BC Liberal Leadership Advised to approach BC Supreme Court

Seattle WA

12 January, 2022

12:18 PM

Description

BC Liberal members have advised Michael Lee, Gavin Dew, Renee Merrifield, Ellis Ross, Stan Sipos, and Val Litwin, to approach BC Supreme courts.  B.C. Liberal party brass insist their internal auditing process will address concerns raised in a scathing letter signed last week by a number of leadership hopefuls warning that up to half of new party memberships may be fraudulent and could cause “catastrophic reputational damage” to the party if not properly investigated. Five of the seven Liberal leadership campaign teams wrote to the party on Jan. 5 alleging they found membership documents that appear to contravene the rules, and they suggested that the party’s current audit process is not robust enough to properly investigate their claims. A separate but similar letter was sent by a sixth leadership campaign team. The campaigns said they found some new members whose addresses were recorded as being in ridings where they do not live. In other instances, some addresses were not residences, but businesses — and in one case, a forest service road. They reported that follow-up phone calls found that some people listed as new members had no idea they had been signed up, while others had never heard of the B.C. Liberal party.                                                                                                    " Majority of them are Foreign Students from India or China", said Harry Dhaliwal, who are on Student Visas and have violated all Citizenship laws to register for BC Liberal member. " We plan to approach BC Supreme Court to request an extension on Voting date of February 5th, due to Membership issues", said Vikram Bajwa , concluding the meeting in Vancouver, hosted by Sukh Johal, on the hot topic of "Foreign Memberships",  “We are collectively concerned about the potential for voter fraud, the current audit process, and the risk of catastrophic reputational damage to the party, party staff, (the leadership committee), the executive and all of us if this race is perceived as anything less than free and fair,” said the letter to the Liberal Election Organizing Committee. Media outlets made several requests for interviews with the party executive and its election organizing committee chairs, Colin Hansen and Roxanne Helme. Instead, the party’s director of communications, David Wasyluk, provided a written statement expressing confidence in the audit process. “This system identified some members who need additional follow up to meet our audit standards. Our registration and voting systems are designed to ensure that members who do not satisfy our audit standards will not be able to cast ballots, it said. The statement did not answer whether it will audit 20,000 memberships as requested by the campaign teams. It also did not confirm how many memberships are under review. Wasyluk said the party does not rely on telephone alone to confirm the identity and addresses of its members. “The party uses multiple methods to confirm member information including but not limited to direct communication via phone and email. This includes cross referencing information from publicly available sources.” Kevin Falcon’s leadership team is the only one that did not sign the letter or express concerns over potentially “fraudulent” memberships. Falcon, a former minister under both former premiers Gordon Campbell and Christy Clark, is considered by some to be the frontrunner in the leadership race. Last month, his campaign manager, Kareem Allam, tweeted the Falcon campaign signed up the most new party members. On Monday, Allam told Postmedia he is satisfied with assurances by party brass that it has not found abuse in the membership process. “We have been assured by the party that the things those other campaigns have alleged, have not occurred,” he said. “We have seen individual errors, like typos or the wrong postal codes. We’ve seen a case where a community that was flooded, a lot of members are in the same hotel and have the same address, so it may raise a red flag, but these are not fraudulent memberships.” The issue of residency could play a decisive role in who will become the next Liberal leader. The letters from the campaign teams for Michael Lee, Gavin Dew, Renee Merrifield, Ellis Ross, Stan Sipos, and Val Litwin cast doubt on how many new members live in the ridings where they are signed up and whether the party’s audit system is able to catch that. B.C. Liberals are set to vote for a new leader on Feb. 5, but the campaign teams have asked that registration for the vote be delayed “until the concerns can be adequately addressed and mitigated.”