Peter Ladner and Suzanne Anton are not impressed. That’s the politest way of putting their reaction to the news from the VPD this morning that no charges can be laid in the case of the missing Olympic village documents. Ladner can’t believe the police need people to agree to polygraph tests in order to complete […]
Reaction on VPD decision that it won’t lay charges in Olympic village leak
May 12th, 2009 · 12 Comments
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No charges in purloined Olympic village document case
May 12th, 2009 · 9 Comments
Police announced this morning that they won’t be laying any charges in connection with the Olympic village documents that went missing last fall. They say it’s partly because some councillors declined to take a polygraphy test. As far as I can determine, that includes all the Vision councillors at the time — Raymond Louie, Tim […]
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Tracking the warning emails on Olympic village
April 28th, 2009 · 6 Comments
The wheels of Freedom of Information grind slowly, slowly, but I finally got an answer last week to two questions: What record was there of meetings attended by the city’s chief financial officer, Estelle Lo, related to the Olympic Village? And what emails did she send to city hall staffers or councillors about the village? […]
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Latest snapshot of Olympic village finances
April 19th, 2009 · 4 Comments
Last year, the city’s financial statements came out and no one paid attention to the paragraph buried deep inside saying that the city had provided a loan guarantee of $190 million for the private developers of the Olympic village. Even councillors didn’t notice it. It’s quite a different picture this year, where the statements detail […]
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A visit with the two brothers building the Olympic village
March 29th, 2009 · 4 Comments
Here’s my latest column in Vancouver magazine, where I got to spend some time with Peter and Shahram Malek of Millennium Developments — the developers at ground zero in the current financial/housing/Olympics twister. Everyone in town has been playing backseat driver to these two and speculation continues to be rampant about the end cost of […]
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Does Vancouver have the money for an integrity commissioner?
March 25th, 2009 · No Comments
Vancouver has spent we don’t know how much money to get lawyer Richard Peck to come up with recommendations for how the city can avoid future leaks of embarrassing documents. One of his main recommendations was that Vancouver hire a full- or part-time integrity commissioner. But it didn’t sound to me yesterday as though Vision […]
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Peck report on leaked documents: Your system sucks
March 23rd, 2009 · 4 Comments
Okay, he put it in more lawyerly language than that, but essentially that’s what Richard Peck said about Vancouver’s “code of conduct,” its definition of “confidentiality” and its whole process for reporting on misconduct at the city. It’s in his eight-page report due out tomorrow on what to do about the city’s in-camera meetings, in […]
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Vancouver appoints new CFO — not Estelle Lo
March 11th, 2009 · 4 Comments
This news release just out from the city on the new CFO who has been hired. Some were thinking that Vision, grateful to Estelle Lo for her emails to Judy Rogers highlighting concerns about the Olympic village that were then leaked by someone to the media, might hire her back. Apparently not. Here’s the new […]
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Why you’re in love with the Olympics — or not — and no one can change your mind
March 5th, 2009 · 9 Comments
I got to do a fun story in BCBusiness on why we’re hard-wired to believe the Olympics will save us or ruin us, as the new science of behavioural economics has helped us understand. My research also helped me understand why now is the moment when we’re all in the worst possible mood we’re likely […]
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Police still on the trail of The Missing Olympic Village Document
February 24th, 2009 · 4 Comments
Mike Howell, the hardest-working reporter on the civic beat and someone who makes me feel tired whenever I look at the volume of stuff he produces on a weekly basis, has been keeping on top of the city hall investigation into the leaked document on the village’s finances last fall. His story is here.
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