[Newsbot]

Title: NDP MLA takes Disneyland trip cited in audit
Category: Provincial Politics
Posted By: Freakinoldguy
Date: 2014-03-21 12:43:46
Canadian

[Freakinoldguy]

I just watched the news and it wasn't just Disneyland it was Europe and the bill came to over 35000 dollars that Ms Quan has said she'll pay back. Would she have paid it back if she hadn't been caught? I doubt it since it appears that she's cut from the same self entitled cloth as our current Premier.

So another question. Why do prominent female politicians in BC seem to always come up with the same excuse when caught with their hand in the cookie jar? My ex husband did it, not me, I didn't know anything about it .

This whole scenario begs the question. WTF are these supposed societies for helping the poor doing with "our" tax dollars other than living a lifestyle they couldn't otherwise afford? I'm hopping against hope that they audit all other "non profit" societies for improprieties but, I seriously doubt that'll happen anytime soon because it would probably involve even more politicians in the scandal.

I wonder how much more they could have done for junkies if they hadn't been holidaying all over the world?

I've said it all along. These societies are nothing more than a lucrative business for the social elite and the people operating them don't want to help the homeless or addicted they just want to continually enable them so they can keep on living a luxury lifestyle.

[DrCaleb]

Entitlement.

They has it.

[Freakinoldguy]

DrCaleb DrCaleb:

Entitlement.

They has it.

I'm also betting this isn't just a BC phenomena either. I can remember watching the news and they were saying that for every dollar that goes to one of the Hospital type lotteries about 10 cents actually makes it to the Hospital. So when you buy a ticket it's doing alot more for some companies bottom line than helping any sick person and it's really just a lottery that has a tax free exemption because of what it was designed for.

[DrCaleb]

Freakinoldguy Freakinoldguy:

DrCaleb DrCaleb:

Entitlement.

They has it.

I'm also betting this isn't just a BC phenomena either. I can remember watching the news and they were saying that for every dollar that goes to one of the Hospital type lotteries about 10 cents actually makes it to the Hospital. So when you buy a ticket it's doing alot more for some companies bottom line than helping any sick person and it's really just a lottery that has a tax free exemption because of what it was designed for.

That's why Redford quit; entitlement. She had the choice to fly with the PM on the government jet to South Africa for free, but instead she decided to take the Alberta Government jet instead. $50k later . . .and she's collecting EI. (In theory).

I wouldn't take that bet. I'd agree there are many faux lotteries and things, all there to pay management of the lottery costs.

[Jabberwalker]

About the only really efficient charity that I've heard of is the disaster relief that is run by the Mennonites. They waste nothing, they skim nothing, they are 100% bling free and they do it because they believe that they are required to do it because of their covenant.

Here, you want to send some money to someone who isn't going to piss it away?

http://mcccanada.ca/?gclid=CPvUyNC5pL0CFdBcMgodmHsAyw

[martin14]

What ?

The Dippers have their hands in our pockets as well ?

Oh say it isn't so.


The deeply committed anti poverty advocate MLA is busy helping herself to
an extra 30 grand bonus, while her people slide further into poverty ?

Then throws her husband under the bus.



I guess she isn't just an advocate for the free injection center, she's a customer too.

[martin14]

I'll just leave this here, andy and Chomsky should enjoy.

$1:

The money was spent on “a very particular thing,” or so KPMG’s forensic bean counters were told: a bill in the amount of $5,749 for a May 2010 trip to Paris, charged to Mark Townsend’s Visa Business Platinum Avion credit card.

Very particular, except there are no particulars. The accountants were offered no details, no receipts. Such things are “unnecessary” when you’re the head of a $28-million-a-year charity funded almost entirely by taxpayers, and your mission is to assist the poor and the mentally ill, and drug addicts, and folks with AIDS and other communicable diseases, and no one has ever insisted that you explain — let alone justify — all of your expenses before.

But what’s $5,749 when you’ve personally racked up more than $470,000 over three years on the same credit card, and your wife has charged another $140,000, and the two other key members of your tax-funded charity’s executive team have added $260,000 of their own? On dubious expenses, luxury travel. For starters.

Mr. Townsend was until Wednesday co-executive director of the PHS Community Services Society (PHS), the largest social services provider in Vancouver’s severely distressed Downtown Eastside. His wife, Liz Evans, was until Wednesday the other PHS co-executive director. They “resigned,” along with two other senior PHS executives, Kerstin Stuerzbecher and Dan Small, who was until recently married to B.C. NDP MLA Jenny Kwan, whose riding includes the Downtown Eastside.

The four executives and the entire PHS board were removed over a financial scandal that has motored along for weeks, initially fuelled by vague accusations of improper spending, rumours and innuendo.

Much was revealed Thursday, with more tawdry disclosures coming late in the day, involving Mr. Small and Ms. Kwan. First, two crucial financial documents were finally made public, one by Vancouver Coastal Health, this city’s health provider, the other by B.C. Housing, a provincial Crown corporation. The two organizations provide the PHS with most of its annual funding, some $17- million a year. The federal government kicks in another $2.2-million annually.

B.C. Housing asked KPMG Forensic Ltd. to examine PHS financials covering three fiscal years, starting in 2009-10 and ending in 2011-12. KPMG completed its work last year. Its efforts were hindered by lack of disclosure on the part of the PHS, which operates, among other things, Canada’s first supervised drug injection facility, called Insite, located in the heart of the Downtown Eastside.

“The PHS declined to provide the associated credit card receipts” for travel, conference and related expenses, noted KMPG in its 126-page financial review. “PHS also reiterated, among other things, their view that provision of these receipts was unnecessary to complete a proper review of these charges. We respectfully disagree.”

The PHS spent generously on executive compensation and benefits. Mr. Townsend and Ms. Evans were each paid more than $120,000 per annum. On top of that, they charged the PHS $1,400 to $1,600 every month for use of a “home office” in the basement of their Vancouver home, and over the three years that were reviewed they billed $11,000 more to have the space cleaned on a regular basis.

Four PHS executives each received another 30% to 40% in payments on top of their six-figure salaries, in benefits, according to KPMG; these supplements included vacation pay, which averaged $20,000 per executive per year, plus $6,500 each in “statutory holiday pay.”

PHS managers also received “retroactive compensation” for fiscal 2010, receiving cheques of between $4,600 and $6,100 each.

“This increase represented an average 7.8% increase in the wages of the executive and senior management team,” KPMG noted.

After releasing the reports, B.C. Health Minister Terry Lake stood before reporters in Vancouver and acknowledged the province has for years been aware of the “mess” at the PHS, hitherto heroes in the Downtown Eastside, at least to some.

Why had the government not acted sooner to have the charity’s senior management and board of directors removed? Careful scrutiny takes time, he explained. Things were even worse than initially feared.

There was more, much more, the accountants discovered. Close to $1-million was put on the Visa Business Platinum Avion credit cards alone, for luxury travel, world famous hotels, fine dining, liquor, floral arrangements, hair salons, spas, limousines.

KPMG cites dozens of individual cases, including Item 14, a November 2009 trip to New York City, charged by Mr. Townsend and Ms. Evans. A stay at the fabulous Plaza Hotel, for $9,266. Ms. Evans spent another $250 in New York salons. “We were told that the salon charges were associated with her getting her hair done before a presentation,” reported KPMG. Purpose of trip: “Activities related to other PHS social initiatives.” That is all.

There was Mr. Townsend’s Paris trip in May 2010, for reasons unknown. Cruise holidays and other vacations were gifted to staff members, perks of the poverty-solving trade. And KPMG found “764 restaurant charges totalling approximately $69,000 over the three-year period of our review, representing an average of $1,927 per month.”

There were questionable payments to various companies under the PHS’s control, including a janitorial supply outfit selling the charity products at inflated prices. A maintenance and construction company that billed the charity for work that KPMG could not discern. Conflicting statements from PHS managers regarding contracts and paid jobs.

Vancouver Coastal Health produced an audit that covers fiscal 2013. It found more “questionable” spending and expenses that were not “reasonably incurred,” including a $5,832 Danube River cruise for a PHS manager, and tens of thousands more dollars spent on other travel, without supporting documentation. There was a $2,700 Disneyland vacation for four, in May 2012, paid for by the PHS.

The lucky vacationers? Dan Small, then the PHS’s community services director, and his then wife, Jenny Kwan, plus their two children. There was another trip as well, apparently to Europe. “Together with my family, I did join my husband — who was an employee of PHA [sic] — on two trips in 2012,” Ms Kwan, the MLA for the Downtown Eastside, acknowledged in a statement. “I was assured at the time by my former partner that he paid out of his pocket for the family-portion of the travel expenses. I never would have gone had I known that the family portion of the travel would appear to have been be paid for by PHS.”

People always say the Downtown Eastside is rotten. Well, the rot has sure spread. Many thought the worst might be allowed to happen. It’s now clear that it did.

http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/201 ... ty-bosses/

[Zipperfish]

These people should be sued for the money they stole and thrown in jail.

[andyt]

This story is about so much more than one NDP MLA going with her husband to Disneyland. But nice spin to make that the headline.

These are poverty pimps who have been living large, while actually doing good work for the poor. They just had no oversight. Problems were first shown in 2002, but the BC housing agency would not release the audits at that time. This means the LIBERAL government (for you non-bc'rs that means the right) has known about this problem for 12 years now and did nothing except funnel more money into this society. 27 million last year alone.

On the whole, the downtown eastside gets 1 million dollars A DAY funneled into it, 365 million a year, yet nobody can say things are getting better. Thats because there are all these agencies, like this one, working at cross purposes, protecting their turf, and with very lax financial oversight. It seems the government treats these people the same way they do with First Nations reservations, throw a bunch of money at it, don't keep control of the purse strings and hope it keeps them quiet enough while everybody else gets on with the business of making money. Cleaning up this mess might take more money up front, but if controls were kept on how the money was to be spent most effectively, at some point there would be savings to be had. Less crime, less health costs, people living better lives. Of course how can we expect better from governments that show over and over they have their own sense of entitlement. Look at the issue with the speaker of the legislature.

Sick

[andyt]

Zipperfish Zipperfish:

These people should be sued for the money they stole and thrown in jail.

Doesn't appear to be any money stolen. The people who resigned were given their severance pay and all is kosher.

[Zipperfish]

andyt andyt:

Zipperfish Zipperfish:

These people should be sued for the money they stole and thrown in jail.

Doesn't appear to be any money stolen. The people who resigned were given their severance pay and all is kosher.

Oh, I don't think all is kosher. Heads will roll on this one, I suspect. It doesn't sound like those funds were used legitimately.

[andyt]

I don't think the rules or oversight were it place to say they weren't used legitimately. The excuse for the disney trip is that it was in lieu of long term disability coverage. Bullshit, but who's to say different. The trips to Paris and Istanbul or where have you were to research legal heroin as relates to Insite. Bullshit, but who's to say different. The people in charge were just handed the money and they could spend it however they deemed fit. Their heads have already rolled, but they'll probably bounce back into some other poverty pimp gig, just at lower salaries. At least to start.

The heads that should roll should be in BC Housing and Coast Health, and the ministers responsible for that. Rich Coleman comes to mind, and the current dipshit, Stone.

[Freakinoldguy]

Zipperfish Zipperfish:

andyt andyt:

Zipperfish Zipperfish:

These people should be sued for the money they stole and thrown in jail.

Doesn't appear to be any money stolen. The people who resigned were given their severance pay and all is kosher.

Oh, I don't think all is kosher. Heads will roll on this one, I suspect. It doesn't sound like those funds were used legitimately.

There had better be a lot more heads to roll than just the East Sides most eminent resident.

The Liberals may have pissed away our money for 12 years on the thieves at the PHS but, people seem to forget that the NDP did the same thing for 8 years with no oversight or consequences either which, makes Jenny Kwans association with the society even more nefarious.

[herbie]

Then lay the blame where it lies with the PHS and the department that oversees Societies rather than the Provincial parties.
I just took the old lady out for dinner. She has no idea if I used MY credit card or the company credit card. She does know the airmiles on the company card are flying her back east this summer.
We should be impressed that SHE'S paying back and they didn't have to fight to claw it back from him.