Former City of North Vancouver mayoral candidate Guy Heywood has been handed an $800 penalty by Elections BC for making a prohibited campaign contribution to himself in the 2022 election.
The public agency, which enforces Local Elections Campaign Financing Act, announced the administrative penalty on Wednesday.
At issue in the investigation was a January 2023 $3,304 loan to his own campaign that Heywood listed in his financial disclosure documents. Later that year, Elections BC staff flagged that as an impermissible loan that would have to be considered a campaign contribution. The amount was $1,980 more than the limit the law allows candidates to contribute to themselves in a single year.
When it was brought to his attention, Heywood explained to the investigator that he had not planned on running for mayor and put together his campaign on short notice, leading him to spend more than he raised in donations. The error in his financing was inadvertent, he added.
Heywood filed an amended disclosure statement, as requested by investigators, showing that he returned the prohibited amount from himself and raised the remainder from friends and family.
The maximum penalty in such cases is double the amount of the prohibited donation – $3,961. In considering the size of the penalty, Elections BC noted that it was the first time Heywood had ever faced an investigation, that he was forthcoming with investigators and that he worked quickly to bring himself back into compliance.
“The investigation did not identify any evidence that would suggest that Heywood had deliberately attempted to circumvent the legislation,” Elections BC’s report states.
The report noted, however, that “accepting prohibited contributions gives a candidate an advantage in that the candidate did not need to seek a contribution of that amount and saved time during a busy campaign.”
In the race, Buchanan finished victorious with 5,275 votes, or 57 per cent of the popular vote. Guy Heywood netted 3,923 votes – 43 per cent overall.
“Frankly, I take responsibility. It’s a bit of an idiot tax for doing something rash at the last minute that I thought was the right thing to do,” Heywood told the North Shore News.
The notion that he gave himself an unfair advantage in the campaign “seems a bit ridiculous,” he added, given that his only opponent reported more than $103,000 in spending and $113,531 in new donations, much of which came from individuals working in the development industry.
When he was a council member, Heywood brought a motion asking his colleagues to recuse themselves from voting on projects that their campaign contributors had a financial interest in.
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