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West Vancouver Mayor Mark Sager and four councillors who ran as a slate supporting him have each been slapped with administrative fines for not strictly following rules about election advertising in the October civic election.
Sager was fined $200 by Elections B.C. for the infraction under the Local Elections Campaign Financing Act, while re-elected councillors Sharon Thompson and Peter Lambur were fined $150 each. New councillors Scott Snider and Linda Watt were each fined $100.
All of the fines are related to the same election material, which included about 20,000 flyers, 600 brochures and 100 “door hangers” promoting the candidates as a slate. The material was distributed without a statement identifying the candidates’ financial agent and a phone number or email contact, as required under the act. A digital ad was also up for about two weeks before the error was identified, according to Elections B.C.
Elections B.C. noted it received a complaint about the material Oct. 7, and that Sager and the other councillors called Elections B.C. to report their own mistake four days later.
The investigator noted that Thompson suggested Elections B.C. not issue a fine “given the time, effort and cost to correct the error.”
In assessing the fine, the investigator noted that while the “potential reach of the ad distribution was significant,” nobody was likely to have been misled by the oversight, which was inadvertent.
Snider described the omission "an unfortunate oversight on our behalf and lesson learned."
The fines were among 26 tickets for similar contraventions of election finance rules handed out to candidates throughout B.C. following the October municipal election.
Candidates have until Feb. 13 to file forms detailing their election spending with Elections B.C. That information is later made public.
