Two Advisors In Clarkland With Exactly The Same Middle Name.

Who'sAdvising
WhoVille

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Please see update at the bottom of the post

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According to Rob Shaw, Mr. Steven Carr is a former Deputy Minister who had become Premier Clark's 'special advisor' and de-facto chief of staff by January of 2016 when the Vancouver Sun published Mr. Shaw's piece titled "Meet the 5 Powerful People Behind The Premier":

"The LNG Boss" Special adviser

The top staffer in the premier's office is a former 27-year civil servant who helped the premier kickstart her most important file: liquefied natural gas.

An economist by training, Steve Carr spent years as deputy minister of LNG, growing what's become the core of the premier's jobs plan. He created the new LNG tax regime and led negotiations with large LNG companies (though none have made final investment decisions). The importance of the file led to close work with Clark, both within B.C. and on overseas trade trips. When Carr, 56, announced his intent to retire last year (i.e. 2015), Clark asked him to instead lead her staff. Don't let his title of special adviser fool you. Carr has all the powers of her chief of staff, overseeing political employees in the building and making sure virtually every file of importance to government is aligned with the premier's priorities. It's the second time Clark has turned to an experienced, non-partisan civil servant to take on the hyper-partisan role of running her office. Carr's predecessor, Dan Doyle, spent 50 years working for the government and was known for his calm demeanour and problem-solving skills. Carr appears a similar choice...


As you might expect, it turns out that the good Mr. Carr was compensated well for his work, presumably in his role as Deputy Minister in fiscal 2015/16 (see pg 11 of the document; pg 10 of the pdf file):

Now, the level of compensation for Mr. Carr is not the item I would like you to focus on here.

Instead, please note the good Mr. Carr's middle name, which is 'James'.

This is something I will return to later in the post.

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So, moving on....

Also in fiscal 2015/16...

A numbered company called '1048216 B.C. LTD' was awarded a no bid contract worth $228,000 to provide 'Strategic and Personnel Advice' to the Premier's office beginning on February 01, 2016.

As a result, this particular numbered company received $57,394 compensation from the province of British Columbia in fiscal year 2015/16 (i.e. between February 1 and April 30, 2016 when the fiscal year's accounting for such contracts ended; see pg 385 of the document; pg 383 of the pdf):

Interestingly, this particular numbered company later received a second no bid contract for $190,000 to provide the same 'Strategic and Personnel Advice' to the Premier's office between Oct 01, 2016 and April 10, 2017.

We noted the details of these contracts, worth a total of $418,000 over a period of approximately 14 months, yesterday. 

Also yesterday, we noted that up until December of  2015  '1048216 B.C. LTD' was instead known as 'STEVECARR CONSULTANTS INC.'

Now.

Yesterday, I was willing to concede that this might all be a coincidence.

After all, there are likely numerous folks named Steve Carr living across the depth and breadth of British Columbia and there might even be a few Steve Carrs among that group that have the skill set to provide 'Strategic and Personnel Advice' to the office of the Premier of the province.

But then the following turned up in my Email inbox:

Hmmmm....

Mr. Carr the 'Consultant' is also named Steven James Carr and he also lives in Victoria British Columbia?

Gosh.

Armed with this new information I can't help but conclude that the 'special advisor' to the Premier of British Columbia and the president of '1048216 B.C. LTD' are the very, very, very likely the very one and the same person.

Which begs the question...

Is the Premier's special advisor receiving $418,000 worth of advice from himself?

And/or...

Is the consultant also the advisor who, at least according to Mr. Shaw of the VSun as noted above, also:

...has all the powers of her (i.e. Ms. Clark's) chief of staff, overseeing political employees in the building and making sure virtually every file of importance to government is aligned with the premier's priorities...

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Post-script: To be clear, there is no evidence that Mr. Carr, the special advisor to the Premier, is not being compensated entirely through the no-bid contracts. Regardless, why the numbered company cloak?...Furthermore, as was pointed out in the original post, the details of the contracts themselves are not publicly available due to matters of 'confidentiality'...Finally, someone in the 'media' has submitted freedom of information request for the details of the numbered companies actions and expenditures in carrying out the original contract. Apparently, this request is currently under 'legislative review'.




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Special thanks to reader Lew for digging up the public accounts records (and the specific pages!) that detail the compensation to Mr. Carr and Mr. Carr's company in fiscal 2015/16
Also special thanks to  A. Reader for sending the corporate director info on '1048216 B.C. LTD' my way. I cannot link to it because it is behind a paywall at BCOnline.gov.bc.ca...The public can get access but you have to subscribe for a hundred bucks....I was willing to pay but I was not willing to wait for them to do the paperwork on my application...Which is great because now I can send the $100 to a much more worthwhile endeavour.
Finally, please note that... I removed the street address for Mr. Carr from the corporate directory document, above and have not listed the second principal in the company...
And extra-special finally...Those of you who like to stop by here occasionally who may have noticed that I've been trying like heckfire to get out of the hard-core BCPoli Blogging game...But I know my good friend BCMary would, if she could, very likely smack me up the side of the head if I really did so before election day... 
Update, late Friday:  In the original version of this post it could have been assumed that I was indicating that Mr. Carr was receiving additional compensation separate from the contracts themselves. There is no evidence of that. Thus, I have edited the post to make sure that is clear and I have added the post-script.


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