In this issue
1. Analysis of Minister Bloy's resignation
2. Profile of Eminata Group
3. Link to photo of Clark and Chung
Calls mount for Premier Clark's ouster
after minister Bloy was forced to resign
By John Twigg
Well here it is the end of another tumultuous week in B.C. politics and if there's one thing clear it's that Premier Christy Clark is still sinking deeper in the mud and losing more and more face in the eyes of the voting public.
Clark's itinerary for the week suggests she was hoping for mostly good news about her and her government, such as the job gains she boasted about Tuesday morning and the quiet passage Thursday of the teachers-back-to-work Bill, which she probably hoped with other moves would build enough momentum for her to call byelections soon in the two vacant seats.
But things didn't work out as she'd hoped. Far from it. In fact for the third consecutive weekend there are valid new reasons evident as to why Clark herself should depart the Office of Premier forthwith, and more voices saying such things too.
First the job numbers thing was greeted with skepticism and boredom, as well it should have been as I will explain further later (my initial critique was correct - that the job numbers were not worthy of much if any boasting - but in DT#26 I used a wrong statistic wrongly to prove it).
Second there was no backlash against the teachers because most people can see that the fault in the dispute is mainly the government's (namely their failure to provide enough funds to ease the pressures of large and special-needs classrooms).
Bloy's leak breached cabinet confidentiality
And then third a new catastrophe arose: she suddenly had to dump cabinet minister Harry Bloy over evidence of his misconduct regarding a breach of cabinet secrecy which furthermore showed favoritism towards a Liberal Party supporter.
Clark on Thursday in the Legislature accepted the resignation of Bloy as minister of state for multiculturalism because he was found to have leaked an email from a Vancouver Province reporter to Advanced Education Minister Naomi Yamamoto asking questions about some student complaints against Eminata Group, a very large Burnaby-based provider of private-sector post-secondary education, and whose principal, Peter Chung, has been a substantial donor to the B.C. Liberal Party.
Clark also met with Eminata officials
Furthermore, a visit to Eminata's website on Friday showed that its principals met with Clark in January according to information and a photo on their website, and whose business probably is the indirect recipient of government loans to students, and whose operations and course content are regulated by the provincial government.
In other words, there are lots of big bucks involved here; as a statement posted by Chung noted, there are more than 10,000 students at Eminata facilities across Canada and in B.C. in 2011 there were 3,100 students of whom only two filed formal complaints with B.C.'s Private Career Training Institutions Agency. Other sources indicate about 60 per cent of its students are from outside Canada.
The gist is that an aide in Yamamoto's office (possibly with personal ties to Christy Clark) passed a copy of the newspaper's questions about Eminata on to Bloy, possibly because Eminata has large proportions of foreign students and/or because it is based in or near Bloy's Burnaby-Lougheed riding and/or for other yet-unknown reasons, and Bloy somewhat stupidly (or perhaps for other reasons) forwarded the email to Eminata CEO Randy Cox who later waved a copy of it in the face of reporter Cassidy Olivier and further suggested the copy came because Eminata has powerful friends, which turned it all into a running cover story and another ceremonial hanging in the Legislature Thursday afternoon when Clark announced she had accepted Bloy's resignation and further announced in the corridor that Bloy would not be seeking re-election as an MLA.
There's a lot of back-story here, such as Bloy being the only Liberal backbencher to support Clark's (frankly) tainted leadership campaign and then proving to be such a spectacular failure as Minister of Social Development that Clark had to demote him in her first cabinet shuffle, and a lot of answers are yet to come too, including why the aide sent the memo to Bloy, whether or not Bloy should step aside now as MLA too and/or whether Yamamoto should resign as well, as the New Democratic Party Opposition is demanding, and heck: let's go all the way and say right here, again, for my third column in a row, that Clark herself should depart too.
Net searches suggest there has been a long-running controversy involving Eminata, going back to 1991 when Chung's educational businesses ran into major financial and regulatory problems in California, and more recently including alleged blackmail by a former employee in India which was reported to police, but perhaps there also are other questions such as students' value-for-money or other education-related issues such as marks or teacher qualifications.
That gives rise to wondering what may or may not have been discussed when Eminata officials met with Clark, and whether or not Clark may have raised some related issues when she recently met with India's Consul-General in Vancouver. And further: did any of that have any connection to the convicted Indo-Canadian gangster known to have worked on Clark's leadership campaign but who Clark claims to have been unaware of?
I dunno. Just askin'. But in any case all of that sure comes at a bad time for Clark because just as she was trying to climb away from previous disasters along comes a new one.
Province paper questions Clark's fitness
As the Province paper's editorial on Friday concluded, "Whenever it becomes clear that a government's special pals get special treatment, their end is near."
And as Province columnist Mike Smyth noted, ``... but when this newspaper started asking questions on the public's behalf, Bloy's first instinct was to protect a private company, whose founder gave money to the Liberal Party. Bloy's resignation from Premier Christy Clark's cabinet is appropriate, but the government is still hiding the full truth about this episode. .... Clark has promised to run an open, transparent, squeaky-clean government. She should answer every question or else she risks looking like she's covering up for political friends."
So it's not just me and Alex Tsakumis and few other bloggers questioning Clark's fitness to govern, it now is the mainstream media too.
The Vancouver Sun so far has not joined the Eminata chase but columnist Vaughn Palmer on Friday excoriated Clark for her response to the issue in Question Period in which she claimed that Bloy was not guilty of a crime (which actually remains to be seen because he still could be charged with a breach of trust) and then went out of her way four times to note that what he did was nothing like what NDP leader Adrian Dix did in the mid-1990s when he was an aide to Premier Glen Clark, namely create (or "forge") and back-date a memo aimed at exculpating Clark from a casino licensing scandal, which led to Dix departing.
The Sun's headline on Palmer's column called Bloy's ploy a "miscue" which is a bit too soft in my opinion but there was no softness in Palmer's subsequent questioning of Clark as to why she had "reverted to attack mode" when it should have been a day only for contrition, which he concluded was embarrassing to both Clark and the Liberal Members who were cheering her on.
Clark's response was that when the NDP was throwing rocks they should expect to be held to account, but that produced this fine coup de grace from Palmer: "All politics all the time. It's no wonder people have trouble seeing her as a premier, when all she does is campaign."
To which I would add that Clark's congenital inveterate incorrigible partisanship is further cause to wonder whether she too has been providing undue favoritism to Liberal friends, insiders and especially donors.
Questions about a big-ticket partisan speechwriter
Meanwhile other new controversies have arisen too, including the Government Communications and Public Engagement (formerly the Public Affairs Bureau) having retained Don Millar, a longtime friend of Clark and the communications chair of Clark's leadership campaign, as a speechwriter billing up to $10,000 a month, which Clark's government defended as appropriate when dealing with confidential matters.
However NDP caucus chair Shane Simpson noted that is just one more among many senior political aides around Clark who are being paid much more than $100,000 a year and some as much as $195,000.
"What are these people doing and how capable are they and are they actually bringing value to the government or is this just simply a case of her not being confident that she has that base of allies in her caucus?" Simpson told The Sun's Jonathan Fowlie.
"When you don't have that, you build your allies by hiring people around you. And that's what she's done, she's paying most of these people in excess of $100,000 per year, and some of them almost $200,000 a year. That's big money."
There also were several running stories on TV newscasts and radio talk shows about Clark's newly-hired press secretary Sara McIntyre, whose efforts to prevent reporters from asking questions to Clark at the Globe 2012 event went viral on the Internet.
The Cutting Edge of the Ledge segment on Bill Good's show this morning dealt with all of those issues and several more too, such as the naming controversy involving BC Place and the provincewide installation of so-called smart meters but it wasn't that cutting, for example not emphasizing that Eminata has political connections and not mentioning that the owner of the soccer Whitecaps, Greg Kerfoot, whose team is involved in the BC Place naming issue, is another close friend of Clark.
But thanks to Palmer it did bring out that the BC Place naming dispute apparently came down to the size of the proposed signs, with Clark and/or her Ministers apparently feeling they would have been just too large.
Good, Palmer and Keith Baldrey of Global TV had a hard time believing that such a big contract (about $40 million over 20 years) could swing on such a trivial matter but it makes perfect sense to me when you realize that the Boss Power misfeasance case, which triggered a payout of $30 million, was triggered because the Liberals did not want to jeopardize any Liberal seats by being seen to allow exploration for uranium not far from Kelowna during the run-up to the much-tainted 2009 election (then minister Kevin Krueger said it would have been political suicide).
In the case of the BC Place signage there already was a major controversy over the size and brightness of a nearby sign and partisan politicians probably figured that exacerbating that controversy would cost them even more seats, certainly destroying any hope of taking away Vancouver-West End from the NDP and perhaps losing Point Grey too - which, ahem, is Clark's own riding.
Clark may get some breathing room next week because the Legislature will not be sitting so the New Democrat Opposition, which has been happily using these and other issues in Question Period, won`t have a ready-made platform for a while to press such questions but we can expect another deluge when they return on March 26, which probably is about when Clark will announce the byelections too. Unless things become really really worse. And assuming she's still Premier by then.
Background on the Eminata Group
From the company's website March 16:
The Eminata Group is the largest private provider of post-secondary education in Canada. Our institutes offer a wide range of educational programs from graduate and undergraduate degrees to art and design diplomas and accelerated career training programs in the fields of business, healthcare, education, language, technology and skilled trades.
All of our programs, totaling more than 120, follow focused, market-driven curriculum, offer small class sizes and flexible schedules, and are taught by instructors that possess extensive professional experience in their fields. The schools also offer career placement services to assist students in finding employment after graduation.
By the end of the fiscal year, June 30, 2012, we will be operating 43 campuses and expect to enroll more than 15,000 students across all divisions. Approximately 10,000 learners will graduate from our university programs, career training programs and Traditional Chinese Medicine programs this year.
A Response from Dr. Peter Chung, Executive Chairman of the Eminata Group:
Recent coverage in The Province newspaper regarding the operations of University Canada West and other entities of the Eminata Group have, in my view, been grievous, inaccurate and hurtful. I would like to address the key issues in a fair minded and factual manner.
The Eminata Group is a dynamic organization and is Canada’s largest independent post- secondary education company.
Education and training programs at our colleges and University Canada West range from career diplomas and certifications to undergraduate and post-graduate academic degrees. In addition, we offer several online university degree programs to students who want the benefits of a Canadian education but are unable to attend a university campus.
Recently, one of my managers operating in India was found to be involved in practices which did not meet the stringent ethical standards of our organization. That individual was confronted with the facts and advised he would be dismissed.
Following those clear steps of action we received a threat that a campaign against Eminata would be launched unless certain sums of money were paid. As evidence of the malicious intent of the individual, a blog was set up with anonymous entries of complaint against our schools. We felt all of this constituted extortion and accordingly reported the situation to the Vancouver Police Department. They are awaiting more details.
The Province newspaper took interest in the story, intrigued by the anonymous complainants on the blog and elsewhere. We have made ourselves available to The Province over a period of some months, to little avail.
Allow me now to address some of the more egregious and distorted elements of their stories to bring clarification:
Vancouver Career College has been in operation since 1995 as part of the broader number of post secondary institutions in the Eminata Group. This group also includes University Canada West, CDI College, and others.
- These schools in BC are all duly regulated, accredited as required and approved by the applicable and relevant authorities.
- In the past two years more than 10,000 students have graduated from our programs across the country.
- This year more than 3,000 students are enrolled in BC alone.
- All instructional staff must meet the credentials set and approved by all relevant authorities.
- At University Canada West, for example, all teaching faculty have either a Masters or PhD level degree.
- In 2011, of the 3,100 BC students, two formal complaints were filed with Private Career Training Institutions Agency.
- All Eminata Group colleges have a formal dispute resolution policy open to all students.
- One appeal of an advertising matter ruled on by Mr. Justice Gaul from the BC Supreme Court (in favor of Eminata Group) was taken to the BC Court of Appeal. It was ruled that Eminata's advertising was neither actually nor potentially misleading.
- Two senior staff members who were alleged by The Province newspaper to have worked in certain US institutions have in fact only worked in schools in Canada.
- In 1991, a computer school in California which I voluntarily closed became insolvent and was assessed default damages of $12 million. Though I never acknowledged wrongdoing personally or regarding any staff, all of my business and personal assets (including my home) were applied to the judgment.
- All of Eminata's colleges in British Columbia are fully audited, solvent and have an overall job placement rate of approximately 77% within the first six months after graduating.
- For example, our grads in the Dental program average a 97% score in the National Dental Assisting Examining Board (NDAEB) exams. Ours is the only independent dental assisting program in BC that is accredited by the Commission on Dental Accreditation of Canada (CDAC).
As is my custom, and the custom of all Eminata staff, I invite ongoing input and constructive criticism regarding any and all elements of our programs. We will continue to provide excellence and quality in training and educating students as they pursue and achieve their aspirations of a prosperous and meaningful future.
Dr. Peter Chung
Executive Chairman
A photo of Chung and Clark can be seen here:
http://www.eminata.com/all-news/about-eminata-group/current-events-eminata-group-meets-with-premier-clark/
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