Extra calls to analyze Kennedy Stewart’s fundraising practises

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One in every of Vancouver mayor Kennedy Stewart’s political enemies has referred to as for additional investigation right into a mysterious doc found final week that seems to hyperlink the mayor’s chief of workers with an aggressive fundraising marketing campaign concentrating on town’s key property builders.

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On Thursday, Colleen Hardwick — who’s working towards Stewart in subsequent month’s municipal election below the TEAM for a Livable Vancouver banner — referred to as on Vancouver’s integrity commissioner, Lisa Southern, to find out whether or not the mayor’s chief of workers, Neil Monckton has wrongly been elevating cash for his boss over the previous few months.

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In keeping with Stewart’s political occasion, Ahead Collectively, longtime political operative Monckton solely started an unpaid depart of absence on Sept. 10 so he might work on Stewart’s marketing campaign.

The spreadsheet in query was discovered not too long ago close to Metropolis Corridor and seems to be Kennedy Stewart’s checklist of high-profile builders and enterprise people who have collectively been requested to lift $738,500 for the Ahead Collectively election marketing campaign.

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Stewart’s alleged checklist has 37 massive names in Vancouver enterprise — together with Francesco Aquilini and even former Imaginative and prescient Vancouver councillor Raymond Louie who’s now the CEO of a property improvement firm — who’ve been requested to lift cash for the occasion and even data how a lot they’ve raised thus far.

Stewart himself campaigned in 2018 towards company donations.

TEAM had already requested Elections B.C. to analyze the spreadsheet and has now referred to as on Vancouver’s integrity commissioner to do the identical.

Ahead Collectively says it’s following all the principles. Massive foreign, company and union donations have been banned in B.C. politics since 2017 and private donations are actually restricted to $1,250 per individual per occasion.

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This got here after the Wild West fundraising practices of former Vancouver political powerhouse Imaginative and prescient Vancouver below Gregor Robertson the place builders had been overtly courted for big donations.

TEAM council candidate Invoice Tieleman stated that the integrity commissioner has acknowledged receipt of his occasion’s letter and may be capable to decide if Monckton breached town’s code of conduct.

Ahead Collectively and rival ABC Vancouver below mayoral candidate Ken Sim are overtly courting developer donations, whereas TEAM Vancouver and the Coalition of Progressive Electors are usually not, Tieleman stated.