Vancouver city councillors reject free Olympic hockey tickets

The developer of the $1-billion athletes’ village has offered some Vancouver councillors free Olympic hockey tickets.

Three councillors, COPE’s David Cadman and Vision’s Kerry Jang and Andrea Reimer, told the Straight that they declined the gift from the Millennium group.

“I think when one is offered—I don’t know how expensive the tickets were, I suspect very expensive, and I just felt this is somebody [Millennium] who we’re going to have to make some decisions about over $1 billion of taxpayers’ money that’s been loaned to them,” Cadman said. “I appreciate their offer, but I think it’s not the way we ought to be acting at this point.”

Jang stressed that he doesn’t take tickets from corporations. “It’s that whole thing again about taking handouts from developers,” Jang said, adding that he was offered two tickets.

Reimer said she doesn’t have time to watch hockey.

Cadman’s COPE colleague Ellen Woodsworth did not receive an offer, which she said she would have refused as well. “Millennium comes to us for permits and rezonings, and we should have a distance to them,” Woodsworth pointed out.

George Chow, also a Vision councillor, said that he hasn’t checked whether or not Millennium sent him a notice about free hockey tickets. However, Chow noted that he would have “a lot of reservations accepting them”.

NPA councillor Suzanne Anton said that she got no ticket offer. “I don’t know the answer to that question,” Anton responded when asked if she would have taken the tickets. She said that councillors who take gifts need to disclose them.

Geoff Meggs, the Vision councillor in charge of the Olympic file, refused to confirm whether or not he received an offer from Millennium. “Lots of people offered me tickets and I declined them,” Meggs said. “I’ve got tickets that I bought myself and [those] assigned to me by the city, and those are the only events that I’m going to. But I’m not gonna go through who’s offered me tickets.”

Millennium is also the developer of a future high-rise residential building at 1215 Bidwell Street, a project that was approved by council in December 2009 despite several questions raised by West End residents.

Vision councillors Raymond Louie, Tim Stevenson, and Heather Deal didn’t return calls before deadline.