Hector Bremner’s Yes Vancouver party says it has no knowledge of the flashy advertisements around the city promoting the mayoral candidate ahead of the municipal election.

The ads are drawing criticism over the influence of big money in politics and provoking speculation on the people and motive behind the campaign.

“Your guess is as good as mine as to who’s doing it. I think there’s a large group of people that are doing it. I don’t think it’s any one individual,” said Tim Crowhurst, secretary of Bremner’s Yes Vancouver party.

Anonymous operators behind the group Vancouverites for Affordable Housing have started a string of advertisements plastered on billboards, adorning posters in SkyTrain stations and spreading on social media, highlighting Bremner’s platform to “fix housing now” and citing Bremner as the “only credible mayoral candidate on housing.”

While supporting Bremner, the group has targeted candidates like Kennedy Stewart, running as an independent, and Ken Sim, mayoral candidate of the Non-Partisan Association (NPA), who is depicted as a puppet candidate for mysterious supporters in attack advertisements online.

Crowhurst added that the “positive” advertisements are a “nice” change after a year of “muck that was thrown by the millionaires and billionaires behind the NPA against Hector, which are all without foundation, all without any merit.”

The rules governing third-party advertising under the Local Elections Campaign Financing Act stipulates that groups can spend as much as they want before Sept. 22 without having to disclose their identity and how much they spent on promotion.

When Crowhurst was asked how the advertisers may have gotten a hold of Bremner’s photo used in the billboards, Crowhurst said they may have “pulled it off the internet somewhere.”

In response to the attack advertisements against the other candidates, Crowhurst said he has not seen them.

According to Andrew Watson, communications manager at Elections BC, if the advertisements by Vancouverites for Affordable Housing continue between Sept. 22 and Oct. 20, the group must register with Elections BC and disclose their names and contact information and adhere to a $150,000 advertising limit.

Kennedy Stewart, an independent mayoral candidate, condemned these kinds of “smear campaigns” against him and said “it has no place in Canadian politics.”

Stewart thinks the people buying the advertisements “have a very close affiliation” with Bremner.

“I am leading on the polling … and Mr. Bremner is doing very badly. I think this is a kind of desperate attempt to increase his popularity,” Stewart said.

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Justin Fung, spokesperson for Housing Action for Local Taxpayers and an NPA member who filed a conflict-of-interest complaint against Bremner, said it’s possible that real estate developers are behind the advertising campaigns so they can “continue (having) influence over city hall.”

Having pulled together political rallies on housing affordability, Fung thinks it would be difficult for grassroots activists to get the money to run these advertisements.

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