Tonight, businessman and former Vancouver Canucks owner Arthur Griffiths will be acclaimed as the B.C. Liberal candidate in the upcoming Vancouver-Burrard by-election.

Griffiths will likely square off against park commissioner Spencer Herbert, who is seeking the NDP nomination in the constuency recently vacated by two-term MLA Lorne Mayencourt.

Mayencourt is the federal Conservative candidate in Vancouver Centre.

Griffiths issued a media advisory announcing that he will accept the nomination in the Vancouver Marriott Pinnacle Hotel, with speeches beginning at 7 p.m.

Griffiths chaired the Vancouver/Whistler 2010 Bid Society, which secured the Canadian Olympic Committee's support for Vancouver to place its bid to host the 2010 Games before the International Olympic Committee.

The Vancouver/Whistler 2010 Bid Society was dissolved for failing to file annual reports with the registrar of companies. The Vancouver 2010 Bid Corporation was a new entity created to promote the bid before the IOC, which selected Vancouver in July, 2003.

Here's a story that the Straight published in December, 2002 regarding the dissolution of the Vancouver/Whistler 2010 Bid Society:

By Charlie Smith
Members of an ad hoc group opposed to the Vancouver Olympic bid say they want to know what happened to funds raised by the Vancouver/Whistler 2010 Bid Society. On December 9, Phil LeGood and Chris Shaw of the No Games 2010 Coalition revealed that the society, which was a precursor to the Vancouver 2010 Bid Corporation, was dissolved for failing to file annual reports with the provincial registrar of companies.

Businessman Arthur Griffiths chaired the society, and on December 1, 1998, the Canadian Olympic Committee endorsed the Vancouver bid to host the 2010 Winter Olympics. After this endorsement, a new Vancouver 2010 Bid Corporation was federally incorporated with five partners: the City of Vancouver, the Resort of Whistler, the provincial and federal governments, and the Canadian Olympic Committee.

The registrar of companies dissolved the Vancouver/Whistler 2010 Bid Society on November 2, 2001. On December 9 of this year, LeGood and Shaw wrote to the former society’s directors, alleging that there are no public records of what happened to the society’s assets.

“On behalf of the people of British Columbia, we demand that the directors of the former Vancouver/Whistler 2010 Bid Society fulfill their legal and moral obligations and make available, as a public record, the Society’s Annual Reports, Financial Statements and a full accounting of its financial transactions,” they wrote in their letter.

Griffiths told the Straight that the society was disbanded after the bid corporation was created, marking the second phase in a three-step process for hosting the Games. If the International Olympic Committee chooses the Canadian bid, he added, the bid corporation will be replaced by a new Olympic Organizing Committee, which will include the IOC and other stakeholders. He said the society’s assets were transferred to the bid corporation, which he chaired on an interim basis.

“It did not file in the end because it would no longer be a useful society,” Griffiths said. “It became superseded by the corporation.”

The day after LeGood and Shaw sent their letter, the Vancouver 2010 Bid Corporation e-mailed the Straight a copy of the society’s audited financial statements from its commencement to September 30, 2000. The auditing firm, Grant Thornton LLP Chartered Accountants, provided a “qualified” report.

“In common with many charitable organizations, the organization derives revenue from cash contributions, the completeness of which is not susceptible of satisfactory audit verification,” the firm wrote. “Accordingly, our verification of these revenues was limited to the amounts recorded in the records of the Society and we were not able to determine whether any adjustments might be necessary to contribution revenues, excess of revenues over expenses, assets and net assets.”

According to the Canadian Securities Course textbook, a qualified report “should be regarded as a signal that the financial statement may not present fairly the financial position or results of operations of the company in question”. The auditors’ report of the society stated that except for the effects of adjustments related to the contributions, the financial statements “present fairly, in all material respects, the financial position of the Society as at September 30, 2000”.

The society’s audited statements show revenues of $741,501. According to a biography of Griffiths on the Web site of Sporg Internet Corporation, the bid-proposal team raised $1.2 million. Griffiths, who is on Sporg’s advisory board, said the accountants informed him that a portion of the contributions were in the form of “contra”, and that the society operated for four months before being registered.

Vancouver 2010 Bid Corporation spokesperson Sam Corea told the Straight that the society’s directors recognized that there weren’t any consequences for failing to file the annual report other than the lapsing of the society’s registration. “My understanding was that the process was selected as a convenient way of terminating the society,” Corea said.

The Vancouver/Whistler 2010 Bid Society’s constitution stated that any assets after dissolution “shall be given, transferred and distributed to such other non-profit community athletic organizations as are determined by the members to have purposes similar to those of the society”.

LeGood claimed that the Vancouver 2010 Bid Corporation cannot be considered a “non-profit community athletic organization”, so it shouldn’t have received any of the society’s assets. Griffiths disagreed on this point. “If the bid corporation and the bid society aren’t similar organizations, I don’t know what is,” he said.

Corea said the Vancouver 2010 Bid Corporation has raised $31.5 million of its original target of $34 million to fund the bid.