St. Albert’s MLA says he plans to make a final version of an investigation into the Alberta Motor Vehicle Industry Council (AMVIC) public.
Last weekend, CTV’s W5 program featured an investigation into car dealerships as well as revealing the details of a draft report by Service Alberta that investigates operations at the arm’s-length regulator.
The report contains interviews that have strong language about AMVIC’s executive director, John Bachinski, and implies he has interfered in investigations in addition to the rest of the report, which identifies poor staff morale and offers several recommendations for standardizing operations and training.
Service Minister Stephen Khan said the final version of the report will be released, but said it wouldn’t be constructive to comment on the draft highlighted on the television program.
“It’s my intent to release that report and that report will be very soon,” he said. “It’s always been my intention to release the report. It’s also been my intention to permit the board adequate time to respond to our department.”
AMVIC has been under fire recently after it was revealed the previous service minister had personal connections with board members and that an investigator for AMVIC also vetted potential Progressive Conservative party nominees.
Khan said the hiring of investigators is the responsibility of the executive director. As for the board connections with Manmeet Bhullar, his predecessor at Service Alberta, Khan said there is a process that is followed when appointing board members and the appointees are qualified.
AMVIC declined to comment on the report at this time. Laura Lowe, communications and education manager for AMVIC, noted the report publicized is a draft and the organization will comment once there is a final version.
Gerald Bachand, general sales manager at Ron Hodgson, said he saw the W5 report and thinks one thing that wasn’t related to the audience was how big of a job AMVIC has to do.
As far as the St. Albert-based dealership is concerned, Bachand said they’ve seen a big change in how AMVIC operates in the past few years in a positive way, with more information and check-ins on the rules around advertising.
“I do have to say that AMVIC, as far as we’re concerned, we thought they were keeping a pretty tight rein on things,” Bachand said. He said AMVIC has actually started to take some people to court in the past few years.
AMVIC can help separate the dealerships that operate fairly from the shadier operations, he said.
“We are all for that type of watch-dog scenario so our customers know if we’re good members in standing with AMVIC that we run our business in a professional way,” Bachand said.
