Tyabji-Wilson Announced Last Year She Is Writing Biography On Premier Christy Clark!
VICTORIA – The BC NDP says even the provincial government’s staff knew the Liberals were in a conflict of interest — as shown by email conversations obtained via freedom of information records — when it awarded one of its former MLAs a grant for $127,000, on top of a salary of $67,000 to manage that grant, to train five people on sheepskinning and marketing.
Judi Tyabji-Wilson, who announced late last year she’ll be writing a biography for the premier, was a Liberal MLA from 1991 to 1996. And according to the New Democrats, she received a grant in 2014 from the Ministry of Social Development for a sheepskin marketing initiative that ultimately went over budget by $53,000, reported 24 Hours.
According to documents obtained by the NDP, a provincial staff member said they had “serious concerns” about giving Tyabji-Wilson the money.
“There is a direct conflict of interest with the president of the non-profit (Tyabji-Wilson) being hired as the supervisor on the project,” the document said.
“Normally, it is not a good practice for a board member to be hired by the not-for-profit to undertake the project supervision. This one especially looks bad as the president was the one that submitted the application and has been the negotiator for the project.”
The New Democrats, who made their remarks through the legislature on Thursday, said the project ended up being a failure, since it was only able to sell 27 sheepskins, and managed to process only 148 skins out of the original plan of 1,000.
Michelle Stilwell, Liberal Minister of Social Development, said programs like these have given 900 people work experience, and responded to the criticism of Tyabji-Wilson’s many hats by referring to the challenge of “balance in life,” pointing to her Olympic track record — the minister has multiple Olympic medals — and her job as MLA and minister.
