[GB] The 2009 BC Election Was Won by Deception

Guest blogger: Gabriel Yiu, former BC NDP candidate for Vancouver Fraserview

To clearly stand out a guest blogger entry, all such headlines will begin with [GB].

The year is coming to an end; now is the time for a sober review. Today, if I say that the 2009 BC provincial election was won by deception, I think not many people would object to my conclusion. After all, whether it’s the HST, a deficit six times over the claimed amount, drastic cuts to health and education, cancellation of the funding to community and cultural organizations, instructions to delete email evidence in the BC Rail corruption trial during election, or BC being the second worst economy in Canada… any one of these issues, if revealed during the election, could well yield a completely different outcome.

At Vancouver-Fraserview, the riding for which I ran for election, the contrast before and after the election is similarly stark. Prior to the election, my rival Kash Heed was praised by columnists of the two local English dailies. Heed even complained to the English media accusing his election opponent of running a nasty campaign.

Kash Heed’s campaign strategy in Vancouver-Fraserview focused on two issues: his capacity of being police chief and the smear that “the NDP will bring in inheritance tax.” Heed had produced two campaign leaflets. The first piece was to promote himself by way of his photograph as police chief. His second leaflet was only distributed to the homes of residents in the last few days prior to the voting day. In it, it stated slanderously that the NDP would bring in an inheritance tax. The interesting thing is, in this English-Chinese bilingual leaflet, the English text did not attack “the NDP’s inheritance tax.” Likewise, Heed’s campaign office also issued a Chinese written media release to the Chinese media criticizing “the NDP’s inheritance tax.” Apparently, Heed’s office didn’t send this media release to the English media.

So why should Heed only criticize “the NDP’s inheritance tax” in the Chinese media and to the Chinese electorate and give up such an opportunity to raise the same issue on the English media and to English-speaking voters?

I would suggest that Heed’s act is a deliberate attempt to deceive the Chinese electorate and the Chinese media. He probably understood that the smear that “the NDP will bring in inheritance tax” wouldn’t carry any weight on the English media and such a dirty tactic might even backfire. It’s a fact that the NDP election platform had never mentioned any inheritance tax and the BC Liberals or Heed had not attacked “the NDP’s inheritance tax” on the English-language media.

I have good reasons to believe that the Liberals and Heed made up the threat that “the NDP will bring in inheritance tax” to deceive Chinese voters. Today, it’s no longer news that a political party would advocate some policy in order to get the Chinese vote, but applying a strategy to deceive Chinese voters is very rare.

Heed’s campaign focusing on his position as police chief has also raised some concerns; in fact, the Liberal candidate might even have broken the law. Heed was indeed the police chief of West Vancouver before he quit. The concerns here are not his title but his use of the official photograph as West Vancouver police chief and his uniform for campaign purposes.

According to Section 9 of the code of professional conduct under the Police Act, a police officer “commits the disciplinary default of corrupt practice” if he or she uses their authority or position, or equipment or facilities as a member of the force “for personal gain or purposes unrelated to the performance of his or her duties as a police officer.”

In addition, this official photograph belongs to the West Vancouver Police Department and the City of West Vancouver and Heed’s unauthorized use of the photograph smacks of the unlawful use of government property.

A more intriguing point is this: if people take a closer look at that photograph, they will discover that Heed’s insignia on his uniform had been air-brushed to make it unrecognizable. What it means is that Heed realized that it’s a problem using this police-uniform photograph. It also indicated that this was clearly a deliberate use and not a case of mere negligence.

Some people might think that Heed was former police chief so this is merely a technicality. Unless Heed could provide the City of West Vancouver’s authorization (but how could the city authorize the photo for election purposes?), the use of the official photo is an infringement of copyright. The more serious point of this matter is that Heed is not any ordinary citizen who might not know these kinds of legal offence. He was a senior, and now the most senior, police officer in BC responsible for upholding the law. What had happened to his predecessor, Solicitor General John van Dongen, was still fresh in people’s mind: Hagan was forced to resign after his speed driving offences had been revealed. Although ordinary citizens may commit a speed driving offence, it’s a completely different matter when the head of the police force was caught deliberately breaking the law. Van Dongen might not have needed to resign in disgrace if he had not been in that official capacity.

During the provincial election, Kash Heed adamantly denied he resigned his West Vancouver police chief job because of the two complaints against him. He said it’s very, very unfair to him because he had spent over 30 years in policing with the utmost integrity and he criticized those who used such “low tactics” to defame him.

Obviously, Heed didn’t apply his utmost integrity in his election campaign. I wonder if he practiced what he said as a police officer. Otherwise, the February 2009 issue of the Vancouver Police Newsletter wouldn’t publish such a comment as this: “A police group says Heed displayed ‘callous disregard’ for the well being of an officer. His actions were called ‘despicable.’”

After the election, we can see a rather different situation. The first complaint was against Heed’s disclosing information about a child-pornography investigation to a co-worker of the suspect. Not long after the election, the revelation of an email indicated that the complaint is not “completely, completely without substance.” The email was from a member of the West Vancouver police board and it indicated that Heed had allegedly disclosed such information to a co-worker of the suspect. Because of this email, the Vancouver Sun demanded that Heed step down as solicitor general to face an investigation. If he refused, the editorial went on, Premier Campbell should remove Heed. Michael Smyth, the provincial affairs critic of The Province, also wrote an article making the same demand. But both were ignored by Campbell and Heed. It’s unfortunate that the Liberals have shown quite different sets of standards before and after the election. (Van Dongen resigned for his speed driving prior to the election).

As regards the second police complaint against Heed, the two police who made the complaint have recently filed a case in court against the former West Van police chief. Although we cannot deduce that Heed has done any wrong simply because he is being sued, with individuals willing to spend their money to bring this matter to court, it suggests at least that this complaint is not “without substance” as claimed.

On the contrary, if these two complaints against Heed are not without substance, then it would make people wonder whether it had anything to do with Heed’s abrupt resignation as police chief. (According to BC’s law, if a police leaves his job, the complaint against the officer would be dismissed.)

I’ve seen extraordinary dirty tricks in action in Vancouver-Fraserview during the election and I would like to reveal some of them. There’re people who were willing to break the law (Election BC has ruled that the leaflets were illegal) and spend a lot of money to print over 100,000 English-Chinese bilingual leaflets to slander the NDP. These leaflets were planned to be distributed by the post office to the families of three Vancouver eastside ridings. The Chinese population in each of these three ridings is over 40%.

The NDP learned that there’re huge numbers of these leaflets at the post office ready to be distributed. The matter was reported to Election BC and that government body instructed the post office not to distribute it. Unfortunately, distribution was only stopped for Vancouver Kingsway and Kensington but was made to the families in Fraserview. When the media asked Heed about this matter, he said he had nothing to do with these illegal leaflets. But amazingly and coincidentally, these leaflets also criticized “the NDP’s inheritance tax.”

So who would spend a lot of money on printing over a hundred thousand leaflets and on postage and risk breaking the law to smear the NDP during the election?

The above was merely the prologue. On the eve of the voting day, my campaign office received several calls from Chinese voters telling us they’d received two Cantonese telephone broadcast calls to their home. The voters then asked us whether the NDP was going to bring in inheritance tax. When they realized that it was a dirty trick, they were furious.

After the election, we discovered that many of the Chinese electorate who said they were planning to vote for me got the two telephone broadcast calls. In addition, on election day, they received a mailed envelop with leaflets inside slandering the NDP (since the leaflets were put inside the envelops, the Post Office didn’t know the leaflets were illegal; therefore, there was no way of stopping them).

The effect was this: in the final week of the election, numerous Chinese voters living in Vancouver-Fraserview had received three sets of leaflets (including one from Kash Heed) and two telephone recordings with the slanderous untrue claim that “the NDP will bring in inheritance tax.”

I got a copy of the telephone broadcast from a voter’s answering machine and it was truly a sensational and well-manipulated campaign message. This is the translation of one of the anonymous telephone broadcasts:

“Happy Mother’s Day. I’m calling because I’m very worried about members of my family. The NDP will bring in inheritance tax. The reason why we work so hard is for our next generation but the NDP is taking away the money I’ve earned, so there is nothing left from me to my children. Please think very very carefully before you cast your vote on May 12, WE CANNOT LET THE NDP EXPLOIT US.”

The intriguing fact is that not only is this message very similar to the message in Heed’s second leaflet, we discovered that only Chinese families who indicated that they would vote for the NDP received these telephone broadcasts and the leaflets. My friends and volunteers had checked with non-Chinese voters as well as Chinese families who did not say they’re going to vote NDP. None of them received the calls and the election day mailed leaflets.

This is an extraordinary finding, because making the calls and mailing the leaflets are beyond the capacity of ordinary citizens. What was involved was not only money. The perpetrators also possessed very accurate voters’ information, which included their name, address, telephone, race and voting preference. As mighty as Election BC is, it would only have knowledge of the first three kinds of information. It took a lot of work to pick out Chinese voters with their last names. It took the candidate and his volunteers weeks of telephone calls and door knocking to find out the voting preference of their electorate.

Thus, only a very few number of people would have the capacity to pull the above dirty trick. Other than the campaign offices of the NDP and the BC Liberal Party (the Green Party didn’t have the resources to compile it), I would be interested to know who else could obtain such voter information, and I urge anyone who knows this matter to contact this writer.

I am certain that the honorable solicitor general, if asked about this matter, would deny he is connected with such dishonorable tricks.

The matters involved in the whole nasty affair go far beyond one election. They are about the acceptability of certain campaign tricks, the deliberate breaking of the law, and the targeting of Chinese voters for political deception.

—————————————

Disclaimer: Views expressed by guest bloggers are theirs and may not represent those of CIV.

By inviting guest bloggers to write here, I’d like to see us grow together with more diverse ideas and perspectives. If anyone believe the idea is cool, please don’t hesitate to submit your stuff to me. We use real names and identities here. Thank you.

Related posts

• [GB] 9 reasons why CSIS chief should resign or be fired (3)
• [GB] Does party affiliation affect views on immigration? (7)
• [GB] Justice or rights? (6)
• [GB] Canada doubles requirements of investor immigrant program (3)
• [GB] CSIS chief should be accountable for his public remark (14)

Short URL: http://www.chineseinvancouver.ca/?p=10231