$4,000 in meals, 2 nights at Château Laurier help nearly double Prince George mayor's expenses, documents show

Less than a year into his first term in office, the mayor of Prince George, B.C., has significantly overspent his proposed budget for meals, entertainment, travel and accommodation, documents show.  

According to financial reporting obtained through a freedom of Information request filed by CBC News, from Nov. 7, 2022 to Sept. 28, 2023, Mayor Simon Yu spent more than $18,000 on travel, accommodation, meals and entertainment, nearly double the $9,500 the city had budgeted for those expenses.

The documents show spending on trips to Vancouver, Montreal, Ottawa and Toronto, including a first-class stay in a deluxe suite in Ottawa.

There were more than $4,000 in meal expenses, primarily at restaurants in Prince George, all on the taxpayers' dime.

The amount spent is significantly higher than that of Yu's predecessor, Lyn Hall, who in his final year in office spent just over $9,000, according to publicly-available information. The most Hall ever spent on expenses as mayor was $16,000 in 2019.

Yu's spending is also out of line with historic expense budgets of mayors of other similarly sized municipalities, according to statement of financial information reports filed annually by cities.

Of eight cities identified by the City of Prince George as "peer municipalities" for budget comparisons, only the mayors of Nanaimo, Kelowna and Victoria have ever expensed more than $20,000 in a year between 2015 through 2022 — Nanaimo twice, Kelowna twice and Victoria once.

Mayor says trips are in the public interest

In an interview with CBC News, Yu says he believes the trips he made were in the public interest and contributed to raising the city's profile.

Many of the trips are standard for the leader of a city, including a stay in Vancouver for the Union of B.C. Municipalities Convention, and economy flights. Yu blames inflation and rising costs for the overages. 

There are also more expensive items, including Yu's trip to Ottawa to mark the 100th anniversary of Canada's Chinese Exclusion Act on June 23. In total, the trip to attend a two-hour event at the Senate of Canada Chamber cost more than $2,000, including $759 on a hotel room for two nights at the Fairmont Château Laurier.

The trip had not previously been publicized to citizens in Prince George, either through the city's communications office or the mayor's own statements, nor was local media made aware of the mayor's attendance at the event.

In an interview with CBC News, Yu explained the event was to mark a dark period in Canadian history in which Chinese people were discriminated against on account of race and ethnicity. The act banned almost all Chinese immigration to Canada. Chinese people were also denied the right to vote, hold public office, own land and work certain jobs.

Yu said he believes there were other elected municipal leaders of Chinese descent from B.C. in attendance, but could not recall who. He says his executive assistant chose the luxury hotel because it is centrally located. 

A follow-up email from the city's communications manager, Julie Rogers, shows Yu did, in fact, book his own stay at the Fairmont Château Laurier, and then forwarded the confirmation email to his executive assistant.

When asked why his attendance was not publicly known, Yu said he believes it's the job of the City of Prince George's communications department to inform the public about his schedule. 

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"Perhaps at the time, the co-ordination of my activity was not synchronized yet with the [City of Prince George] communications team," said Yu. 

"As a mayor, I'm not the type to try to blow my own horn … I leave this to my communications team if they feel that this event should be put on the city's website."

Yu says he believes councillors knew about the event because he shares his calendar with them every week, but says there was no disclosure beyond that, and no conversation in advance about whether the trip was in the public interest. 

In an email to CBC News, Rogers said the mayor's calendar is shared with city council every two weeks, but not with the communications department. She says there are also many meetings and trips not added to his calendar. 

Little oversight of municipal spending: Democracy Watch

CBC News contacted every member of city council for comment on both the trip and Yu's overall expenses but just one chose to respond. 

Coun. Trudy Klassen said in an email she believes Yu has been "very busy meeting with residents, business owners, advocates and potential investors."

She volunteered that she, too, is over budget this year, and has paid between $2,000 and $3,000 out of pocket. Unlike the mayor, councillors have a set annual budget of $8,000. 

In a blog post published Wednesday morning, Coun. Cori Ramsay says individual council members — including the mayor — are responsible for managing their own expenses, not an executive assistant or the communications department.

Duff Conacher, co-founder of of Democracy Watch, a non-profit group that advocates for government accountability, says there is a broad understanding that spending by elected officials should be in the public interest, but oversight at the municipal level is often lacking. 

 "The problem is that [what's in the public interest] is left to politicians to define," he told CBC News, noting that "proactive disclosure" of expenses is not an expectation at the municipal level. 

Conacher says this leaves it up to the public or media to track spending and hold elected officials to account if they veer too far in their expenses. 

Stay at local hotel also charged

There were also several instances of the mayor spending money locally, including for meals with out-of-town groups and locals, including city councillors, at several restaurants.

In one instance, Yu charged taxpayers $242 for a one-night stay at the Prestige Treasure Cove Hotel in Prince George. Yu lives in the College Heights neighbourhood of Prince George, about five kilometres from the casino. 

Read the full list of the mayor's expenses:

When asked about it, Yu said he made the calculated decision to stay at the hotel rather than cab home and then retrieve his car in the morning. Yu offered no explanation as to why he was unable to drive home following a business meeting with a potential investor from Amylia Capital Corp. 

"At the time, I just did not know… [the rules around] the expenses and the limit." 

In a written response, Yu says he now acknowledges that charging the city for that hotel stay was "not good practice" and he plans to pay back the $242 charge. 

In 2021, Prince George City Hall was shaken up by a spending controversy involving a downtown parkade and whether city staff, and elected leaders, knew about it and chose not to disclose it to the public. 

Conacher says it's examples like this that have worn thin public trust in elected leaders.

"Secrecy by politicians and public officials is a recipe for waste and corruption, fraud and general abuses of the public interest," he said.  

A year into his first elected role, Yu maintains he wants to be the "three A's mayor" — accessible, accountable, and action-oriented. Voters expressed an appetite for change, electing Yu by a wide margin over two-term councillor Terri McConnachie.

Yu says he only learned he was over budget last month and he has since reined in his spending. 

"Everything is a lot more expensive than before… so next year, I'm probably going to be a little bit more selective," says Yu.

He says that may mean fewer out-of-town conferences and meetings, and fewer meals charged to taxpayers.