Something weird is happening in the Freedom of Information offices at Vancouver City Hall.

Charlie Smith of the Georgia Straight recently filed an FOI with Vancouver asking for records on Mayor Gregor Robertson’s media interviews April 17. City Hall says there are no records – which seems ludicrous, given Smith’s report of the timeline.

Well, it would seem ludicrous, if the same thing hadn’t just happened with me.

On April 19, the West Coast Oil Pipeline Summit was held at the Sheraton Wall Centre. According to its event planners, the Summit was “hosted by the Tsleil-Waututh Nation along with the City of Vancouver and City of Burnaby.” One ad featured Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson and Burnaby Mayor Derek Corrigan as featured speakers in the fight “to stop oil sands expansion in B.C.” The Green Party noted on their website that the summit was happening “with support from the Cities of Vancouver and Burnaby.” And the official poster featured Vancouver and Burnaby’s logos.

I wanted to know how much money Vancouver and Burnaby property taxpayers put in for this event, so I made twin FOI requests to each municipality, asking for “any and all documents, records, costs and emails related to the [city] sponsorship of the West Coast Oil Pipeline Summit and Gala Dinner, at the Sheraton Wall Centre April 19, 2013.”

Vancouver sent back their reply quickly: “We were unable to locate any records responsive to your request.”

Burnaby took a few days longer (and misspelled my name and called me Ms. – good attention to detail, Burnaby): “No records were located.”

So this sponsorship (and mayoral speaking gigs) materialized out of thin air, apparently. And for free. Which leads to more questions:

- Will Vancouver and Burnaby be going after event organizers for illegal use of their city logos? After all, no record exists of permission.
- If Vancouver and Burnaby, who both “hosted” and “supported” the Summit, didn’t put money in, who did?
- How did Gregor and Derek know when and where to speak? Are they clairvoyant? Prophetic? Did they allow this group to use their photos on their ads?

Look, wherever you stand on the pipeline issue, I think we should all be concerned that neither Vancouver or Burnaby are being up front with how they are spending property tax money and what causes they are choosing to support.