Disclosure of DUI charge called appalling

By Dan Hilborn
Published Nov. 19, 2005


Officials with Team Burnaby are questioning the timing of Friday morning news reports that their mayoral candidate, Andrew Stewart, was convicted in 2002 on a charge of impaired driving.

"I just think the timing is more than coincidental, and I'm appalled by the tactics of the opposition," Team campaign manager Mark Robertson said. "Mayor Derek Corrigan said on CBC Radio this morning that he knew about this and he's known about it for a long time. I'll leave it to you to connect the dots.

"I'm appalled and disillusioned."

The comments came when Burnaby NOW obtained an exclusive interview with Stewart and his campaign manager on Friday morning.

Looking distraught and with his wife, Linda, at his side, Stewart said that he never told his Team campaign organizers about the May 30, 2002 impaired driving incident and the subsequent 12-month suspension of his driving license because he always considered it a personal and private matter.

"I made a mistake in a very difficult time in my life," Stewart said, noting the incident occurred immediately following his participation at a charity golf tournament and on the night before his wife was going into surgery for a hysterectomy.

"I didn't fight it. I didn't get a lawyer and I paid the penalty and moved on," he said. "I also chose to adopt the city at that time as opposed to adopting a child. A lot of people know we don't have children, but it's not an issue we really want to talk about.

"I was trying to protect my family from a personal tragedy," he said. "It was an issue I felt was both personal and private. I didn't even tell many of our close friends.

"It was selfish," he said. "I thought it was my own and my wife's tragedy and I didn't want it to be front-page news."

When asked how he felt about the revelations, Stewart said: "Awful."

When asked point-blank if he was an alcoholic, Stewart said he was not.

Stewart said he continues to have the support of his Team Burnaby running mates and hopes the incident does not impact either his or anyone else's chances to get elected.

"They were shocked but supportive," Stewart said of the reaction he received from his Team Burnaby colleagues during a succession of phone calls late Thursday night, after his initial interviews on the matter with Global Television and the Vancouver Sun. He has since informed all of his running mates of the incident, with the exception of one candidate who is out of the province attending a family funeral, and they are unanimous in their support, he said.

"They feel we're still going to come out strong on crime and I have their support," he said.

Team council candidate Gary Begin said he is satisfied with Stewart's explanation and described the incident as "a little blip" that happened three years ago.

"Some people might take offence to it, but what we're talking about is the crime that's taking place in homes throughout Burnaby - the break-and-enters, the grow operations and cars that have been stolen, and the need to involve the community in taking care of themselves and policing their own streets," Begin said.

Team candidate Gary Eyre said he is satisfied that Stewart has taken responsibility for his actions. "It's perhaps unfortunate that we were not informed. However, he did fully admit his responsibility back then and he did not contest the charge. He was straight up with it then and it was dealt with at the time. I think that was the right thing for him to do."

While Stewart said the non-disclosure of the impaired driving conviction may have been a mistake, he did tell his running mates about a 1996 complaint from a former employee - whom he characterized as "disgruntled" - that resulted in an assault investigation in which charges were stayed. (One year after a stay of proceedings, the original charges are deemed to have never occurred.)

Stewart noted that both the Sun and Global TV knew about the stay of proceedings and decided against publishing that information.

Stewart also said that he continues to feel a strong sense of duty to his community, as evidenced by an incident last summer near his southeast Burnaby home when he discovered a cache of stolen goods at a nearby property, including several expensive items that had been stolen from his own backyard.

Stewart said he contacted the RCMP about the home, but the police were unable to gain access to a shed on the property where he believed other, larger, items might be hidden and that could be moved before the official investigation could be completed.

That's when Stewart went home, got a baseball bat and then returned on his own to confront the group of five or six young men.

Dressed in a suit, with his Rotary Club pin on his lapel and a baseball bat in hand, Stewart was able to retrieve his own property, plus several items belonging to his neighbours.

"They had five lawnmowers in the shed and they didn't even have a lawn," Stewart said. "I didn't threaten them. I was loud and vocal and the people at a nearby dealership (a business on Sixth Street) were cheering me on over the fence."

While the mother of one of the young men filed a formal complaint against Stewart, police never proceeded with charges. Stewart said the RCMP also gave him the necessary forms to allow him to collect statements on the matter from his neighbours.

"I wrote letters to the RCMP wondering why nothing has happened, but I guess they have difficulties of their own," Stewart said. "But the house is still there, and it's still a problem."

Stewart said he never brandished the bat in a threatening manner and only carried it for his own safety.

Stewart also said that he wanted to tell the story to the media last year but had been advised against it by the RCMP.

"Hopefully, I can still get elected and we will get the 36 new officers and I don't have to do something like that again," he said. "We have polling that shows that 69 per cent of Burnaby residents believe crime is an issue and we need to make sure that these things don't go under-reported."

Corrigan, meanwhile, denied the accusation that he had anything to do with the release of the news.

"I don't do politics like that, I don't go out and try to professionally assassinate the other person," Corrigan told the Vancouver Sun.

"This is not something that I would have brought out. I don't do personal attacks on other candidates," he reiterated to the Burnaby NOW Friday.

"But now that it's out, and I don't know where it came from, I think people will have to judge for themselves. This is someone who makes crime their platform and attacks on the issue of crime. Isn't it ironic that they have been a contributor to the crime statistics?

"I think the public has always had doubts about Mr. Stewart's ability to lead this city, and I think this will probably confirm those doubts. I just think that throughout this campaign he hasn't done anything to give people confidence in him as a leader.

"I think when people look at this, I think there are some who will say that it's pretty hypocritical to run on a crime platform and then be part of the crime statistics in your community."