Dear Editor:
I agree that financial statements from civic election campaigns should be made to be easier to access in this day and age (Financial info should be online, Editor's Letter, Burnaby NOW, March 30).
In the past, one would expect to go to city hall and pore over statements. As I did, a few times, you went to city hall, signed out for the documents you wanted to go through, and returned them to the clerk's desk.
But there is one aspect missing from Coun. Sav Dhaliwal's equation. His provincial afflilated party, the B.C. New Democrats, have insisted on open government and disclosure ad nauseam. But why is this not applicable to the civic level? It is absurd to think that Ms. Kathy Corrigan and her associate Raj Chouhan routinely in the provincial legislature insist on public disclosure of matters from the provincial government, continually complain about open government not being there in Victoria, and yet over at the Burnaby Citizens Association meeting, they cannot become proactive and present the concept to their BCA brothers and sisters that civic election documents should be made easier to access.
It is also intriguing to see MPs Peter Julian and Kennedy Stewart come up with financial statements for their offices, and yet they are silent when it comes to the BCA. The NDP has periodically come out squealing like a stuck pig over financial disclosure and open government, and yet, here is their civic counterpart with a 1980s way of accessing civic election documents.
As an election watcher over the past 27 years or so, I have gone through civic, provincial, federal and leadership disclosure documents many times. The disclosures for the most part were not eye-openers, but rather a continuation of the same old thing, but I will note the NDP and B.C. Liberal leadership races were eye-openers, as were two federal campaigns.
Burnaby should follow the other Lower Mainland cities and set a means of full discloure of civic election expense reports. It's not going to cost a new community centre or even paying for the repaving of a street. It is simply good practice, since the politicians, once they are elected, are paid for not by the parties that elect them, but by the taxpayers.
Public life is just that: public. It makes sense to make the civic election financial disclosure more accessible to the public by placing them online. New Westminster can do it, why can't Burnaby?
P.A. (Paul) Keenleyside, Burnaby
