Monday was the deadline for all candidates in last November's civic election to file a campaign disclosure statement and those documents are now available for public viewing at Burnaby City Hall.
But don't expect to find anything earth-shaking in the full binder of papers that feature more empty pages than anything else.
While most cities in the Lower Mainland have gone to a system where the documents can be accessed online, Burnaby continues to only offer a paper version that can be viewed only in the city clerk's office on the bottom floor of city hall.
Open up the four-inch binder and the first disclosure statements are for Burnaby Mayor Derek Corrigan. In his 12-page disclosure, he received no contributions and had no expenses. In fact, other than zeros and slashes through almost every page, along with him signing off on the document, there is nothing to indicate Corrigan spent any money to get reelected last November.
That's exactly the same as two other mayoral candidates, Allen Hutton and Sylvia Gung, while Team Burnaby's Tom Tao contributed $2,900 to his own campaign, spending it all via $1,900 for convention and meeting expenses and $1,000 to Team Burnaby's overall campaign.
It's a similar story for Corrigan's council and school trustee candidates in the Burnaby Citizens' Association, as their individual filings all
indicate they raised no money and spent no money. But go to the last section of the binder and you'll find the Burnaby Citizens' Association party disclosures. There you'll discover the BCA raised $269,217, the majority from trade unions, and spent $269,179, leaving a balance of $63.09.
The BCA's disclosure statements include five pages of expenses and three pages of donors.
The expenses page shows a welloiled machine that started getting into election mode on Sept. 1, 2011. On that date, the party's account was at $843.24. Within the next eight weeks, while the party started to pay for office space, campaign literature and advertising, cheques started going out and money started rolling in.
On Oct. 28, the party's account reached a high-water mark of $135,599.84, and it wouldn't be until Jan. 24, 2012 when the account would fall to under $5,000, as cheques continued to clear well after the Nov. 19 election. The party spent its money primarily on advertising ($93,208), wages to campaign workers ($84,492), and signs and pamphlets ($40,207).
Go to the donors' pages, and most notable are the large contributions from local unions. Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) B.C. led the way with $63,500. CUPE Local 23, comprised of City of Burnaby workers, is next at $20,000. The B.C. Government and Service Employees' Union and Canadian Office & Professional Employees Union (COPE) Local 378, at $10,000 each, and the Hospital Employees' Union, at $5,000, contributed a huge chunk of the BCA's election war chest.
There were several notable individual and corporate donors noted on the BCA's disclosures, including $1,000 from Gateway Casino, $5,000 from K. Chohanik, $3,000 from Victor Chen, $100 from former B.C. Teachers' Federation president Irene Lanzinger and $135 from Maryann Manuel, who works in Mayor Derek Corrigan's office.
The BCA party itself raised $118,785, with some of their candidates donating directly to the party, including Corrigan's $600 donation.
Team Burnaby, which ran a slate of unsuccessful candidates, spent a fifth of what the victorious BCA spent, with $51,595 raised and $51,094.93 spent on their campaign.
Much of Team's contributions came from their own candidates, including council candidates Lee Rankin ($6,500), Garth Evans ($6,000), June Jeffries ($2,800), Ray Power ($1,800), Lotus Chung ($1,000), and Jim Favaro ($1,009); and school trustee candidates Bonda Bitzer ($1,090), Anne Sylva ($750), Rennie Maierle ($1,000) and Pablo Su ($550).
Team's largest corporate donor was biotech company Amgen ($1,900), while developers Beedie Construction, Citimark Projects and Boffo Developments all contributed $500 each. Former Burnaby MLA John Nuraney was a notable individual donor to Team, with $200 contributed.
Individual Team candidates, unlike the BCA candidates, also had significant individual filings.
Evans contributed $20,250 of the $22,735 he raised for his own campaign, spending $22,029 of it in a bid to get back the seat he lost in the 2008 election. Jeffrey Chiu, also an unsuccessful council candidate, raised $4,035 for his campaign, spending the majority, $3,844 on advertising, mostly with the ethnic media but also $82 on advertis-ing on Facebook. Council candidate Lotus Chung raised $4,550 for her campaign, including $3,450 from her own wallet, and spent all but $14 of it.
The two parties to Burnaby's civic races, Burnaby Municipal Greens and Burnaby Parents' Voice, raised $18,110 and $10,876 respectively.
The Greens got the majority of their contributions, $15,000 from Bruce Friesen, president of the party, with $3,000 coming from Helen Chang, a former trustee who was unsuccessful in regaining a spot on school board.
Burnaby Parents' Voice's largest contributions came from Hon-Yuk Wong ($1,500), school trustee candidate Chi Tat (Charter) Lau ($1,243) and Dean and Ida Gazzola ($1,000).
Lau also raised and spent $2,050 on his own campaign.
Every 2011 civic candidate and elector organization is required to file a campaign financing disclosure statement with the city.
Campaign financing disclosure statements must be filed within 120 days after general voting day, which was Monday, March 19.
For more on this story, see www. burnabynow.com.
