Docs Show Mandel Bought Oilers Tickets Worth $69,000 in 5 Years

This article was last updated on April 16, 2022

Canada: Oye! Times readers Get FREE $30 to spend on Amazon, Walmart…
USA: Oye! Times readers Get FREE $30 to spend on Amazon, Walmart…

The Tories candidate in the Edmonton-Whitemud byelection, Stephen Mandel, explained on Wednesday that the hockey tickets bought from taxpayers’ money during his last five years as Edmonton’s mayor were mostly handed over to charities for fundraising purposes. The health minister is up against Wildrose Candidate, Tim Grover, who released documents detailing Mandel’s expenses from 2008 through 2012 on Wednesday.

According to the records unveiled by Grover, Mandel allegedly spent $69,000 taxpayer dollars on Edmonton Oilers tickets, even though he had access to two skyboxes for hosting purposes. In response to the allegations, Mandel campaign spokesman, Steve Buick, stated that “the whole allegation that Stephen Mandel expensed these tickets for his own use is simply false. He did not.” It was elucidated that “these tickets were not expensed for Stephen Mandel’s use, they were given away to other people, and in fact most of them were given to charitable agencies to raise money for themselves by raffling the tickets off.”

Furthermore, Buick alleged that Mandel had simply adopted “an established practice under the previous administration” but still “it was stopped just because of the negotiations with the owner of the Oilers over the arena.” Buick added that “there was a judgment made that while the city was actually negotiating with the Oilers, it might create an appearance of a conflict for the mayor to be giving away tickets to games.” He alleged that “the mayor got no benefit from it and absolutely was sensitive to the ethics of it, so that in fact he stopped when he thought that it might be perceived as a conflict.”