This Day In Snookland...The 'Other' Virk Affair.

TheNeighbourlyWayTo
GoVille


The Clark government's minister for advanced education, Mr. Amrik Virk, is in a bit of hot water, as documented by the Clark government itself, for being involved in a scheme to pay a couple of Kwantlen administrators and extra $50K each, essentially under the table.

Heckfire!

Even Mikey-Mike couldn't ignore this story:

...(L)et me bring you up to speed, because the stench on this one is still rising:

The report found Kwantlen broke the government’s rules on executive salaries when Virk, a former RCMP officer, was on the university’s board of governors.

The university, faced with a strict salary cap, paid two senior executives $50,000 each in addition to their base salaries. The payments were recorded as “pre-employment contracts” and not reported to the government, breaking a compensation disclosure rule...
(note to self - why is it always the 'administrators' that are so special at our advanced educational-type places?)

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Now.

Here's the thing, just in case you missed it...

Turns out that the Dipperians, through David Eby, tried to do a little advance wurtlitzering earlier this week on the actions of the good Mr. Virk knowing, I would guess, that the Kwantlen flim-flam report was coming.

Upshot?

Looks like there might be a bit more "Les(s)" in the good Mr. Virk than we previously thought.

Michael Mui was one of the few proMedia wags to pick up that story:

The New Democrats say Minister of Advanced Education Amrik Virk was in a conflict of interest when he appeared at a Surrey board of variance meeting in 2005 as a “neighbour” to support construction-related changes at a property his wife’s company owned.

Documents shared with 24 hours show Virk — who was a police officer at the time — presented a petition to the meeting to show himself and other neighbours were not opposed to the changes.

“We are the neighbours directly to the south and it is true that this property is unique and it does make more sense to have the building face designed accordingly,” he said, according to Surrey’s board of variance minutes...

{snippety doo-dah}

...Virk, in a statement, acknowledged that he spoke at the meeting.

“My wife — a realtor — and sister-in-law were registered owners of the company that owned the property next to us,” he said.

“All neighbours of the property signed a petition of support, including myself. I did speak at the meeting as a neighbour.

“Records state that I said no neighbours had an objection to the variance.”

So.

There you have it.

Demonstrable conflicts of interest just don't matter as long as you just admit that you were doing it and tell everybody to move on.

Sure sounds like a perfect fit for Snooklandia to me.


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And while the advance wurlitzering may not have taken this time, clearly there is something different going on with thought/planning/executing of a BCNDP media strategy under Mr. Horgan...We noted this right off the bat when he set up advanced one-on-ones with people like 'The Dean' prior to even taking the leadership...And getting Mr. Eby out front early and often, doing the people's work, is a good thing, regardless....As a bonus it will also help innoculate him against the smears that are sure to come (and have come before) for his history as 'gasp!' a 'community organizer'...
Perhaps it is not surprising for Ms. Clark to have this particular fine fellow as her advanced education minister....After all, to her, it would appear that one of the goals of being an accidental academic tourist is to be able to say....'Look! I can see Maggie Thatcher from my dorm room!'
Interestingly (tellingly?), what really got Mr. Smyth exercised was not the actual details of the Kwantlen winky-winky deal making with top 'scholars', but instead the way the gov't report was document dumped in the massive media wake of the NGateway decision by Ottawa... 
So, there you go....An entire post without mentioning demonstrable untruth released from the former stomodeum of the keeper of all the promises himself,  Mr. Factbender.


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