The 2016 Fair at the PNE registered 34,000 more turnstile clicks than it did in 2015, but organizers also ended a two-year rollercoaster ride with the Canada Revenue Agency that promises to be expensive.
On July 12, 2014, the federal tax department revoked the Pacific National Exhibition’s registered charity status under the Income Tax Act, which meant it could no longer use the special GST reporting method allowed as a charity or issue donation receipts.
A special note to the PNE’s 2015 financial report, which was released in July, mentioned that management was confident that the status would be annulled rather than revoked. PNE spokeswoman Laura Ballance said the notification of annulment came August 30, meaning it had been incorrectly classified as a charity in the mid-1970s. She said the ruling would cost the PNE between $250,000 and $300,000 annually from the loss of its charity rebate.
“We had only two choices in front of us — outside of legal action — to be revoked, which implied we did something wrong, or to be annulled, which indicates we did nothing wrong and it was a misclassification back 39 years ago,” Ballance said.
“In protest, we reluctantly agreed to accept the annulment. Our position is we are a charity, we do a significant amount of charitable works every year, we feel we were unfairly treated in this assessment.”
The PNE’s biggest fundraiser is the annual Prize Home Lottery, which, according to the 2015 financials, sold more than 1.1 million tickets and generated $5.45 million in revenue. Proceeds supported agricultural, multicultural and family programming. The PNE also gave away more than 21,000 tickets to the Fair and other events at Hastings Park in 2015 to local residents, schools, charities and community groups. Hastings Park’s owner, the City of Vancouver, does not provide a direct operating subsidy to the Fair.
“This is just yet another blow to an organization that does a lot of good work without assistance, and to me it’s perplexing,” Ballance said. “This will offer yet another challenge, but the PNE has 106 years of resilience and public support. We believe that will continue.”
As for attendance, the 2016 fair began amid a heat wave and settled into a stretch of moderate weather midway before ending with a rainy preview of fall. It reinforced the PNE’s ongoing consideration of moving the Fair to an earlier date when the weather is more stable. The earliest that could happen is 2018.
The final attendance tally of 712,367 was better than the 678,193 in 2015, which was marred by a windstorm on the middle weekend that cut power across the region. The 2016 total was more than 300 higher than 2013, the year the Fair began closing on the first two Mondays. It was, however, far below the 937,485 recorded at the 2010 centennial Fair.
Ballance said the sunny and hot weather makes it challenging for senior citizens and families with young children, “but it is not nearly as dramatic as when you have rain.”
“We have half-a-million square feet of indoor space, we’re very fortunate, a 15-day run in a 17-day window so we’re able to absorb weather swings,” she said.
The Fair included free or discounted admission gate promotions on six of its 15 days, in addition to discounted advance-purchase tickets through participating retailers. The biggest attendance (75,512) was on August 30. The second of two Port of Vancouver-sponsored two-hour free admission promotions drew a whopping 55,000 more than the same day a year earlier.
On August 31, the Fair drew its smallest crowd for 2016 at 25,839.
September 4, the final Sunday, featured no gate-only admission discounts, but attracted 75,461. That was almost 4,800 better than the same day in 2015.
PNE hopped on the Pokemon Go bandwagon for the first hour of its August 20 opening day with free entry to anyone who had installed the augmented reality, scavenger game app on his or her mobile phone. Ballance said 6,000 people took advantage of the offer. •
