On Sunday (June 3), NPA members will converge on the Hellenic Centre on Arbutus Street to nominate their Vancouver mayoral candidate.

One of the three candidates, Glen Chernen, has made ethics and transparency a cornerstone of his campaign.

In fact, he uses the words "transparent" or "transparency" five times on his website's home page.

But to date, none of the NPA mayoral candidates, including Chernen, has been particularly transparent about their financial holdings in advance of the nomination meeting.

For example, Chernen's website includes no information on his investments or any creditors who might be owed money by him.

There are certainly none of his personal tax returns on his website.

The same can be said of the websites created by businessman Ken Sim and park commissioner John Coupar, who are also seeking the NPA mayoral nomination.

There's nothing about their private investments or personal liabilities. None of them are walking the talk of transparency.

The NPA directors also include no financial-disclosure statements on their party website.

We don't know, for instance, if any of them may have a business relationship with any of the mayoral candidates.

Despite their lack of transparency, they seemed to make an issue of NPA councillor Hector Bremner's ethics when they denied him a chance to seek the mayoral nomination.

It's oh so very opaque.

For that matter, we don't even know if there are any financial relationships between the NPA mayoral candidates.

Sim attended Chernen's wedding. They were high school buddies at Churchill secondary school.

Sim's exceedingly wealthy. Chernen puts on airs of being wealthy.

How do we know that Chernen never invested in Sim's companies or if Sim never consulted with Chernen before seeking the NPA mayoral nomination?

To look for information on the public record, I went back to Chernen's financial disclosure form for the 2014 election, when he ran for council with the Cedar Party.

He declared having shares in the following companies: Apple Inc., B2Gold Corp., Berkshire Hathaway Inc., Bank of Nova Scotia, Bank of Montreal, Comcast Corp., Royal Dutch Shell, J M Smucker Company, Stepan Company, and the Walt Disney Co.

But there was no indication how many shares he held in each company at that time. This means it's impossible for an independent observer to determine if he is indeed living off his investments, as he has claimed, or if he's just another West Side trust fund millionaire.

There's a way for the three NPA mayoral candidates to clear the air and provide genuine transparency before Sunday's vote.

All they have to do is post their assets and liabilities, including the number of individual shares and size of any personal debts, on their campaign websites.

And they can state on the record whether they have or ever had business relationships with any party directors or between themselves.

If they're lying about that, investigative journalist Bob Mackin will probably eventually ferret that out.

For good measure, I've also emailed each of the candidates to ask if they would supply me with their personal tax returns.

In the United States, presidential candidates with the exception of Donald Trump have routinely disclosed their tax returns to be transparent to voters.

I can't see why those seeking the NPA mayoral nomination can't do the same—especially if they're putting transparency and accountability at the core of their campaigns.

It's their opportunity to show that the NPA truly differs from Vision Vancouver and all the other parties they condemn for lacking accountability.

This is their chance to take transparency to a new level in Vancouver civic politics. 

Chernen and Sim, in particular, like to brag about how adept they are at reading financial statements. Why not let NPA members learn more about how they handle their finances?

Surely, they don't have anything to hide.