Tuesday, January 25, 2005

A QUESTION OF ETHICS

Underbelly News
Downtown Eastside

A QUESTION OF ETHICS

Hi All!

As some of you may have seen in Charlie Smith's Georgia Straight article last week, www.straight.com, the Mayor of Vancouver--ex leader of COPE--Larry Campbell--putting forward the name of labour activist and criminally convicted NDP'r Kelly Quinn to sit on the executive board of COPE.

What is interesting about this is that the Mayor is Chair of the Police board and Ms Quinn has been previously convicted of assaulting a police officer. This raises questions of ethics and the Mayor needs to address concerns whether he knew of Ms Quinn's criminality when he put forward her name for a public trust position.

One wonders since, the wife of Councilor Jim Green--Roberta McCann was publicly endorsing Ms Quinn's recent candidacy for NDP nomination in Vancouver Kensington--whether Councilor Jim Green was also in cahoots with the Mayor when promoting and supporting the convicted Quinn for a COPE executive position.

In light of Ms Quinn's difficulties, and the Mayor's and Councilor Green's support of her, alarm bells are ringing across the city.

As some of you know, I previously wrote here about the Mayor putting forward the name of a lawyer for the vacated police board position. Interestingly, this nominee is facing disciplinary hearings with the law society regarding public trust issues.

Hence the voters of this city should be increasingly alarmed about the dual alliance of Jim Greeen and Larry Campbell running the city's business. It might also be wise to question the ethics of Mayor Campbell and Councilor Green.

Jamie Lee Hamilton
tricia_foxx@yahoo.com