‘Vindication’ for NDP political staffer

VICTORIA — NDP political staffer and school trustee Gurveen Dhaliwal is off the hook for scrutineering an election where she was also a candidate, after saying she did not know it was against the law to do so.

Nevertheless, Gordon decided that it was not in the public interest for Dhaliwal to be charged with violating the rule. He gave several reasons, including that “the offence was committed as a result of a genuine mistake or misunderstanding of fact.”

Dhaliwal told a police investigation that “she was unaware that, as a candidate, she was prohibited from being present at the voting place for any purpose other than casting her own ballot.”

“It was a lapse of memory on Gurveen’s part that she could not be a scrutineer,” said Cheryl Greenhalgh, chair of Community First New West in a statement last October.

“Gurveen deeply regrets this mistake,” added the party chair while at the same time telling reporters that Dhaliwal would not be available for comment.

In listing his reasons for not laying a charge, the independent special prosecutor noted that election officials had slipped up when they authorized Dhaliwal to serve as a scrutineer.

“The presiding election official did not ask her if she was a candidate, and he mistakenly neglected to check her name against the list of candidates in the election. “An argument could be made that Ms. Dhaliwal’s wrongful act of remaining to scrutineer was induced by the election official’s error.”

“Ms. Dhaliwal did not serve as a scrutineer for long. CCTV from the community centre showed Ms. Dhaliwal arriving at 12:19 p.m. and departing at 12:39 p.m. It was estimated that a small number of voters, perhaps a half-dozen, used the ballot box at which Ms. Dhaliwal was scrutineering over this period.”

Dhaliwal was elected Oct. 15 to a second term as a school trustee on the slate of Community First New West,  a civic party aligned with the NDP.

Special prosecutor Gordon cited her electoral success as one of the mitigating factors in deciding that a charge was not in the public interest: “Her re-election to a second term shows she is well-regarded in New Westminster.”

The Dhaliwal case was marked by some strange machinations in the provincial government.

On May 1, while she was still under police investigation, she was appointed as a political aide to Health Minister Adrian Dix. Two weeks later, the appointment was shifted to Labour Minister Harry Bains.

The New Democrats never explained the reason for the switch, nor their reasons for hiring Dhaliwal as a political aide while she was also serving on the school board.

Pay for ministerial advisers ranges from $67,000 to $97,000. Pay for New Westminster school trustees is in the range of $27,000 to $30,000.

The next day, May 27, Premier David Eby explained that Dhaliwal had been placed on administrative leave.

“We take this investigation incredibly seriously,” Eby told reporters. “As soon as we learned about it, we placed the staffer on administrative leave. And at this point, it is in the hands of the special prosecutor and certainly, we’ll continue to monitor the situation, but the staffer was immediately placed on leave.”

In early June, Dhaliwal “stepped back from her role as chair” of the New West school board, although she continued to serve as a trustee.

She indicated as much in a statement Friday through her lawyer.

“Our client looks forward to continuing to serve New Westminster as well as the province of British Columbia, and will not be granting any interviews or providing additional statements at this time,” lawyer Joven Narwal told Theresa McManus of the New Westminster Record.

He added that his client considered herself “vindicated by this decision.”

But when a politician’s best defence is ignorance of a key provision in election law, that’s not much of a vindication.