Elections BC has opened an investigation into Progress Vancouver’s finances

ELECTIONS BC announced on Tuesday that Progress Vancouver has been deregistered as an elector organization for failing to meet campaign financing disclosure requirements established by the Local Elections Campaign Financing Act (LECFA). As a result, candidates endorsed by Progress Vancouver in the 2022 General Local Elections are disqualified from running in local elections until after the 2026 General Local Elections.

Mark Marissen is one of the candidates who has been disqualified. Marissen, principal of Burrard Strategy Inc., a communications company he founded, was a candidate for mayor of the City of Vancouver and placed fourth with 3.47% of the vote.

He was also hired this year by Surrey Mayor Brenda Locke to lobby the provincial government for keeping the RCMP in Surrey.

The filing deadline for campaign financing reports from the 2022 General Local Elections was January 13, 2023. Progress Vancouver and six of their eight endorsed candidates did not submit the required reports by this deadline.

Progress Vancouver and its endorsed candidates did file reports by the late filing deadline of February 13, 2023. However, the report filed by Progress Vancouver did not meet LECFA’s requirements.

The report did not provide information about the organization’s campaign finances, including campaign contribution details and campaign-period expenses attributed to specific candidates. The report also disclosed several apparent violations of campaign financing rules, including accepting:

• a non-permissible loan of $50,000,
• contributions without reporting the required information (missing or incomplete contributor names and addresses),
• prohibited campaign contributions from outside British Columbia, and
• contributions more than the annual campaign contribution limit.

Elections BC notified Progress Vancouver on March 10, 2023, that they were required to file a corrective supplementary report within 30 days. Since then, Elections BC advised Progress Vancouver multiple times on their legal responsibilities and what was required of them to correct the deficiencies in the financial reports. Despite this Progress Vancouver did not provide a supplementary report that addressed the legislated reporting deficiencies by the compliance deadline.

Under section 64(3) of LECFA, any elector organization that fails to file a disclosure statement, annual report or supplementary report with the required information must be deregistered.

Further, under section 65.1(1) of LECFA, any candidates endorsed by that elector organization are disqualified from running in local elections until after the next general local elections.

Elections BC said the following candidates are therefore disqualified:

Progress Vancouver’s deregistration is effective July 4, 2023. As part of the deregistration process, Progress Vancouver must file a deregistration report within six months (by January 4, 2024) for the period from January 1 to July 4, 2023. A separate deregistration report must also be filed if any financial transactions are made after July 4, 2023. Progress Vancouver may not re-register until after the 2026 General Local Elections.

Elections BC has opened an investigation into Progress Vancouver’s finances. Further enforcement actions may apply depending on the results of this investigation. Elections BC will provide an update on the outcome of this investigation once it concludes.