BCA spent $164,922 on election

BCA spent $164,922 on election
By Dan Hilborn, Burnaby NOW assistant editor
Published March 19, 2003

The business interests were split, but labour stayed true to its roots, according to the civic election financial disclosure statements made available by Burnaby city hall this week.
The Burnaby Citizens Association, which won all but two of the seats on city council and school board, spent a whopping $164,922.36 on the November election campaign, almost 30 per cent more than its next nearest competitor.
The majority of the BCA's campaign - $115,880 - was financed by labour unions, and almost half of that came from the Canadian Union of Public Employees. CUPE's head office and six different locals contributed a total of $58,850 to the BCA campaign.
In terms of local business, the greatest contributor to the BCA campaign was Bonny's Taxi, which gave $4,000, while smaller amounts came from Metropolis, Metrotown, Telus, and ABC Recycling.
The Burnaby Voters Non-Partisan Association spent the next highest amount on the campaign, but it was all for naught. Despite spending $123,769.06, the traditional party of the right did not win a single seat.
The BVNPA's greatest contributors were its own candidates, and an assortment of local businesses. For instance, the largest single fundraiser for the party was Stephen Chong, a city council candidate who contributed $23,855 to the campaign, almost half of which came out of his own pocket.
Some of the BVNPA's biggest contributors included Liberal MLA Harry Bloy, who gave $500 to school board candidate Barbara Spitz.
Team Office Products gave donations totaling $600 to council candidate Barbara Fisher, and a long list of business and development groups gave under $1,000 apiece. The largest single business contributor to the BVNPA was a company called JVT Holdings, which gave $1,000.
The upstart TEAM Burnaby spent $109,867.48 on its campaign, with most of it coming from its own candidates.
Business contributors to TEAM included: $2,000 from Fibre Crown; $1,000 each from ABC Recycling, Boffo, Bosa, and Holdom Developments, plus $500 from Willingdon Park Hospital.
TEAM Burnaby's candidates contributed amounts ranging from Cory Coyle's $7,800 and Lee Rankin's $7,124.94 to Terezina Weston's $2,525.
Among the more notable TEAM contributions were a $250 donation from MLA Harry Bloy to council candidate Nick Kvenich, donations in kind of Joe Keithley's music and David Grenier's comedy to Tom Hetherington, and individual fundraising to the tune of $1,550 from Jonathan Frate and $1,200 by Nancy Harris.
The four independent candidates who ran for city council raised and spent the least amount of money.
Tom Tao spent $965.50 on flyers, newspaper ads and two t-shirts, Parvin Chami spent $350 on signs and flyers, Kit Nichols spent $95.27 on photocopying, signs and flyers, and Jim Ervin listed both his expenses and contributions as nil.