The B.C. government added Premier Christy Clark’s former deputy minister and a BC Liberal insider to the board of directors that oversees BC Place Stadium and the Vancouver Convention Centre on October 24.
John Dyble and Jatinder Rai replace Farax Consulting president and Bullies in the Boardroom author Stephanie Sharp and Passenger Transportation Board chair Don Zurowski. Zurowski and Sharp were appointed in 2012 and 2013, respectively, to the BC Pavilion Corporation board for indefinite terms.
Dyble retired earlier this year as head of the B.C. Public Service. He was best known for his 2013 internal report on the Quick Wins ethnic outreach scandal, in which he confirmed that some public workers were doing BC Liberal campaign work on government time. Dyble delayed the release of the trove of email evidence until after the BC Liberals won re-election. Dyble was a consulting engineer with Sandwell Swan Wooster before his 27-year government career.
Rai is a longtime Clark loyalist who has worked with her since her failed 2005 campaign to become the NPA mayoral nominee in Vancouver. More recently, Rai’s Response Advertising company was paid $1.1 million for work on the government’s Our Opportunity is Here ad campaign. In 2013, Response scored a $450,000 no bid contract to create a video introduction for the controversial Times of India Film Awards at BC Place. Rai was the interim ICBC chair in 2014 after the resignation of Paul Taylor and an appointee to the Medal of Good Citizenship Committee last fall.
PavCo’s board expanded to eight directors, with the addition of Downtown Surrey BIA CEO Elizabeth Model and Ron Mundi, owner of the Coast Kamloops Hotel and Conference Centre and Holiday Inn Express in Kamloops.
According to Elections BC, Model donated $1,600 to the BC Liberals in 2014 and 2015. Mundi’s RB Hotel Investments Inc. donated $10,000 to the party on September 24, 2014. Todd Stone, the minister responsible for PavCo, represents the Kamloops-South Thompson riding.
NDP critic Spencer Chandra Herbert called the patronage-tinged appointments a “continuation of the BC Liberals’ failed approach to managing PavCo.” He said it is reminiscent of the lead-up to the 2013 provincial election, when Suzanne Anton was appointed in August 2012 and Peter Fassbender in November 2012. They both ran and won seats for the BC Liberals, but did not step aside from their PavCo appointments until after the election.
Chandra Herbert blamed “partisan bungling” for the renegotiation of Paragon Gaming’s lease for the new Parq Casino from $6 million to $3 million a year while Anton and Fassbender were on the board.
For the year ended March 31, 2016, PavCo reported a $4.165 million loss.
