The Digital Sign Post: Bending to the Point of Breaking Election Rules

During the recent Port Moody civic election, massive elect “Meghan Lahti for Mayor” digital advertisements appeared on the large electronic billboard at the intersection of Barnet Highway and Ioco Road (see above). The ads ran for a couple of days and then mysteriously disappeared. The advertisements inspired a great deal of controversy amongst staff at the City of Port Moody as can be seen in the results of a recently released FOI request submitted to the City of Port Moody regarding the matter and it has since been confirmed as a result of the FOI request (see below) that the digital advertisements were ultimately determined to be non-compliant with the City’s Election Bylaw and were ordered to be taken down by the city.

Context of the Controversy

The digital advertisement in question first appeared on or about October 3, 2022 quite soon after some rather dubious, unsubstantiated, and unproven claims that “hundreds” of candidate signs (including a number of Meghan Lahti’s campaign signs) were being stolen in an organized manner (AKA the latest instalment of the like clockwork, and oh so tedious “Port Moody Sign Wars” in which opposing candidates accuse each other of having/supporting clandestine crews of supporters working covertly under the cover of darkness stealing and/or defacing their opponent’s signs and then trying to outdo each other as to who is the bigger victim/who has been victimized more presumably in an attempt to elicit some sort of sympathy). Many, many examples of that (for example here is the claim that hundreds of signs were going missing during the last election). Happens pretty much election. Anyway, the electronic campaign ad ran for several days with Mayor Lahti posting it prominently on her Meghan for Mayor Facebook account on October 4, 2022 suggesting facetiously that this would make it harder for those with ill intent to steal her signs (see below).

Objections were raised as soon as the signs went up that the campaign advertisement on the electronic billboard contravened the City of Port Moody’s General Local Government Election Bylaw, 2011 Bylaw 3367 in so much as the election advertisement on City property was not located in one of the six designated areas as identified in Schedule B of the bylaw (see below) and that it violated the basic underlying spirit and intent of the stipulations within the bylaw which sought to limit the size and location of campaign signage on public property in order to provide a level playing field for all candidates as part of a fair and equitable electoral process.  

Legislative and Legal Context

As noted previously, election signage within the City of of Port Moody is governed by the City of Port Moody’s General Local Government Election Bylaw, 2011, Bylaw 3367. The bylaw identifies the maximum size of advertisements, required content, their acceptable locations on public property (see Map below identified as Schedule B in the bylaw), etc. Elections B.C. does not regulate election signs locations within municipalities. That is left up to the individual municipalities.

FOIP Request Regarding the Matter

Based on a tip that the Watch had received, the Watch submitted a request for access to records under the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act to the City of Port Moody on December 31, 2022 resulting in a due date of February 13, 2023 regarding the matter. The Request for Access to Records was received by the Watch on February 13, 2023. The full response to the FOIP request can be found here.

The Watch will endeavour to summarize below the electronic correspondence received in temporal order as many of the 58 pages received represent duplications of some rather lengthy email strings. The earliest electronic record appears on Oct. 3, 2022, the presumed first day that the advertisement was displayed.

Email from Steve Milani to Philip Lo (City of Port Moody Elections Officer)
Monday, Oct. 3, 2022 10:44 p.m.

Email from Steve Milani to Philip Lo inquiring about campaign advertising on the electronic billboard on Barnet Highway and asking what is going on. Redacted information included.

Email from Philip Lo (City of Port Moody Elections) to Steve Milani
Tuesday, October 4, 2022 5:52 p.m.

Philip Lo detailing the City of Port Moody’s corporate policy regarding digital advertising and that any campaign advertising would have been booked directly via Pattison Outdoor Advertising.

Email from Steve Milani to Philip Lo (City of Port Moody Elections)
Tuesday, October 4, 2022 10:43 p.m.

Mr. Milani identifying that the electronic display is not an approved location for campaign advertising and asking that the city should be asking Pattison to stop displaying the ads.

Email from Steve Milani to City of Port Moody City Manager Tim Savoie cc Philip Lo (City of Port Moody Elections)
Wednesday, October 5, 2022 1:02 A.M.

Question to Mr. Savoie/Mr. Lo as to why city owned land is being allowed for election campaigning (not an official location as identified in the bylaw).

Email from Tim Savoie to Steve Milani cc Philip Lo
Wednesday, October 5, 2022 9:41 A.M.

Mr. Savoie noting that Mr. Lo is responsible for election signage. However, Mr. Savoie also provided his opinion that the Election Bylaw was not applicable to the current situation as those types of election signs were simply not addressed.

Email from Steve Milani to Tim Savoie
Wednesday, October 5, 2022 10:04 A.M.

Response to Mr. Savoie’s opinion redacted as contains information determined to be information resulting from a closed meeting of council.

Email from Tim Savoie to Steve Milani cc Mayor Rob Vagramov
Wednesday, October 5, 2022 3:27 P.M.

Notification to Mr. Milani that given the questions surrounding the situation, that the Chief Elections Officer had sought a legal opinion on the matter. Mr. Savoie informed Mr. Milani that this opinion will differ from his original interpretation and to stay tuned that the CEO will send it out once obtained.

Email from City of Port Moody Elections (Philip Lo) to Meghan Lahti @ Meghan@meghan4mayor.ca with Schedule B from Election Bylaw (Map of Approved Election Candidate Signage Locations) Attached
Thursday, October 6, 2022 4:47 P.M.

Notification to Meghan Lahti c/o her campaign email (reproduced in full below) that her campaign’s digital campaign advertising was non-compliant with Section 13.4 of the City’s Election Bylaw and that the advertising needed to be removed by tomorrow morning (October 7) (or confirmation that the ad is being removed as of tomorrow morning). Notification was provided that if this does not happen, Bylaw would be requested to contact Pattison Outdoor directly requesting removal of the ad.

Email from City Manager Tim Savoie to Mayor Rob Vagramov
Friday, October 7, 2022 6:57 A.M.

Notification to the Mayor that the Chief Election Officer had received legal advice and had made the decision that the sign “like the one discussed” are not permitted.

Email from Mayor Rob Vagramov to Tim Savoie
Friday, October 7, 2022 9:46 A.M.

Email from Mayor Vagramov asking what the legal advice was and if a fine would be levied.

Email from City Manager Tim Savoie to Mayor Rob Vagramov cc’ing Philip Lo
Friday, October 7, 2022 10:34 A.M.

Mr. Savoie deferring to Mr. Lo to answer the questions posed by Mayor Vagramov as he was not able to provide an answer to the questions.

Email from Philip Lo to Mayor Vagramov cc Tim Savoie
Friday, October 7, 2022 10:42 A.M.

Mr. Lo stating that the procedure is the same as for all other sign complaints/violations indicating that the Lahti campaign had been notified of the violation with Bylaw enforcement to follow up if there was non-compliance.

Email from Philip Lo to City of Port Moody Bylaw Enforcement Officer with cc list.
Friday, October 7, 2022 11:04 A.M.

Philip Lo instructs Bylaw Enforcement to prepare a formal request to Pattison Outdoor for the removal of the campaign advertising from the digital billboard as it was not in compliance with section 13.2(f) of the City’s Election Bylaw.

Email from Patrick Kolby, Senior Bylaw Enforcement Officer City of Port Moody to Pattison Outdoor with large cc list
Friday, October 7, 2022 12:42 P.M.

Notification from the Senior Bylaw Enforcement Officer City of Port Moody to Pattison Outdoor requesting that the digital campaign ad should be removed and/or no longer displayed as the ad is in contravention of the City’s General Local Government Election Bylaw No. 3367 section 13.2(f).

“No campaign advertising signs or posters shall be erected or placed…on any public property except in areas set out in the attached Schedule B”.

Email from Pattison Outdoor to Patrick Colby with Long CC List
Friday, October 7, 2022 2:03 P.M.

Email stating that they “do mind” taking it down (likely a mistake/typo as in context that they likely meant that they didn’t mind taking it down given then it says “however, just seeking for clarification” immediately right after).

Pattison Outdoor also asked for clarification as to why there was a request to take down the ad as the ad did not appear to violate Ad Standards Canada (in terms of content).

(The Watch Sidenote: In terms of content, Pattison Outdoor was quite correct in their interpretation as the electronic advertisement itself appears to adhere to all the rules, regulations, and stipulations regarding election advertising as identified in the Media Obligations Under the Local Elections Campaign Financing Act including the presence of a sponsorship statement etc. It is very doubtful that Pattison Outdoor would have allowed the campaign ad to have been displayed at all without all the appropriate information as to do so could resulted in a fine under the Local Elections Campaign Financing Act.)

Email from Philip Lo (Legislative Services Advisor/Chief Election Officer) City of Port Moody to “All” (including Pattison Outdoor)
Friday, October 7,2022 3:01 PM

Mr. Lo confirms that he had had a conversation with “Paul” (presumably with Pattison Outdoor) that the ad will be removed from rotation at the end of that day (October 7, 2022)

Review and Analysis

So what do these electronic records tell us? Summarizing the main points:

• That the electronic Meghan Lahti Campaign ads were identified by the Chief Elections Officer as being a contravention of the Local Government Election Bylaw No. 3367 section 13.2(f).

• That there was indecision/confusion on the part of Election Officials and City Staff causing the sign being displayed for far longer than it should have been.

• That the Chief Electoral Officer received legal advice on the matter in making his decision regarding the contravention of the Election Bylaw.

• That the Lahti Campaign never responded to the City regarding the matter and that the City had to take the matter in their own hands and contact Pattison Outdoor directly to get the advertisement taken down/removed from rotation.

• That the lack of response from the Lahti Campaign caused the sign to be displayed for a full day after the sign had been identified as being a violation of the Election Bylaw.

• That no fine was ever levied.

So What’s Missing?

FOI requests are also interesting both for what they contain and what they don’t contain. What the FOI doesn’t contain is a response from the Lahti Campaign to the email sent to them on October 6, 2022. At no point does there appear to have been any response to the email. One can only assume that either a phone call was made or that the Lahti Campaign chose to ignore the email altogether. Given that City of Port Moody staff were forced to contact Pattison Advertising directly to get the ad taken down, one can only assume the latter was the case.

What’s also missing is any correspondence between Philip Lo and the city’s legal counsel. If any emails/correspondence did occur they should have been captured by the FOI request and redacted accordingly. Either way the presence of the correspondence should have been noted. That would lead one to question if a legal opinion was provided, that it must have been done so verbally with no accompanying record. Something changed on Wednesday October 5 given the differences between Mr. Savoie’s emails between 9:41 a.m. and 3:27 p.m. It is currently unclear what exactly happened.

One has to wonder why the notice about the contravention of the bylaw was also not sent simultaneously to the Lahti campaign manager and/or the financial agent for the Lahti campaign, the latter of which would have been responsible for signing off on any campaign expenditure? There is no record of any correspondence regarding the matter from then candidate Lahti, her campaign manager, and her financial agent, all of whom were specifically named in the FOIP request as well.

Lastly, there is no apparent evidence of any discussion regarding a fine for the incident. Given that the campaign did not abide by the Chief Electoral Officer’s request and that the Bylaw Officer had to contact Pattison Outdoor themselves, this would appear to be a clear case of non-compliance with the orders of the Chief Electoral Officer. The offending advertisement ran for a full extra day in violation of the order. There is no evidence so far publicly available that any kind of a fine was ever levied regarding this matter although the bylaw is explicit in stating that the city has the ability to bill an offender for “the removal, storage, and disposal” of a sign. This is identified in Section 13.5 of the Local Government Election Bylaw No. 3367. One could argue that the time spent by city staff on contacting Pattison Outdoor to have the sign removed should have been billed to the Lahti Campaign as well as the cost for the extra day(s) of advertisements.

Anything Sounding Familiar Here? (Groundhog Day)

The fuss over the advertisement will be familiar to those long term residents and long-time political observers of Port Moody Elections at the civic and other levels as it is somewhat reminiscent of a controversy that erupted during the 2018 Election Civic Election over a different type of commercial advertisement on public property (bike racks in this case) paid for by then Mayor Mike Clay just prior to the election in 2018 (see below).

The bike rack ads were installed in various public spaces around the city including in front of the Rec Centre, Rocky Point Park, and elsewhere. At the time the ad linked to Mikeclay.ca which looked like this (see below):

These ads were deemed/determined (by City Staff if I remember correctly) ultimately not to be election ads per se but just private commercial ads in public places although that could have fooled many people at the time, especially given the website that it was linking to at the time (see above).

Interestingly, when all this was happening back in 2018, an interested observer said the following:

“….Some candidates I guess feel that the rules are meant to be bent (if not broken) for any kind of advantage. It’s unfortunate that things have to be this way.”

Any idea who said that? The then interested observer is the now recently elected Councillor Callan Morrison. He is of course correct. I wonder if 2022 Callan Morrison would feel the same way that 2018 Callan Morrison did about the Lahti Campaign skirting local election laws to gain an advantage?

Sign Declaration on Campaign Expenses

A review of the recent campaign disclosure statement by Mayor Lahti suggests a very large signage expense was declared ($9,890.30) for the Campaign Period (a whopping 36% of the entire campaign budget of $27,632.96), one can only assume that the cost of the digital advertisement is subsumed within that large amount (the summaries provided by Elections B.C. do not break down the individual expenses so it is hard to suss out exactly what the cost of the electronic billboard advertising was). It would be interesting to know how much was spent specifically for the ads, how long they would have run had the City not intervened, and how much that would have cost? Given that the Lahti Campaign came in less than $1,000 under the campaign spending limit, one wonders how that would have been reconciled?

So What?

So was the use of the electronic billboard to display campaign advertising smart politicking or a bending of the rules to the point of breaking them? It has already been demonstrated that the Lahti Campaign team had problems following election rules as evidenced previously by them being fined by Elections B.C. for another campaign advertising infraction and detailed in prior blog posts here and here so this is all part of a much larger established pattern of behaviour. The three individuals involved (the candidate, the campaign manager, and the financial agent of the candidates) all should have known better in both cases. The fact that the Mayor continues to display photos of an advertisement that was identified as being contravention of local election bylaws on her official Facebook account would suggest that she and her campaign team continue to thumb their noses at election rules, displaying a shocking lack of respect for due process and fair political engagement. I guess when winning is all that matters, all that matters is winning and the ends justify the means.

Moving Forward

Quite clearly the Lahti Campaign Electronic advertisement appeared to violate the spirit and intent of the Local Election Government Bylaw whose intent was to limit the amount of election advertising in public spaces and on public property to a number of designated areas in the hope to avoid the visual pollution of election signs so prevalent in a number of other municipalities where election signage laws are lax to non-existent.

Moving forward, we at the Watch would like to see the City of Port Moody proactively revise the City of Port Moody’s General Local Government Election Bylaw, 2011 No. 3367 to specifically include and identify private static advertising mediums (such as bike racks) and moving digital advertisements (including Digital and Projected Advertising Displays [DPADs]) as being unsuitable venues for campaign advertising materials. In addition, we would like Bylaw 2403, which allowed the presence of the digital billboard and governed signs within the municipality to also specifically identify campaign advertising as not being suitable within the digital advertisements locations within the city. Lastly, we would like to see a set of clearly identified fines for violating the City of Port Moody’s General Local Government Election Bylaw, 2011 No. 3367 as a deterrent to any future violating of the bylaw in the future. Given that the City of Port Moody has already signalled a willingness to reopen the Election Bylaw regarding the recount procedure, it would be a good time to revisit some of these other stipulations as well. We at the Watch think that most residents would agree, irrespective of their political leanings, that the ambiguities within the bylaw(s) need to be addressed prior to the next election taking place so that there is a clearly established set of rules and guidelines for everyone to follow. Otherwise, we’ll just have to wait for the next election when the same topics will come up again, and again.

The Watch is in the process of filing a number of other FOIP requests and researching a number of issues that have come up since the past election. Stay tuned for further updates.  Will try to start tackling the developer donations in an upcoming post. Actual moderate growth everyone!

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