteps. Knowing your beliefs, this is very humorous. Perhaps you should do some investigation into the ideals of the man you are emulating.

[Holden West]

The mayor of a city is like a CEO of a corporation. Travel to initiate and maintain trade and tourism links is vital to Victoria's health. Every mayor in every city in the world does it. The pittance spent on these trips pales in comparison to the economic spin-offs. I fail to see controversy.



Minister Ida Chong and Victoria Mayor Alan Lowe
with Chinese officials at the Suzhou Industrial Park November 20.

The day concluded with a Suzhou-Victoria Memorandum of Understanding signing event that I was honoured to witness. This agreement represents a new opportunity that builds on the long history of friendship and partnership between the two cities. It commences a new and important direction for this long standing sister city relationship. It galvanizes the heretofore friendly relationship between the two cities into a mutual commitment toward increased trade and investment thus fulfilling the test of economic robustness of the twinning relationship with our capital city. Clearly, twinning is a viable and proven approach to building important and successful economic, educational, and cultural relationships in British Columbia that will result in mutual benefits to our citizens.

[Concerned Citizens]

CCC

Our primary interest is in determining whether these trips were in the public interest.

It is unclear whether they were undertaken in Mr. Lowe's capacity as the mayor of the City of Victoria, or whether he was on vacation as a private citizen.

The trips to China are of dubious economic benefit directly to the City. The mayor has, however, been taking trips to the country for some years.

The trips to Thailand are new, and may well be vacations. We are not aware of any real or known direct economic advantages to the City of Victoria in formal relations to that country.

If the trips were public in nature, they are open to public scrutiny. If they are private, it would be unseemly for him to be pursuing any kind of private business advantage in those countries while still in public office.

He must clearly prove to us that he was not undertaking or does not intend to undertake any private business in either country while still in public office.

We are also gravely concerned that the mayor not be doing any public business with a vicous atheistic Communist Party of China monopoly regime with an appaling human rights abuse record against Chinese Christian, Falun Gong and Tibetan Buddhist families.

The difference between our modus operandi and that of the secret client who hired Mr. Mulroney to find out more about the police chief is that we do everything in an overt manner.

By posting our intentions to this public website, and by disseminating this information to other media outlets in a press release in the coming week, we are effectively giving warning to the mayor as a courtesy that we are about to send these FOI letters, so he has more than ample to time to prepare his papers, and knows the identity of his adversaries.

Whether Gerald Hartwig is the secret client or not is not known to us. I know Gerald as a former neighbour on Rockland Avenue. I know that he shares mutual concerns about wasted tax dollars, corruption and incompetence at all levels at City Hall and the Police Station.

He is not, however, a member, nor has he ever been, of the Concerned Citizens' Coalition, nor of our legal arm, the Greater Victoria Concerned Citizens' Association.

We appreciate the general thrust of the questions contained in the FOI letters sent by the secrect client, especially those pertaining to the police chief's apparently out-of-control expenses and the mayor's apparent habit of rubber stamping them without any apparent diligence or rigour.

However, the secret client, whoever he or she is, has done a grave disservice by hiding his or her identity, not only to the mayor and police chief, but also to all of Victoria.

If a police chief and mayor are this vulnerable to the highly unusual legal manoeuvres of a secret individual or cabal of conspiritors, unsubstanciated allegations, a nocturnal break-in into the police chief's lawyer's office, an RCMP investigation into the suspended police chief, and all kinds of sordid gossip, neither the public nor the private interest is very well served.

The Chief of Police and the mayor have a right to face their accuser.

The citizens of Victoria deserve to know all of the facts now.

Gregory Hartnell
Concerned Citizens Coalition

CCC

[spanky123]

Gregory,

You obviously haven't made too many FOI act requests in the past.

The mayor will be long gone from office before you get any meaningful response and even then anything of value will either be redacted or sitting in the bottom of a shredder.

A long time friend of mine who has made more FOI act requests then you can count has often said that the only time he ever got what he was actually looking for was when somebody screwed up big time (ie didn't "lose" the materials).

Personally I don't care why the mayor was overseas. What I care about is the hundreds of thousands of dollars being paid to people to sit at home when the money could have covered another 1/2 dozen officers patrolling our streets.

[Holden West]

Every trip made by every politician is a combination of business and pleasure. It is physically impossible to have a business trip without personal time. And even personal trips made by municipal politicians have business conducted while they're away (especially during this BlackBerry age).

As for doing business with China--yes, they're a dysfunctional police state. Yet it's easier to change the politics of a country you have economic ties with than a country with no ties (think North Korea, Cuba etc.)

Thomas Friedman talks about the importance of international trade and peace:

In 2.0, I wrote that no two countries that have McDonald's have ever fought a war since each got McDonald's. That was really an argument about trade and integration.
Now we got to 3.0 and I have a variation on my McDonald's theory. In my new theory, no two countries that are part of a global supply chain will fight ever a war against each other as long as they are each part of the supply chain. So it's a level deeper.
When you, India, become the backroom of American Express and General Electric, you can't take a day off, you can't say, 'Sorry GE, we got to take a week off to fight a war, a nuclear war on top of it,' and GE says, 'Sorry India, we are now talking about trade. You are running my credit card business, my healthcare business, my employee retirement plan, you can't take a minute off, let alone a day or week.'

It's a little off topic but I believe the more economic ties, the more you are able to influence the politics of a country. Although I suppose it works the other way too... :-/

[aastra]

We anticipate that his defenders at this site will try to come to his defence, somehow.

Is this a stock message that you're posting all over the place or something? That bit about "his defenders" would seem to have no relevance here.

[spanky123]

I don't blame anyone who makes a compliant against a police officer from wanting to "hide" their identity given the choice.

I had an aunt a number of years ago (not in Victoria) who claims she filed a complaint against a police officer for the rough treatment of a suspect that she witnessed. She had no relation to the suspect and was simply a passerby who thought she was doing the right thing. That is until she went to work the next day and received three seperate tickets for failing to signal a lane change, driving 5km over the speed limit, and not having a legible signature on the back of her license.

She probably would have received a number of tickets on the way home as well but her first stop was the police station to withdraw her complaint.

[Baro]

that's terrible, police corruption is terrible. I really wish there was more that could be done, but they have a monopoly on the law.

[Caramia]

Interesting spanky, that this is exactly the kind of behaviour our chief was known for cracking down on. No wonder he made enemies.