The Non Partisan Association’s rejection of high-profile mayoral candidate Hector Bremner shows the party lacks transparency, is stuck in an old “backroom” boys mentality and has displayed anti-immigrant bias, say opponents to its candidate approval process.

Bremner, who is currently an NPA councillor, said he was approved by the party’s Green Light Committee but unexpectedly blocked from running for mayor under its banner by the party board, suggesting the racial identity of his supporters may have hurt his bid. NPA president Gregory Baker told media earlier this week that the Green Light Committee had “serious concerns” with Bremner and so the board decided not to green light his application.

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“We had statements made to us when we started signing up more people,” said Bremner, referring to a membership drive that he said added more than 2,000 party members.

“When you sign up 100 white people at a church, that doesn’t seem questionable, but when you have 100 non-Anglicized names, that is questionable,” said Bremner, whose wife is Filipina and who signed up many immigrants.

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He said the comments against immigrants were not openly made.

Photo by Francis Georgian / PNG

“It’s covert in a lot of ways, you know, when they talk about foreign buyers. It’s all in code but we all know what they mean,” he said, adding he was “astonished” by what he heard.

“It’s disappointing,” he said.

Bremner and others are left to speculate why he was turned down because the board said it won’t be revealing the “serious concerns” noted by the Green Light Committee. Bremner said that despite those concerns, the Green Light Committee still recommended him as a candidate.

Bremner said he would welcome the reasons for rejection being made public because he has nothing to hide.

“Put out whatever you want, I have no secrets,” he said. “I don’t want to hear about these sort of vague insinuations … some vague, super-secret concerns.”

He said politics “shouldn’t be done by some backroom decision. The candidates should be voted on by the members and by the public. The star chamber, big-donor era is over.”

Young, a former Conservative Vancouver MP, said she, too, had signed up “100s and 100s” of new members for the NPA last fall in anticipation of running under its banner.

Photo by Adrian Wyld / THE CANADIAN PRESS

She said her organizers were told there were problems with the forms and they had to be PDFs. That was fixed but when the members showed up to vote at the AGM, they were told they weren’t eligible, she said.

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Young’s organizers signed up 300 more members and she said they were never approved. “They were saying do these people even speak English, do they even know what they’re signing?”

She said the NPA called to confirm who they were. “Some of my Chinese seniors were freaked out,” she said. “They were saying, ‘Is it wrong to join a political party and to vote for you?’”

Young said, “I believe very strongly the people of Vancouver should decide who sits on council, not the backroom boys who are doing it now.

“The NPA is a venerable party. It needs to change with the times,” she said. “This shows they’re not able to change their ways.”

Scott de Lange Boom, an engineer who had recently announced his intention to run for a council seat under NPA, said on Wednesday he’s changed his mind because the board ignored the Green Light Committee’s recommendation on Bremner.

“I didn’t think the board was acting in an open, fair and transparent way,” de Lange Boom said.

Council candidate Adrian Crook also dropped out from the NPA slate because of the Bremner decision.

Bremner, elected in the 2017 byelection, is vice-president of Pace Group communications firm, and is pro-development and pro-density and his campaign focused on housing affordability, including using city land for social and market-rental housing.

He said on Wednesday he isn’t certain if he will still run as an independent.

NPA board president Greg Baker didn’t return a request for comment on Wednesday.

The board approved three names for mayoral candidates: old-guard party member and Park Board Commissioner John Coupar, political newcomer and Nurse Next Door co-founder Ken Sim and Glen Chernen.

Baker, Sim and Chernen all graduated from Churchill High School in 1988.