The mayor of Vancouver “was wrong” in the Olympic plebiscite and the voters lost their voice: Count. Hardwick

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A war of words between Vancouver mayoral bid rivals Kennedy Stewart and Colleen Hardwick continued over the weekend as the councilor fired back after the city’s integrity commissioner criticized the mayor.

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Earl Hardwick issued a statement welcoming the decision.

“Before I submitted my motion (on a 2030 Olympic plebiscite), I submitted it to the staff, who had no problem with it,” Hardwick said. “Then I was shocked by Kennedy Stewart’s tweets, which were not only factually incorrect, but also intended to misrepresent my position on the Olympics, reconciliation and the MOU itself.

“My motion was simply to give Vancouverites a voice, the same kind of plebiscite we had before the 2010 Winter Olympics and Paralympics. Your tweets created a very negative tone and dissuaded any councilmember from even supporting my motion. . It meant that the whole issue was taken off the table at City Hall.”

In March, Mayor Stewart accused Hardwick of violating a memorandum of understanding with local First Nations when he tried to put the 2030 Winter Olympics referendum on the October ballot.

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In a series of tweets, Stewart claimed that Hardwick’s motion “violated” the terms of the agreement. In one, it said: “The city council approved a formal memorandum of understanding (MOU) to work in partnership with the host First Nations to explore how the 2030 Winter Olympics could become the world’s first reconciliation games.” .

Hardwick complained the next day that it was a misleading accusation and “effectively branded me anti-reconciliation, which is categorically wrong.”

In the report released last week, Integrity Commissioner Lisa Southern sided with Hardwick. She said Stewart “has every right to form opinions, have opinions, express opinions and, while he is in office, to give effect to those opinions.” However, she was wrong to characterize the motion as a direct violation of the MOU, “which she was not.”

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“While Kennedy Stewart’s tweets were an attack on me, I also think he owes the people of Vancouver an apology for the misleading tweets and how they influenced public discussion of the proposed referendum on the city’s potential involvement in the 2030 Olympics,” he said. Hardwick.

“I was wrong, and Vancouver voters missed their chance to voice their opinion on October 15. I believed then, as I do now, that the people of Vancouver should not be ignored and forced to sit on the sidelines when big issues arise. they are deciding on their city.”

south report recommended that Stewart get policy training and go public that his tweets about Hardwick were untrue. The mayor admitted that “by definition there is nothing in the MOU” that has been violated, but he did not fully retract.

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In a statement to Postmedia, Stewart accepted Southern’s “findings that a more accurate use of the words would have been to say that Councilman Hardwick’s motion violated the spirit of the MOU, and it did.”

Hardwick was hailed as TEAM VancouverThe mayoral candidate shortly before the Olympic rampage. Stewart will run for re-election in the municipal elections on October 15, under the banner of the brand recently forward together civic party.

— With a file of Tiffany Crawford