Three Squamish candidates in the October 2022 municipal election have been subjected to a small monetary fine by Elections BC.
The three candidates with Squamish First — Mike Young, Rajan Hans and Adrien Byrne — were penalized $200, $200 and $150, respectively, for “sponsoring election advertising without an authorization statement,” reads the Elections BC release sent out Aug. 30.
Elections BC wrote in separate penalty letters to the candidates that they received a complaint on Sept. 19, 2022, about a sign promoting the candidates which seemed to be missing the required authorization statements.
“Elections BC’s compliance team contacted you to remind you about the requirement to include the respective authorization statements on your election advertisements. I understand that you were already in the process of changing and updating the signs to include the authorization statement after EBC’s Compliance team had contacted you,” reads one of the letters from Adam Barnes, the director of investigations with Elections BC.
After a follow-up inquiry, Barnes settled on the small monetary fines, which is far less than the amount maximum of $5,000, as the lack of an authorization statement “would not likely have misled a reader to conclude that the signs were sponsored by another individual or organization.”
Additional reasons included that the candidates were in the process of fixing the issue and the campaign was cooperative with the investigation among others. Each candidate has the opportunity to request a review of the determination or about one month to pay the fine.
Read the letters in full at the Elections BC website.
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