The former VANOC manager hired to accompany Coun. Tim Stevenson to Sochi on an Olympic lobbying junket to promote gay and lesbian rights was paid $25,520 in project management fees, according to city manager Penny Ballem’s report to council.
Maureen “Mo” Douglas’s company Mobilize Strategies received $122,043.52 for civic consulting projects since 2011 and was paid more than $17,000 before she arrived in Sochi for the Winter Olympics with Stevenson, according to Freedom of Information documents.
Ballem’s report for the June 11 finance committee meeting also shows $8,000 in communications and social media fees. That role was performed by Boldt Communications, which shares office space with Vision Vancouver polling firm Stratcom and sponsored a party fundraiser last October.
Stevenson’s Sochi-related expenses were $6,569.51, according to the civic website. The Vision Vancouver majority city council agreed to use taxpayer funds for the openly gay councillor’s trip after NPA and Green councillors alleged Stevenson was at risk of conflict of interest. The report says $57,080 was raised by donors, of which $42,225 was spent.
Real estate marketer Bob Rennie and developer Peter Wall, both Vision Vancouver supporters, donated $25,000 each while $1,000 each came from Tourism Vancouver, PCI Developments, Granville Entertainment Group president Blaine Culling, Rize Alliance vice-president Christopher Vollan and Concord Pacific senior vice-president Matt Meehan. Coun. Geoff Meggs donated $250 and there were $1,605 in anonymous donations. Dates of the donations were not disclosed.
Stevenson’s trip was prompted by the Russian laws against so-called homosexual propaganda that ignited international protests before the Games. Stevenson and Douglas, who is openly lesbian, spent two days in Istanbul before arriving Feb. 1 in Sochi. They returned to Vancouver Feb. 9.
While in the Olympic city, they stayed at the IOC’s hotel, the Radisson Blu Paradise Resort, but were only able to arrange a 90-minute meeting with Jochen Farber, chief of staff to IOC president Thomas Bach, and IOC spokesman Mark Adams. Douglas’s Feb. 28 report indicated $1,025.12 was spent on meeting hospitality “as required for meetings with Olympic officials.”
Letters seeking meetings with top officials of all participating nations and Bach, himself, yielded no results.
“I had no meetings planned at all before I left,” Stevenson told the Courier.
The agenda that Stevenson provided to the Courier showed he went to Cabaret Mayak, Sochi’s gay bar, and made himself busy by talking almost exclusively with Canadian media outlets. He had seven interviews with various CBC programs, two with CTV and the Vancouver Sun, and one each with the Toronto Star, Global, Mountain FM, Co-op Radio and freelancer Jordan Wade.
What did Stevenson and Douglas achieve?
They wanted the IOC to add sexual orientation to the equality clause of its Charter and mandate gay and lesbian party facilities in future host cities. Vancouver and Whistler were the first to have so-called pride houses.
Farber and Adams told them the Olympic Charter is part of Bach’s Olympic Agenda 2020 omnibus review. Pride House International later backtracked from its demand that the IOC mandate pride houses in future host cities.
"For a Pride House not to take place means either that there is no local interest in such a venue, or that there are impediments to a local community organizing one,” said PHI’s statement in the report. “If impediments do exist it means that the IOC has chosen an inappropriate host country for their event.”
Wrote Ballem: "With better understanding... we are now aligned and supportive of Pride House International’s position."
