Negative Signs Around Community

I have been around politics long enough to know that one’s personal life is open for scrutiny when running for public office.  I am still naive enough to hope that in our local Port Coquitlam election that information “found out” about a candidate will be accurate and disseminated responsibly.  This morning I found out that even here in PoCo, negative, incorrect politicking exists.

Starting around 8:30am this morning, I received phone calls from half a dozen residents, City staff, members of a running group and even fellow candidate Brad West telling me that signs (as pictured above) were taped to bus stop benches along Coast Meridian and Prairie and taped to the front windows of Hyde Creek Community Centre (where I workout at the gym).  On the back of the signs was a single page of a court action filed against me in 2006.

Had the person or persons who put up the signs had any integrity, they would have also pointed out that this case never went to court.  In fact this was all an error which resulted in the action against me being removed and letters from the Plaintiff sent to my bank, the courts, credit bureaus, etc. stating that they are deleting the listing from records.

Let me explain the background.

Sometime in the 1990′s I took out a Mastercard credit card from Canada Trust.  In 2000, Canada Trust was purchased by Toronto Dominion Bank and the Mastercard was transferred to a TD Mastercard.  Shortly after that, the TD Mastercard business was sold to Citibank and at that point I cancelled my card.

During the transfers from Canada Trust to TD to Citibank, records of my payments were lost which led to years of back and forth with my pleading my innocence.  To make matters worse, Citibank sold my “past due credit file” to a credit collection agency and this agency sold it to another and then in 2005 the file landed with Contact Resource Services who sent it to the courts.

When I met with a representative of Contact Resource Services in 2007, the errors / problems were acknowledged and this matter closed without getting to court.  In fact, CRS sent me a letter dated June 29, 2007 – CLICK HERE to view in PDF – stating that the records on this file were being deleted.

In short, while an action was indeed filed against me, after some meaningful conversation took place the matter was resolved.  I hope that the person / persons who put up these signs will contact me directly for some more of this meaningful conversation.  I also hope that this election does not continue in this manner.

UPDATE: The Tri-City News published a related article on October 21st under the headline, “PoCo civic election gets nasty”.  I wish they mentioned – as I discussed with the reporter – the charges never when to trial.  Other than that, not bad.