Port Moody Council and Developer Watch Update #2

So what happened since Ontario Calling, the original post detailing the initiation of an Elections B.C. investigation of the Lahti for Mayor Campaign in Port Moody? Here’s an update: 

Lahti Campaign Fine for Violating the Local Elections Campaign Financing Act (LECFA)

On December 13, 2022, a ruling was published on the Administrative Monetary Penalties page on Elections B.C.’s website confirming that that the Meghan Lahti Campaign had indeed contravened section 44(1) of LECFA, and must pay a penalty of $200 to the Chief Electoral Officer of BC, under section 68.25(2)(a) of that act.  This basically validated almost everything identified in the original blog post.  News of the fine was subsequently published by a number of primarily local media outlets including in the Tri-City News and the Tri-Cities Dispatch (see below).  

In addition, a note was also included in the CBC’s Metro Matters Newsletter regarding the fine, the issue was featured in “Mayors in Hot Water” section of the December 16, 2022 episode of the Cambie Report podcast, and was part of a recent Vancouver Sun article pointing out the lack of a deterrent that the current election fines are to cheating in municipal elections.

Significance of the Fine

The confirmation by Elections B.C. of what was detailed in the original blog post is significant. It confirms independently the use of Campaign Support Limited by the Lahti Campaign within the Port Moody Civic Campaign. For those unaware, Campaign Support Limited is a well-known, largely right wing supporting Ontario-based, social media and marketing company specializing in voter identification that has worked on a number of large right wing political campaigns in the past including Andrew Wilkinson’s leadership campaign for the BC Liberals, John Tory’s campaign for Mayor in Toronto, and Doug Ford’s mayoral campaign.

The Call Centre manager for Campaign Support Limited is Amber Jay Kouvalis, who is none other than Nick Kouvalis (Conservative operative and strategist extraordinaire)’s wife. Nick Kouvalis, is actually a principal at Campaign Research Incorporated as well as Campaign Support Limited (for those unfamiliar, I would encourage you to do a quick search if you don’t know who Nick Kouvalis is and how he and his company operates).

The investigation by Elections B.C. also confirmed that $3,654 had been spent on the phone call advertising run by Campaign Support Limited on behalf of the Lahti Campaign.  This represents a whopping approximately 13% of the entire $28,561.09 maximum candidate expense limit for Mayoral Campaigns in Port Moody as mandated by Elections B.C.  Indeed the Director of Investigations at Elections B.C. felt the need to describe this expenses as “a larger advertising campaign” thereby resulting in the Lahti Campaign being assessed, one of the largest fines to date resulting from the 2022 Elections.  However, the size of the fine was/is small ($200.00) and quite obviously is largely ineffective as a deterrent for circumventing election rules, but in comparison to the fines levied by Elections B.C. to date, Lahti’s fine remains one of the largest fines so far levied following the October 2022 Municipal Election.  The Director of Investigations for Elections B.C. also took the opportunity to criticize Mayor Elect Lahti, suggesting that “…this was your third local government election as a candidate, and you should be aware of the election advertising requirements”. (actually more than that but who’s counting?). I actually take objection to this characterization as I believe the fine for non-compliance with election rules actually reflects on the ineptness and lack of attention to detail of her Campaign staff rather than on herself personally.  Indeed, the Campaign Manager for the Lahti Campaign is well versed in running municipal electoral campaigns with his experience extending back to 2006 when he was the campaign manager for the “Coquitlam First” slate, incidentally one of the only actual legitimate slates to run for office municipally in the entire Tri-Cities (see below). I disagree with the Director of Investigation on this point. It’s Lahti’s campaign staff that should have known better.

Incidentally, Mayor Elect Lahti’s answer when she asked directly about the use of Campaign Support Limited (see below) would suggest that she had little to no awareness of the engagement of the company by her campaign and that she was likely just parroting what her campaign team had told her about the company. The “all political stripes” line is actually somewhat amusing given the company literally bills itself as specifically supporting Conservative candidates and campaigns (see above statement from Nick Kouvalis, one of the company’s principals). It’s hard to interpret “we work for Conservative candidates and their campaigns” any other way.

An overlooked and often missed point regarding the use of the Ontario-based Campaign Support Limited in the Port Moody Civic Election was the use of spoofed local phone numbers in an attempt to dupe Port Moody residents into thinking that the promotional calls that they were receiving from Campaign Support Limited were actually locally-based and presumably run by local volunteers when indeed that was not the case.  The number that showed on caller ID when I received the campaign advertising call from Campaign Support Limited was a local B.C. number (778-783-3595) which forwards to Campaign Support Limited in Ontario.  In this way the Lahti Campaign Team was literally caught purposely lying to the Port Moody Electorate via their use of these spoofed numbers. The use of big city and big right wing campaign strategies in little old sleepy Port Moody is definitely concerning.

BTW, for those interested, this how the Campaign Support Limited Call Centre operates as detailed in an anonymous review on Indeed.com from May 6, 2022.

“People are called over the phone by the software the company uses and you read off a script verbatim. Usually people hang up. You can have YouTube playing in the background and not bother to pause it until you’re certain the person won’t hang up. That will only happen a few times a day. Mostly people hung up on you and you get their voicemail. In both cases you must select “Call Back”. There’s a slight but satisfying feeling when you select “call back” esp for callers who have been rude to you. Feels like you’re setting your colleagues on them.”  

This mimicked my experience and the experience of others. We received repeated calls from the spoofed number prior to the successful engagement.  Given there were 24,775 eligible voters in Port Moody, one wonders how was this call list was generated and did Campaign Support Limited try to contact all eligible voters?

It is unclear to me whether or not Campaign Support Limited was further involved in the Lahti Campaign beyond just the 100 hours of phone call advertising declared to Elections B.C. (the Lahti Campaign would only be legally required to declare initially only the cost specifically of the phone call campaign in which the missing sponsorship statement was missing). Given the sophisticated neighbourhood-specific print campaigns (unlike anything we have ever seen previously in Port Moody) (see below),

the extensive Get Out The Vote (GOTV) call campaign on election day that may have also used spoofed numbers (as confirmed by a neighbour who received at least four calls on election day as from various phone numbers without any prior direct interaction with the Lahti Campaign) as well as other potential voter identification and data harvesting activities, and additional potential Astroturf campaign activities (including the numerous visual similarities between the Campaign Support Limited’s website [top] and the Together Port Moody Website [below]) (see below), one wonders if the involvement of Campaign Support Limited was indeed limited exclusively to just the 100 hours of call centre engagement given that the services that they provide go well beyond the simple operation of a call centre as their website suggests.

One also wonders if had the original blog post hadn’t identified the use of Campaign Support Limited, would any of the outside of Province elections expenses have been declared by the Lahti Campaign? That is not 100% clear. If someone was wanting to hide campaign expenses and/or an interested third party wanted to pay for campaign expenses covertly, that certainly would be a way to do it wouldn’t it? These are the types of question that unfortunately arise when extra-Provincial entities are engaged in local B.C. municipal politics.

Lahti’s Campaign Team on the Investigation (Oh the Drama!)

Lastly on this topic, it should be noted that following the publication of the original blog post, a number of members of Lahti’s campaign team took to social media to publicly accuse the author of at best being disingenuous and at worst, straight up lying regarding the non-compliance complaint with Elections B.C. and the associated investigation that was initiated.  For example, 

Here’s the post from Lahti’s Campaign Manager Dave Teixeira regarding the matter, 

Here’s the Financial Agent for the Lahti Campaign’s post regarding the matter. 

and here again…

And here’s a post from another individual associated with the Lahti Campaign who identified themselves as designing Lahti’s brand and website. 

As well a former Councillor who worked on the Lahti Campaign chimed in…

Also, here is Bruce Gibson, the Vice President for Real Estate Asset Management for the AP Group (the proponents for the Oceanfront Development at the old Flavelle Mill Site in Port Moody) regarding the matter, on the Coquitlam Politics Facebook Page. 

Needless to say, given that literally indeed almost everything detailed in the original blog post has borne out to be correct and subsequently confirmed by Elections B.C. thereby resulting in the fine being levied, it is pretty clear to see who indeed was being disingenuous at the time so I will leave it up to the reader to assess the nature of the character of Lahti’s campaign team and the character of those whom Mayor Elect Lahti has chosen to surround herself with.  Remember too that there would have been ample opportunity for everyone involved to do the honourable thing and publicly retract their erroneous statements, particularily at the point when Elections B.C. was literally requesting the invoice for the ads and copies of the original script, but the individuals in question clearly chose not to. 

Well that’s it for now. The Watch is in the process of filing a number of FOIP requests and researching a number of issues that came up during the past election. Stay tuned for further updates over the following few weeks. Happy New Year and Moderate Growth everyone!

Got any tips that we should know about? Send us an email at tips@portmoodycouncilwatch.ca