Heather Miller, July 8 2021

If fraud is committed, and it is ignored, is it still fraud?

If you can see fraud, but you are assured there is none, can you still see the fraud?

If those responsible for detecting fraud do not do so, have they failed in their responsibility?

If those in power tell you there is no fraud……what do you do?

The fraud I see at Bowen Island Municipality:

• In December 2020 the two most senior managers at the Municipality, Chief Financial Officer Raj Hayre and Chief Administrative Officer Liam Edwards presented their budget proposals for 2021 to Council and the public. They had prepared and reviewed this proposal, and it has also been reviewed by the Finance Advisory Committee
• They recommended a property tax increase, offering 4 options; in each, a portion of the increase was to raise $102,000 for staff cost of living increases

• Council agreed in Spring 2021 a property tax increase of 6.8%; of that, 1.8% in new tax was to cover the cost of living wage increase for staff and council, to raise $102,000

• The cost of living increase as an actual proportion of wages should be calculated on the average Consumer Price Index (CPI) for Vancouver in the preceding November; this is set in the policy governing staff pay and conditions

• CPI for November of the preceding year was 0.7%
• But Chief Financial Officer Raj Hayre ultimately said that he was using 2% as the rate for the wage increase – ie staff would receive 2% more in pay

but wait …there’s more

• Chief Financial Officer Raj Hayre stated on February 18 and again on the 22nd that $102,000 represents a 2% salary increase for 2021
• $102,000 is 2% of $5,100,000

• 2021 wages and benefits for staff and council are $3,900,000
• why $3,900,000? see https://thebowenbulletin.files.wordpress.com/2021/07/explainer.pdf for details on that figure

• At the real CPI, 0.7%, the most that could legitimately be asked for was less than $28,000
• Even if you allowed for 2% – that would still only be $78,000 – nowhere near $102,000

I believe this is fraud, deliberately obtaining more money through raising property taxes for the cost of living increase in wages than is legitimate.

So, how did I get to this conclusion, who else knew, and what did I do?

• January 14: I submitted a letter as part of the public budget consultation process outlining how excessive the staff increase appeared to be, particularly when so many on Bowen are struggling with the financial impact of COVID
• Despite a response January 15 acknowledging receipt of that letter, and that CFO Raj Hayre had received it and given assurance it would be included in his report to Council, it wasn’t – my concerns appeared nowhere in his report at the February 8 Council meeting
• So, I wrote again, directly to Mayor and Council, on February 12, attaching my original letter, restating my concerns
• Raj Hayre wrote me a reply on February 18, for the first time definitively stating that this was a 2% wage increase and legitimate
• I wrote again in response to his letter, to him, Mayor and Council, in time for receipt and reading prior to their meeting February 22, showing clearly that this was not a legitimate 2% increase

At the meeting, Councilor Nicholson asked Mr. Hayre to respond directly to me – he did, repeating and amplifying his claim that this was a legitimate 2% increase, and further advising that even though the real CPI was lower, the difference wasn’t significant enough to make any change. Council thanked him and voted to advance the budget.

Confusion – Different strokes/different figures? Lost in the math?

How Mr. Hayre presented the figures at the meeting:

• Cost of living increase requested is $102,100
• He got to this amount as he said that $72,000 covered salaries + $28,000 benefits = about $100,000
• This is a 2% increase in wages and benefits
• The difference between 2% and the real CPI was negligible, made no real difference

Notice the number that Mr. Hayre never mentioned? The total real figure for benefits and wages – the amount his 2% increase would be applied to..

…..but……

2021 wages and benefits for staff and council are generously calculated, in reality, as about $3,900,000 altogether

Where does Raj Hayres’ math lead?

• $72,000 is 2% of $3,600,000
• $28,000 is 2% of $1,400,000
• $3,600,000 plus $1,400,000 equals $5,000,000

Thus 2021 wages and benefits for staff and council would have to be $5,000,000 for Raj Hayre’s math to add up.

It would have been simple for Mr. Hayre to say what the total wages and benefits were – he didn’t. Because that number is not $5,000,000….

Is the cost of wages and benefits for staff and council $5,000,000?

Or, really, is it more like $3,900,000?

Then what happened?

• I wrote again, right after the end of the meeting, to Mayor and Council, responding directly to what had happened in the meeting, pointing out again that this was not a 2% increase, and that in any case 2% was not legitimate. I felt that somehow, they hadn’t received my previous final letter – but, as I discovered the next day, that wasn’t true
• At the February 22 meeting, then, the CFO, CAO and Mayor and Council had full knowledge that the increase was well over 2% of actual wages, and that 2% wasn’t a legitimate increase; I had written to them three times about this by then. Many of them must have known this well before this date
• The letter I submitted after the meeting (titled Response to comments at Reg Council Meeting Feb 22) – my fourth letter – should have been included on the agenda for the March 8 Council meeting as correspondence – it wasn’t
• Through March, I had several written exchanges with CAO Liam Edwards, Corporate Clerk Hope Dallas and Manager of Planning Daniel Martin in relation to public submissions, their handling by the municipality, and failures of procedural fairness; this was not only related to the budget correspondence, but also to the TUP for Riley’s Cider

Document tampering?

• In the evening of March 31, I replied to Liam Edwards with a copy of the email I had sent February 22 containing my fourth letter, to illustrate that it had been sent and received, but never included on the record
• At 7:04 am the next day, April 1, Liam replied to me that he would look into this
• At 3:20 pm that day (April 1), I wrote again to Liam:

• 20 minutes after I’d sent this email, at 3:40:12 pm April 1, the agenda for the February 22 Council Meeting was edited, and my fourth letter now appears on that agenda.

The agendas and other published documents contain embedded metadata that show the time and date that the document was last modified; agendas are edited after meetings, if at all, in the next day or so, to include late and on-table items.

I looked at every BIM Council agenda from September 2020 through May 2021, and the only agenda altered or edited more than 2 days after the meeting in question was the one for February 22 – edited 38 days later, following the exchange between CAO Edwards and myself. It was modified at 3:40:12 pm April 1. That agenda now mysteriously includes my fourth letter, previously nowhere to be seen in the public record.

On the balance of probabilities that edit was likely made by Hope Dallas; as Corporate Clerk, she handles the receipt of correspondence for Council and manages the agendas. In all previous queries re public submissions and their recording, Liam Edwards and others generally referred these issues and questions to her.

There seem to me three possibilities:

• Hope Dallas tampered with the document purely to protect herself; knowing that both I and CAO Edwards knew this fourth letter wasn’t included on the March 8th agenda, she attached it instead to the February 22nd agenda, hoping to own to a smaller mistake, but not the complete failure to put this letter on record

• She tampered with the document under the direction, guidance or with the tacit knowledge of CAO Edwards and/or others, to achieve the same aim as above, but to protect the Municipality more generally

• Someone at the Municipality other than Hope Dallas tampered with the document

I go into detail here because there is currently a case before the BC Supreme Court, related to the TUP and in large part about the handling of public submissions, where the response and defense of the Municipality rests entirely on the affidavit of Hope Dallas; I think it matters that she appears to be someone who may tamper with documents to conceal the truth. And if not her, someone else at the Muni.

So – What have I done?

First I tried to let you all know about the numbers….

I wrote a letter for the Undercurrent, sent in on February 23rd, but Bronwyn wouldn’t publish it. She and I spoke at length. My letter was not I think extreme or libelous, it was factual (it was also short!), but Bronwyn couldn’t or wouldn’t check the facts. Even now, she hasn’t done that.

I have a very grave concern about this; it appears to me that there is an editorial standard applied to letter writers, which is fine and good, but the same scrutiny and attention is not paid to the actions and words of our government.

Bronwyn didn’t have to publish my letter, that is entirely at her discretion, but she didn’t doubt the basic facts of what I was saying. And by not looking further, and not reporting, when she knew that the Muni was aware that she knew about this, I believe this is a great disservice to our community.

The Municipality don’t appear to have the internal capacity to manage their own behavior, and there appears to be a lack internally of ethical oversight and responsibility.

We need a free press to help keep them honest. If an unrestrained government, with little or no internal moral compass, knows that the press will not scrutinize their actions, we are in very big trouble.

I think we’re in that trouble now.

So now I am publishing this myself…

I don’t really want to; I am tired, exhausted, and depressed.

First, the impact on me of what happened on February 22nd has been enormous; the abuse, misuse of power, that I was subject to, the whole of Council and our two most senior managers, redefining reality to assert that something untrue was the truth, specifically targeting me, knowing I knew that this was going on, that is devastating. This was gaslighting. It hit me hard, and still does.

Second, the very next agenda item on February 22 was the TUP for the cidery – on the property neighboring ours. That has been and is a whole other nightmare, one where we are dealing with the indifference and contempt of staff and Council to our lives, and just as significantly, the safety and availability of our water. Again, there is abuse, misuse, of power and influence. Again, a sense of how little most people care, really, about others.

I was in an impossible, painful position after February 22; I had a constant sick feeling of dread about Council and the TUP, but at the same, was supporting and helping my mother and neighbours I have known and cared about for decades, who were hoping that Council could listen, could look at fact, could behave as a democratic body ought to behave, could treat these decent people with even minimal respect. That didn’t happen.

And I had, for months, to negotiate and carry the fear and worry that saying or doing anything about the fraud I had seen would work against the interests and efforts of all these people.

Third, I’ve had a very difficult couple of years, fighting to bring back and hold together a small business, and then get it through COVID, having ultimately to make the decision to close a business that had been open for more than 20 years, a struggle that was in part due to the failings of municipal staff and a Councilor.

I am working on healing what is a deep and sustained series of traumas. Each on their own would be difficult, but combined, well, it’s quite a cumulative burden.

And I feel completely alienated from Bowen. I don’t feel any longer that this is a healthy or functioning or caring community.

I feel that our Municipal government and staff are detached from reality, turned away from any sense, any recognition, of the reality of their actions and decisions in the lives of people. In a community as small as this, that’s toxic.

Why do I think this matters?

What this tax theft represents is a failure of the most basic, foundational, fundamental accountability government and public servants have to the public. It is serious. It is a sign that there are things deeply wrong with our municipal government.

And so I have done, as my strength allows, what I can. That’s why I’m posting this. I think the public need to know. Whether people care, or not, that’s something else, but the public deserve to know. And I can’t and shouldn’t have to carry this as a burden any longer.

I have written requesting investigations to the ombudsperson, the municipal auditors and, in the case of Raj Hayre who is a CPA, to the professional body overseeing that profession. I have yet to hear from the auditors (having just written to them very recently) but the other two bodies are looking at this. What conclusions they have or will draw, I don’t know. The ombudsperson is also looking at two other matters related to the Municipality’s interactions with me.

The text of the letters related to this fraud are here:

• to the Chartered Professional Accountants of British Columbia (CPABC) which also went to the ombudsperson: https://thebowenbulletin.files.wordpress.com/2021/07/letter-to-cpabc.pdf
• to the auditors: https://thebowenbulletin.files.wordpress.com/2021/07/letter-to-auditors.pdf

If and when I feel able, I will move on to the TUP, and a whole other story of manipulation, unaccountability, and on. I may not be able to change things, but I can at the very least speak up.