The NDP has asked B.C.’s auditor general to investigate executive salaries at Kwantlen Polytechnic University, where Advanced Education Minister Amrik Virk was vice-chairman of the board of governors.
Opposition critic David Eby alleges that Virk and other officials cut side deals with senior executives to top up their pay and get around a provincial salary cap.
Finance Minister Mike de Jong ordered a review last month after Eby raised the issue in the legislature.
But Eby said the internal government probe lacks independence because Virk has told the legislature that the reviewer will report to him and de Jong.
“Given the issues at stake, and the alleged involvement of the minister in the contracts in question, it is inappropriate for the government to be reviewing itself and the conduct of a minister of the Crown,” Eby states in a letter to auditor general Russ Jones.
“We believe your office is best placed to ensure a complete, independent and impartial review of [Kwantlen’s] executive compensation and reporting practices.”
Kwantlen reported total compensation and expenses for its new president, Alan Davis, as $161,773 in its statement of financial information for 2012-13.
In the same document, the university reported that Davis received a separate $50,000 goods-and-services contract.
Virk has denied that anything was hidden or disguised.
He said Davis received the $50,000 for three months of work prior to becoming president in September 2012.
“This is a pre-employment contract,” Virk told reporters.
He said Davis made at least three trips to Surrey from Empire State College in New York before starting work at Kwantlen.
“He attended numerous meetings with faculty, with staff, with the board. I’m quite aware that he started a draft of a visioning and strategic exercise process. … So it was certainly work of incredible value to the university.”
Eby, however, alleges the contract was a “side deal” designed to skirt Public Sector Employers’ Council reporting rules.
The NDP has obtained both Davis’s employment contract and his $50,000 consulting contract. The two deals were signed on the same day, April 12, 2012, with Virk as one of the signatories.
The employment contract for $224,995 — just $5 below the $225,000 salary cap — stated that there were “no collateral contracts or agreements.”
“In other words,” Eby told the legislature Thursday, “there were no side deals. But that was not the case. There was a side deal. The minister knew it and he signed anyway.”
Eby said the employment contract was sent to the Public Sector Employers’ Council and reported as the president’s total compensation. The $50,000 contract was marked confidential and “never reported to the council,” Eby said.
Virk dismissed the allegation as “incorrect” and said an internal government review would “clear up once and for all the term of the pre-employment period and the employment period so that the facts are correct.”
Kwantlen issued a statement Thursday saying it welcomes the review by assistant deputy finance minister Rob Mingay and is co-operating fully. “Because the review is ongoing, it would be inappropriate for Kwantlen to comment publicly on these matters at this time,” the statement said.
