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Miscellany

Bob Mackin

The BC Liberals are spying on the NDP, looking for “gotcha!” video fodder in the run-up to the May 9 provincial election. 

The taxpayer-funded Government Caucus Communications department, which keeps track of where opposition politicians are appearing, has published at least two clips so far.

NDP critic David Eby turned the tables in Question Period on Feb. 27 when he said a government employee, posing as a Young New Democrat, attended the Richmond NDP-hosted “Housing Our Future: A Youth Political Forum on Housing and Education” at Minoru community centre on Feb. 25. 

“She said she was interested in ‘post-secondary education and housing’. Those are her words,’’ Eby told the Legislature. “She then secretly recorded these youths, using a cell phone she tried to hide on her lap. When we posed for a group picture, she pretended to take a phone call and left the room to avoid being photographed. How ironic.”

In an odd coincidence, former B.C. Civil Liberties Association executive director Eby directed his question at a former president of the BCCLA, the Liberal government’s communications minister Andrew Wilkinson. 

Eby alleged that the staffer breached the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act. He asked Wilkinson whether the video would be destroyed and the youths who attended be sent a privacy breach notice. 

Wilkinson called them “wild allegations” and invited Eby to file a complaint.

“Of course, we can tell that we’re getting close to the big day in May, when it will be determined by the people of British Columbia what the future of the government of British Columbia will be,” Wilkinson said. “So we can expect that these kinds of events may occur, where individuals perhaps do things that are debatable.”

The Question Period bell rang before Eby could ask a followup. 

Eby later told theBreaker by phone that the government employee was Caroline Bleay, a government caucus researcher who had registered for the event under her name for the Facebook-advertised event. 

He said he assumes he is being recorded by political foes at any event he attends. In this case, he said, Bleay did not disclose her affiliation or ask for consent from any of the youths, whose faces and voices she would have recorded.  

“The worry that I have is a young person curious about politics, they want to hear what the NDP has to say on issues they care about, they now have to grapple with the fact they might be secretly videotaped by a staff member of their own government for unknown purposes,” Eby said. “Does it mean that if they decide to apply for a government job that suddenly there’ll be a record that pops up that says they attended an official opposition event and asked questions that seemed critical of the government? 

“We know about governments around the world that engage in this conduct.” 

Bleay did not respond to an email or a phone message left with the BC Liberal caucus office. 

Her LinkedIn profile says she has worked for the government caucus since January 2016, after a stint with Ashcroft Terminal in 2015. In summer 2013, Bleay was an intern with Kinder Morgan in its public relations and communications department. 

Liberal hidden video of NDP’s Rob Fleming.

The Liberals Tweeted a link last November to a YouTube video on the BCGovCaucus page called “John Horgan Unedited.” More recently, they Tweeted a clip of Rob Fleming’s appearance at the Richmond-Steveston riding association’s acclamation meeting for candidate Kelly Greene on Feb. 19. The clip included a cash register sound effect, like the one used by Stephen Harper at his game show-style campaign stops in the waning days of the federal Conservatives’ failed 2015 re-election campaign. 

BC Liberals and their allies have used dubious video tactics in the past. 

During the 2009 provincial election, the Province’s Mike Smyth wrote a column about how government caucus staffer Kyle Surovy was showing up at NDP leader Carole James’ news conferences, posing as a TV cameraman. Surovy is now one of Premier Christy Clark’s videographers.

Vision Vancouver sent videographers, including Mark Vonesch and Zack Embree, to NPA news conferences during the 2014 Vancouver civic election to gather content for attack ads. The Vision videographers did not identify themselves as party workers and pretended to be with the news media.

One of many things that the Liberals and Vision share is the same spin doctor, Don Millar. 

The government caucus knows where NDP and Green politicians are on a daily basis. Among the email that Clark’s ex-press secretary, Sam Oliphant, did not delete when he quit a year ago was the gem below. Taxpayers’ money is spent to compile a schedule for internal use, called Opposition Watch, which theBreaker obtained under freedom of information.

Liberal Caucus Opposition Watch by BobMackin on Scribd

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Bob Mackin The BC Liberals are spying on

News

Bob Mackin

When she was in opposition, Christy Clark slammed the NDP government for a post-budget “propaganda” campaign worth less than half the one she launched Feb. 24.

“People don’t want the government to spend 700 grand of their money so they can find out how to access services; people want this government to spend their money so that those services are there for them to access, that’s what British Columbians want,” the future Premier Clark chided Finance Minister Joy MacPhail in Question Period on April 1, 1999. “Can the minister tell us this: how many hospital beds, how many firefighters, how many police officers will not be on the street because she’s spending $600,000 on her advertising campaign?”

You can watch archival footage of Clark in action at this link here.

Scene from budget-themed B.C. government ad.

Fast forward to 2017. Clark and her BC Liberals are running for re-election and spending $1.87 million of taxpayers’ money to sell their Feb. 21-tabled budget to voters. The new 30-second ads highlight the scheduled Jan. 1, 2018 reduction of Medical Services Plan fees for 2 million people. On screen, it claims “MSP Premium Elimination Plan Starts With 50% Cut,” but the government has released no date for phase two or the ultimate deadline.

The plan is merely aspirational and subject to change. But the cost of the ad campaign is substantial: $1.87 million would pay the salaries of 32 new court sheriffs for a year. Two separate cases against accused drug dealers were thrown out of Victoria Provincial Court in less than a week because of a shortage of court sheriffs.

The government already hiked this year’s government ad budget from $7.8 million to $15 million in early December. The Liberals raised $12.5 million last year toward the party’s blanket ad campaign in April and early May in an attempt to win a fifth consecutive term. Donations are partially tax deductible. Their machine is so well-stocked that Deputy Premier Rich Coleman boasted at a party gathering last September that the Liberals were “fully funded” for the 2017 campaign. Clark’s strategy is similar to 2013, when she spent $16.6 million of taxpayers’ funds on advertising her BC Jobs Plan before the election and won a surprise majority. 

Advanced Education ministry spokesman Rodney Porter said the new ads are scheduled to run until March 31, which is the end of the fiscal year. The campaign for the May 9 election officially begins April 11. The frequency of the ads and the expenditure is subject to change. 

“TV and online media buying is a live process in which weighting and targeting is recalibrated based on performance and uptake,” Porter said via email.

The contractors are the same four that have collaborated on the government’s November 2015-launched “Our Opportunity Is Here” campaign.

Vizeum (media buying), St. Bernadine Mission (production), Kimbo Design (online) and Response Advertising (ethnic) were designated as preferred suppliers after a 2013 tender when Clark associate Athana Mentzelopoulos was deputy minster of government communications. Clark associate John Paul Fraser is the government’s current propaganda chief.

Jobs for Friends

Two of the companies are led by longtime Clark supporters, Jatinder Rai and Kim Pickett, whose association with Clark dates back to her failed 2005 bid for the Vancouver NPA mayoral nomination. 

Rai’s Response Advertising billed taxpayers $1.1 million for the year ended March 31, 2016. Clark named Rai a director of B.C. Pavilion Corporation last fall and reappointed him to the Medal of Good Citizenship Selection Committee. In 2010, Rai co-chaired the federal Liberal election readiness committee in B.C. with Andrew Wilkinson, who is now the minister responsible for government advertising. 

Kimbo’s Pickett

Response’s Rai

Pickett runs Kimbo Design and billed taxpayers $4.1 million last fiscal year. Pickett designed Clark’s 2011 leadership campaign logo and the 2013 Today’s BC Liberals branding. Kimbo’s billings have mushroomed, from $666,905 in 2013-2014 to $2.27 million in 2014-2015. 

Both Response and Kimbo have gone to the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner to resist efforts by theBreaker to obtain their invoices under Freedom of Information.

Vizeum billed $3.05 million for last the fiscal year and then another $2.88 million in April 2016, for a 13-month total of $5.93 million. St. Bernadine Mission billed $1.3 million. 

Overall, the government spent $12.45 million on information and publications, what it calls advertising, in 2015-2016, more than double the $5.67 million spent a year earlier.

The media outlet reaping the most revenue for the first 2015-2016 phase of the campaign was Pink Shirt Day-sponsor Global TV. Vizeum invoices obtained by theBreaker show it used $585,929.89 of taxpayers’ money to buy 570 ads between November 2015 and March 2016 on Global, an average of $1,027.95 per ad.

By comparison, the government spent more per 30-second ad on Global than it paid to a single welfare recipient ($610) or a person with disabilities ($983) over a 30-day period. The frozen-since-2007 monthly welfare rate stays at $610 in the 2017-2018 budget, but the disability payments rise $50 to $1,033 beginning April 1. 

Officially, government guidelines state that “public funds must not be used to purchase advertising in support of a political party.” Clark’s strategy differs from predecessor Gordon Campbell, who banned non-essential government advertising for four months prior to winning re-election in 2009. Premier Campbell ordered Deputy Ministers to allow only statutory, emergency or public health and safety ads during the moratorium. Crown corporations were not covered by the ban. 

A similar four-month pre-election moratorium is contained in the NDP’s Feb. 16-tabled Banning Publicly-Funded Campaign Advertisements bill. Private members bills rarely pass, but this bill was part of a suite of 14 planks in the NDP’s democratic reform platform. The NDP proposes following Ontario’s lead and trusting the Auditor General to veto advertising deemed partisan. 

Since 2015, the “Our Opportunity Is Here” ads have touted social services, tax breaks, the Site C dam and LNG, all in an effort to convince the public to re-elect the Liberals this May 9.

An LNG ad that claimed $20 billion had been invested in the B.C. industry was withdrawn after a citizen’s pre-Christmas complaint to the Advertising Standards Council of Canada. Internal government correspondence claims the figure is actually more than $21.5 billion, but $9.45 billion of that is actually the sum of mergers and acquisitions by companies located in foreign jurisdictions.

 

Vizeum media buying invoices GCP-2016-61837 by BobMackin on Scribd

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Bob Mackin When she was in opposition, Christy

News

Bob Mackin

That photograph, obtained by theBreaker under freedom of information, is as much of a letter of understanding with Woodfibre LNG’s owner that Deputy Premier Rich Coleman is willing to show you before the May 9 provincial election.

Sukanto Tanoto (left) and Rich Coleman, holding documents the government refuses to release.

After the BC Liberals cancelled the fall 2016 sitting of the Legislature, Coleman — the co-chair of the BC Liberal re-election committee — went on an Oct. 16 to 21 junket to Southeast Asia. It included stops in Kuala Lumpur, to meet Petronas executives, and Singapore, to meet Indonesia-born, Royal Golden Eagle Group owner Sukanto Tanoto.

On Oct. 18, British Columbia’s natural gas minister posed for photographs with the billionaire behind the planned $1.6 billion Howe Sound LNG export plant. They also dined in luxury at the Corner House in Singapore. Coincidentally, the exclusive restaurant boasts a Whispering Corner.

Tanoto’s B.C.-based vice-president, Byng Giraud, joined Coleman and Premier Christy Clark for a hard hat photo op on Nov. 4 to announce the project would proceed after qualifying for subsidized electricity rates. That was the same day the BC Liberal convention began in Vancouver. No coincidence. 

On Oct. 13, Coleman and Bill Bennett, the energy minister responsible for BC Hydro, spoke to the Cabinet Working Group on Woodfibre LNG. What they said is a secret. A footnote on their speaking notes says it is “protected by solicitor client privilege.” The government is the client and has the power to waive privilege. But it didn’t. 

Coleman and Tanoto dined at the Corner House in Singapore, which boasts a “Whispering Corner.”

Those censored documents were released after theBreaker asked to see copies of the government’s business case and cost-benefit analysis for the eDrive program, which gives a discount to LNG plants that use BC Hydro electricity. An appeal has been filed with the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner.

Coleman and Bennett’s deputy ministers went back and forth with Giraud and his boss, Pacific Oil and Gas president Ratnesh Bedi, for almost two weeks on the letter of understanding and appendices that Coleman and Tanoto eventually signed. 

Brian Hansen’s Oct. 5 letter to Bedi offers a clue, mentioning attached documents such as current versions of the electricity supply and load interconnection agreements with Woodfibre LNG and a link to redacted FortisBC Energy electricity supply and load interconnection agreements for its Tilbury LNG plant from June 2016. 

The government also released a censored cabinet submission from last Nov. 1 about the eDrive program. Three days later, both eDrive and Woodfibre LNG’s decision to proceed were announced. Mayor Patricia Heintzman was not invited to the news conference at the former pulp and paper mill site. Chief Ian Campbell of the Squamish Nation stayed away. 

The new eDrive rate is a $30 discount off the original $83.02 per megawatt-hour power rate the government had set for LNG plants. Eoin Finn of Woodfibre LNG foe My Sea to Sky estimated the eDrive rate would result in a $34 million-a-year subsidy to the plant, worth $860 million over 25 years. 

Woodfibre LNG donated $79,500 to the BC Liberals from 2014 to 2016, including $5,000 just 11 days after the eDrive announcement. Giraud gave $48,964.36 since 2006. Two of Giraud’s 2016 Liberal donations ($10,225, Sept. 30 and $3,050, Nov. 30) bookended the period that included Coleman’s meeting with Tanoto and the eDrive decision. Natural gas supplier FortisBC and its predecessor, Terasen, donated $327,487.79 between 2005 and 2016. 

Clark and Giraud, Nov. 4 (BC Gov)

In March 2016, the federal Liberal government gave conditional environmental approval for the plant. The company hired KBR for design, engineering, procurement and construction. As of Feb. 23, no job opportunities were posted on the Woodfibre LNG website. 

An Oct. 6, 2016 briefing note for Coleman said design optimization had been completed and the next design phase would take eight to nine months. 

“Woodfibre is not anticipating that it will enter into the permitting phase until early 2017, when they plan to submit their LNG facility permit application to the BC Oil and Gas Commission,” the briefing note said. 

Giraud inked a 25-year supply deal in May 2016 with Guangzhou Gas Group beginning in 2020. The Chinese company has an option to buy up to 10% of the plant. The FortisBC pipeline to feed natural gas from Eagle Mountain to Woodfibre was conditionally approved in August 2016. 

Woodfibre LNG asked the federal government Feb. 7 to extend its 25-year export licence to 40 years. Earlier that same week, it filed for an amendment to change from seawater cooling to the Squamish Nation-preferred air cooling. 

Clark’s ambitious 2013 plan to build an LNG industry hit a snag with the global oil and gas glut. She originally vowed three plants would be built by 2020, but Woodfibre LNG could be the only one.

NGD 2017 70048 Coleman Tanoto by BobMackin on Scribd

Egm 2016 64736 Edrive Foi by BobMackin on Scribd

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Bob Mackin That photograph, obtained by theBreaker under

Opinion

Bob Mackin

It’s that time of year again, for pink shirt-wearing, selfie-taking, speech-making, flash-mobbing and feel-gooding. Maybe even some politicking and grip-and-grinning with oversized, not legal tender novelty cheques. A provincial election is coming.

Feb. 22 is the annual Bullying Awareness Day, formerly Anti-Bullying Day. Not sure why they rebranded it, but they want us to #MakeNice this year. 

Who could possibly argue against the basis of the message — to be kind to each other and to stop bullies? 

British Columbians should, however, question the pink-garbed, messenger-in-chief and whether she is really devoted to the cause of anti-bullying. 

Premier Christy Clark rode the pink wave to the premier’s office six years ago and she is using it again to get re-elected this May. Take a closer look and you’ll notice that it has always been more about her brand recognition. 

Clark and friend Dave Teixeira (Twitter)

Clark left politics before the 2005 provincial election and failed a bid to be the NPA mayoral nominee for that year’s civic election. In August 2007, longtime Liberal strategy guru Patrick Kinsella helped open doors for Clark to become a CKNW talkshow host. He knew that she wanted to return to politics and had ambitions for a high office. She needed a platform to build her profile and got it for three years during the early afternoon time slot on AM 980. Talk radio in B.C. has been a launching pad or a landing pad for politicians, from Chuck Cook to John Reynolds to Dave Barrett. For Clark, it was a relaunching pad.

Clark imported Pink Shirt Day to B.C. after learning of a Nova Scotia high school protest. A Grade 9 student had been bullied for wearing a pink shirt. His friends responded by coming to school, proudly wearing pink shirts. The bully was silenced.

Clark made it her pet cause. Former Deputy Premier Clark convinced Premier Gordon Campbell to proclaim Feb. 27, 2008 as B.C.’s first Anti-Bullying Day. He even gave her credit. It gave Clark immeasurable recognition and respect that she parlayed into that successful run for the party leadership, which culminated in the Feb. 26, 2011 win over Kevin Falcon.

She began using taxpayer resources in 2012 to promote Pink Shirt Day every year on the final Wednesday of February. Her former media employer is still involved as the sponsor of the pink shirt sales. Its Orphans Fund charity said it doled out $375,000 in T-shirt sales proceeds for various anti-bullying projects last year.

The campaign has always focused more on schools than workplaces. That is a colossal missed opportunity. The one workplace that Clark has direct control over, the Government of British Columbia, remains a bastion of bullying.  

The longest-serving female head of government in Canada promised to bring motherly qualities to the job. Yet, consensus-building and collaboration are missing from our government. It still functions on right-versus-left, adversarial party lines. We’re more than 15% through the 21st century with enough history behind us to know better. A polarized political environment has been good for the bank accounts of lobbyists and spinners, but not really for the rest of us.  

Clark at Pt. Grey secondary in 2013. (BC Gov)

In Victoria, under Clark, there is an obsession with non-stop campaigning and non-stop fundraising. Fear and greed are the weapons. Truth is not adored, but secrecy is.

Reporters who don’t regurgitate press releases are shunned. Documents are destroyed or not created at all. Children die in government care, but no one loses their job or gets arrested. Lawyers cash-in while schoolchildren did without, until the Supreme Court of Canada told the government to hire more teachers. The fall sitting of the Legislature gets cancelled; the governing party chose to campaign and fundraise, rather than clap, desk-thump and endure sharp questions from the opposition. The conflict on display in the Legislature can be entertaining at times. It is, as Frank Zappa said, the showbiz wing of industry. But it really should not be. 

In this environment, agreeing with an opponent is discouraged and considered a sign of weakness. Citizens are under the illusion that they pay the bills and call the tune. But the tune-calling is restricted to only one day every four years.  

The premier, who decides who in her caucus gets better jobs and bigger paycheques, is the boss for the remaining 1,450 (or so) days. Everybody knows the game. Step out of line and no cabinet post and perks for you.

Sean Holman’s 2013 documentary, Whipped: The Secret World of Party Discipline, shows how government MLAs end up being more loyal to their leader than the people that they are supposed to serve in their communities. And opposition members, no matter how reasoned they are, are second-class citizens. Even in the hyper-partisan U.S., it is not uncommon for Republicans and Democrats to co-author a bill. But not in B.C. Not in the 21st century.

According to Imagine-X.ca, only 1.8% of votes by BC MLAs from 2013 to 2016 were cast out of party lines — that’s just two votes. 

“Liberal-initiated votes always passed, everyone else’s always failed. Votes only pass when supported by the Liberals,” said the Imagine X website.

Party discipline is a type of bullying. And it, too, has to stop. 

If the premier herself lived up to her anti-bullying message, she would not have lied and so lamely apologized to the NDP for the false accusation of hacking. She would have already passed democratic reform laws to stop the unlimited fundraising, expand rules regulating lobbyists and beef-up the conflict of interest laws. She would have found another conflict of interest commissioner who is not related to the longtime friend she made deputy minister of the government advertising and PR department. She might even have allowed free votes in the Legislature and encouraged her caucus to reach across the aisle and regularly listen to opposition ideas. 

Late Roderick MacIsaac, one of the health researchers wrongly fired.

And we would have been told everything by now about the health firings scandal. Instead, we ask why eight innocent people were given pink slips? Why did one of them, Roderick MacIsaac, take his own life?

Some of those survivors got apologies and their jobs back. None of the wrongful firing lawsuits made it to court. The Ombudsman is investigating, but it’s not the public inquiry those affected had demanded. The victims and MacIsaac’s sister hope and pray that they will learn more before the election.

The Liberals have spent millions of tax dollars since 2012 to cover-up the biggest bullying scandal in a government workplace and they even lied about the existence of a police investigation. They would rather it all went away, instead of learning from what went on, to prevent a repeat someday.

So when I saw that 2017’s Pink Shirt Day was coming on Feb. 22, I also looked closely at the much-published photograph of MacIsaac. He is wearing a grey shirt. 

I can’t wear pink like the premier because I’m concerned about the bullying that exists under her watch, in our government. You might even call her bully-in-chief.

So, I’m wearing a grey shirt on Feb. 22. Will you join me? 

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Bob Mackin It’s that time of year again,

News

Bob Mackin

The BC Liberal government waited until the afternoon before handing-down the 2017-2018 budget to quietly reveal the location for the new Liquor Distribution Branch warehouse. 

Site of the new Liquor Distribution Branch warehouse in 2018 (CBRE)

It plans to move from Broadway and Rupert in East Vancouver in spring 2018 to 7003 72nd Ave. in Delta’s Tilbury district, according to a Feb. 20 news release. 

The  warehouse is owned by 0977221 B.C. Ltd., a numbered company held by GWL Realty Advisors. The 412,000-square foot building was offered for sublease by Gurch Ollek and Jason Kiselbach of CBRE. GWL, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Great-West Life Assurance Company, bought the warehouse in 2013 for $62.75 million from Beedie Group. Last year, the warehouse on 21 acres near the South Fraser Perimeter Road was assessed at $55.61 million last year. 

The B.C. government and the insurance giant are growing ever-closer. GWL Realty Advisors is one of three primary managers of B.C. Investment Management Corporation’s $18 billion real estate portfolio, which was rebranded as QuadReal in 2016. On Feb. 20, Craig James, the Clerk of the Legislative Assembly, sent a memo at 9:28 a.m. to advise MLAs and their staff that Great-West Life would become their medical and dental plan provider on April 1, after the Pacific Blue Cross contract expiry. 

The capital budget for what is officially called the Interim Distribution Centre Project rose $6 million since theBreaker revealed the plan in January after a notice of the no-bid contract was posted on BC Bid without the location or name of the landlord. The government says it will cost $57.1 million for the move, new systems and equipment, but the news release does not show the cost of leasing the warehouse for 10 years plus two, five-year options. CBRE was asking $8.20 per square foot (per annum), which would be almost $3.38 million-a-year, plus $1.2 million in annual taxes and operating costs. 

Site of the new Liquor Distribution Branch warehouse in 2018 (CBRE)

The move is a major about-face. LDB had been looking last spring for 35 acres of land on which to build a new warehouse of up to 1 million square feet. LDB wanted to buy the site or lease it for at least 60 years and have it ready for occupancy in 2019. The move will happen a year earlier, but to a warehouse much smaller than originally desired.

Here is why: A source told theBreaker last fall that the interim option was taken because Treasury Board wants to take a second-look at privatizing LDB, should the BC Liberals win the May 9 election. 

In 2012, the government used a new B.C. Government and Service Employees’ Union contract as the foil to cancel a controversial attempt to privatize the LDB warehouse. The government had no business case and faced allegations of bid-rigging. Leaked documents showed how proponent Exel Logistics, in its own words, tried to use its lobbyists’ connections with then-liquor minister Rich Coleman to acquire LDB.

The aging East Broadway site sold for $37 million in 2014 to prominent BC Liberal donor Aquilini Investment Group and three First Nations for redevelopment. The contract has still not been made public, nor has LDB revealed how much it pays to lease-back the 220,000 square foot warehouse. 

More to come…

 

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Bob Mackin The BC Liberal government waited until

News

Bob Mackin

A former BC Liberal Solicitor General, who became a talk radio host, planned to end his year-long run on a Surrey station with a bang on the morning before the pre-election Throne Speech.

Instead, the Kash Heed Show on 107.7 Pulse FM was cancelled with a whimper the previous afternoon, Family Day.

Ex-BC Liberal Kash Heed is now an ex-talk show host. (Pulse/theBreaker)

The one-term Vancouver-Fraserview MLA opted not to renew his contract with Pulse last month. His last 9 a.m. to noon show was scheduled for Feb. 14 with four guests on the theme of British Columbia’s political future: Ex-political commentator Alex Tsakumis, Canadian Taxpayers’ Federation’s Jordan Bateman, IntegrityBC’s Dermod Travis and NDP leader John Horgan. 

Horgan was Heed’s first guest when the show debuted last year. Heed told theBreaker that, during the year, he unsuccessfully invited Premier Christy Clark (a former CKNW talkshow host) to be a guest at least eight times.

“[Horgan and NDP MLAs] were more than willing to come on and talk about the issues. That did not sit well with the BC Liberals,” Heed said. “We gave [Clark and her aides] so many opportunities to come on; at times they did not even have the decency to say no.”

Heed said he got a call from Pulse owner Suki Badh just after 2 p.m. on Feb. 13 — Family Day — to tell him that the current affairs show time slot would be moved to 6 a.m. to 10 a.m. effective immediately with new host Dave Sheldon. That meant Heed’s swan song was off. 

Heed said he believes Badh was under pressure from people inside the ruling party, who fear losing votes in key Surrey battleground ridings.

“They weren’t happy with some of the positions I was taking,” Heed told theBreaker.

Asked to elaborate, Heed said Badh told him the previous week that “the boys downtown are aware I’m leaving and he has had discussions with them. He went on to say that he met with [Liberal cabinet ministers] Amrik Virk and Peter Fassbender. 

“I asked if he has caved in. He said no, but they’re aware of the change of direction.”

Heed said Badh had previously referred in December to meeting the “boys downtown” and mentioned they included Barinder Bhullar, director of policy in the Office of the Premier. Former Pulse general manager Jas Basi told theBreaker that Badh told him that the “boys downtown” were Liberal party heads.

“Kash had free rein”: station owner 

Badh admitted he is friendly with senior members of the BC Liberals, including Bruce Clark, the premier’s brother. But he said the “boys downtown” he was referring to are actually advertising agencies and rep houses.

Pulse radio owner Suki Badh.

Badh denied receiving any complaints from the party about Heed’s show and also denied that he had discussed campaign advertising with the party. Asked if he had recently met with any senior Liberal officials, Badh said “that’s irrelevant.”

“The station is not for sale for editorial perspective, not at all,” Badh said. “Kash had free rein to do whatever he wants to do.”

As for the schedule change, Badh said he decided the station would “start fresh” with a new schedule after the long weekend. “Instead of changing things over in the middle of the week effective Wednesday, we just changed it Tuesday.” 

Tsakumis said Heed did a good job of holding both the government and opposition accountable, but he said the station’s owner was intimidated by the Liberals. Tsakumis called the final show’s cancellation “an act of censorship” that deprived listeners of a chance to hear Horgan.

“[Heed] was critical of the government, but also critical of the NDP,” Tsakumis told theBreaker. “The problem in this province is that the NDP doesn’t have any problem being criticized, but the [Liberal] government sure does. Kash was very balanced, very reasonable. If they can’t take that kind of criticism, it makes you ask how they’re going into this next election: do they know something that we don’t?” 

Heed spent 31 years in policing, rising to the rank of superintendent with the Vancouver Police before joining the West Vancouver Police as chief for a year-and-a-half. Premier Gordon Campbell recruited him to be a star candidate in the 2009 election. He spent a year as Solicitor General before resigning  over a campaign financing scandal that resulted in an $8,000 fine under the Election Act in 2011. His campaign manager overspent the $70,000 limit by $4,000. Chief Justice Robert Bauman ruled that “mistakes [were] made, without his knowledge, but on his behalf.”

After Campbell resigned in October 2010, Heed supported George Abbott to become leader and premier. Clark beat Kevin Falcon on the final ballot in February 2011.

Heed went public almost a year before the 2013 election to announce he would not run again under Clark. He called his time in the Liberal caucus “horrendous” and blamed the Clark administration’s obsession with politics and campaigning over policy and governing. 

“This whole entity certainly flexes their muscle, in every area possible where they have influence,” Heed told theBreaker. “They’re so caught up in trying to get re-elected they will do whatever they deem is the thing to do, whether it’s from an ethical or principled decision or not.”

The 2014-licensed Pulse broadcasts primarily to Surrey. The province’s second biggest city will be an expanded, nine-riding battleground in the May 9 election because of redistribution. 

In 2013, Liberals won five Surrey ridings and the NDP three. Former RCMP officer Virk and ex-Langley City mayor Fassbender both won with less than half the popular vote. In Fassbender’s case, he upset incumbent Fleetwood NDP member Jagrup Brar by a mere 200 votes. 

Expecting another tight race in 2017, Fassbender opened his campaign office on the last weekend of summer last year, eight months before the election.

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Bob Mackin A former BC Liberal Solicitor General,

News

Bob Mackin

The BC Liberal government announced Feb. 14 that PharmaCare would finally fund Duodopa, the trade name for the levodopa/carbidopa intestinal gel (LCIG) to treat people with the most severe symptoms of Parkinson’s Disease.

But the Liberals did not make the Valentine’s Day announcement out of the kindness of their hearts. The party that says it is all about “getting to yes” stubbornly said no, no, no to Parkinson’s patients for several years. 

Esteemed advocates for the 13,000 British Columbians living with the degenerative disease — which causes a loss of control of movements, body and emotions — tried repeatedly in vain to convince officials, all the way up to Health Minister Terry Lake, to fund the drug for the handful of people who need it.  

The announcement, hustled-out just hours before the last pre-election Throne Speech, came as a pre-emptive strike after potentially embarrassing documents were released to theBreaker under the Freedom of Information law on Feb. 9. 

A ski resort in Health Minister Terry Lake’s Kamloops riding got funds to build a hockey rink, before Parkinson’s patients got funding for life-saving medication.

The 77-page release shows how Lake, assistant deputy minister Barbara Walman, drug intelligence executive director Eric Lun and special authority director Susan Bouma thwarted efforts, since spring 2015, by Dr. Martin McKeown, the UBC Chair in Parkinson’s Research, and Jean Blake, the CEO of Parkinson Society B.C., to gain funding for about 10 B.C. patients needing the $60,000-a-year drug. 

“Given the fiscal pressures affecting PharmaCare and the broader health system, the program has limited capacity to expand coverage for new benefits and must be very selective in that regard,” Lun wrote to Blake on May 9, 2016. “Due to the extremely high cost of this product, coverage requests are not being considered, including exceptional cases.”

McKeown wrote to Bouma in June 2016, a year after writing to Lun on the same topic. “If our patient were a resident of Alberta, Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec or Yukon, my patient would successfully gain public reimbursement for LCIG.”

Lake and his staff relied on a 2009 Canadian Expert Drug Advisory Committee recommendation against funding. New research, published in 2014 by the Lancet Neurology and supplied by Blake and McKeown to the ministry, was in favour of the drug. 

Bouma suggested maker AbbVie resubmit its research to federal officials for a new funding review. Blake said that was not feasible, because it would force the other provinces to stop coverage during the review, thus putting patients’ lives in jeopardy.

Blake even met with Lake last April 11, International Parkinson’s Awareness Day. She followed-up with a June 8 letter. Lake didn’t respond, but Walman did on June 30 with yet another rejection letter. 

At the end of November, Dr. Josh Greggain, Hope Medical Centre medical director, wrote Liberal MLA Laurie Throness (Chilliwack-Hope).  

“In receiving the Duodopa therapy, patients will experience considerable relief of pain, have better control over severe and dangerous balance issues; be removed from the fear of breathing and swallowing issues, and be provided with support with other non-movement (non-motor) problems,” Greggain wrote. “The payoff for the health care system will be fewer hospitaliztions, fewer emergency visits and avoidance of early admissions to long term care.”

NDP MLA Gary Holman (Saanich North and the Islands) added his voice in a Dec. 12 letter to Lake.

“As a matter of compassion and prudent management of a $17 billion health care budget, I urge you to immediately review this life changing therapy and the BC PharmaCare funding of it,” Holman wrote. 

The undated Lake response to Holman on government letterhead repeated many of the same words in the boilerplate responses by Walman, Bouma and Lun to McKeown, Blake and others.

Blake appealed yet again to Lun on Dec. 14.

“We ask you once again to consider reviewing the new 2014 evidence as your colleagues in Quebec, Ontario, Alberta, Manitoba and the Yukon have done,” she wrote. “It is just not right that because these people live in B.C. they cannot receive this life saving therapy.”

Global TV reporter Nadia Stewart told viewers the story just before Christmas about Paddi Woods, who was diagnosed with Parkinson’s in 2008 and could not afford to buy Duodopa. Woods described her decline and daily battle bluntly: “It’s like living in hell.” 

Clark, Lake and others in the Liberal caucus returned from their Christmas and New Year’s vacations to continue their door-knocking and cash-for-access fundraising events and to continue to spend $15 million of taxpayers’ money on the controversial “Our Opportunity Is Here” propaganda  campaign. (Lame-duck Lake is campaigning for Kamloops Mayor Peter Milobar to succeed him as the Kamloops-North Thompson Liberal MLA.)

After making Parkinson’s patients wait through years of unneeded stress, they finally found time to announce the about-face on Duodopa funding.

With 84 days until the 2017 provincial election. 

B.C. government Duodopa funding refusal by BobMackin on Scribd

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Bob Mackin The BC Liberal government announced Feb.

Opinion

Bob Mackin

More than 200 days have passed since the Legislature in B.C. sat for four days last July. What happened,  you say? 

theBreaker has compiled a list of milestones.  

SEPT. 19: Premier Christy Clark and Deputy Premier and Housing Minister Rich Coleman announced a $500 million plan for what he called affordable social housing, that he said was a Canadian provincial record. It took more than three months for the government to admit that it had no facts to back-up the claim that it was a record. 

SEPT. 22: Coleman boasted in front of party faithful that the campaign was “fully funded.” But the party continued its fundraising spree unabated. It even hosted more four-figure cash for access events. A reporter was kicked-out of the Wall Centre Hotel during Finance Minister Mike de Jong’s October cocktail party with donors. Clark hosted a $1,000-per-person cocktail party at the Century Plaza Hotel, across from the decaying St. Paul’s Hospital. They papered-over the windows to save Clark and her donors from embarrassment.

SEPT. 30: Haida Nation president Peter Lantin told Clark to stay home when the Royal Couple, Will and Kate, came to Haida Gwaii. The Royals went for a canoe ride with Haida members wearing attention-getting T-shirts emblazoned “No LNG.” 

NOV. 3: International Trade Minister Teresa Wat spent more than two months in China and didn’t tell her Richmond Centre constituents. It took a leak to a reporter from a Liberal source about Wat’s apparently broken hip to get the government talking. Wat did not respond to questions about how and where she suffered the injury. 

NOV. 4-6: The party held its annual convention at the Bayshore Hotel, sponsored by a drug company and others. Keynote speaker was Jim Messina, Barack Obama’s 2012 campaign strategist (you win some) and Brexit Remain campaign strategist (you lose some). When he predicted a Hillary Clinton win, the room erupted in cheers. We know what happened on Nov. 8.

NOV. 4: The same day the convention began, Clark and Coleman and others held a photo op on the Woodfibre LNG site, claiming that the Indonesian billionaire who owns it was planning to build the export plant. Was it all just a PR stunt? The Liberals announced a new program called eDrive to subsidize electricity rates for LNG plants that use BC Hydro electricity. The government is refusing to show the business case and cost-benefit analysis for eDrive. 

NOV. 21: It was revealed that the person whose name is on the deed for Clark’s hush-hush house in Dunbar is a close business associate of Vancouver Whitecaps’ owner and Clark friend Greg Kerfoot. Clark’s name is on the deed of a $1.7 million house in Mount Pleasant. She does not own property in Kelowna and has not revealed where she stays on the rare occasions she visits her riding.DEC. 10

DEC. 7: The BC Liberals admit they’re going to double the advertising budget to $15 million, to flood B.C. airwaves and Internet with party-friendly “Our Opportunity Is Here” ads before the election period officially begins April 11. Did you know? Before the 2009 election, then-Premier Gordon Campbell issued a ban on all non-essential government advertising for the four months leading up to election day.

DEC. 10: The first of two features by Dan Levin of the New York Times that embarrassed the BC Liberals. Levin wrote that the Site C dam controversy was a “struggle between a public demanding greater rights and a government trying to push through large projects while avoiding scrutiny, at least in the eyes of critics.” Just over a month later, on Jan. 13, Levin delved into the murky world of B.C.’s political campaign financing. Levin wrote that “much of what is considered business as usual in British Columbia is illegal elsewhere in Canada” 

DEC. 15: Clark and Coleman announced a subsidized second mortgage scheme for first time home buyers. It was immediately panned by economists and likened to the subprime mortgages that led to the 2008 global recession. Like its other big ticket promises, the government is refusing to show the business case and cost-benefit analysis for the program. 

DEC. 22: Remember that “Our Opportunity Is Here” ad that claimed $20 billion had been invested in B.C.’s LNG industry? The Advertising Standards Council forced the BC Liberals to withdraw the ad after a complaint that it simply was not true. 

JAN. 20: Clark proclaimed that she would no longer take her $50,000-a-year bonus from the BC Liberal Party. Instead, she claimed, she would be reimbursed for expenses.

She once called the arrangement a car allowance, but Democracy Watch says it’s a glorified commission for attending party fundraisers and divides her loyalties between the public and party funders. The party is not covered by the Freedom of Information law. Is it time for B.C.’s premier to show the public her tax returns? 

JAN. 17: Liberal speaker and career politician Linda Reid dinged taxpayers $10,000 for a tropical getaway that she and two others took to Guyana, for a goodwill visit to meet with that country’s parliamentarians. 

JAN. 31: Democracy Watch filed a petition in B.C. Supreme Court, to ask a judge to cancel the BC Liberal government’s Jan. 11-announced approval of the Kinder Morgan pipeline twinning. Democracy Watch says that Clark, Environment Minister Mary Polak and Deputy Premier Rich Coleman were in conflict of interest because of Kinder Morgan’s $550,000 donations to the Liberals.

FEB. 6: The damning report about the preventable suicide of 18-year-old Alex Gervais at an Abbotsford motel. Since Clark took power in 2011, there have been 20 reports from the child protection watchdog all pointing at her government for failing its duty to care for B.C.’s most-vulnerable children and youths. 

FEB. 11: While Liberal cronies run the “Say Anything John” third-party attack campaign against NDP leader John Horgan, Clark demonstrated yet again that she is “Say Anything Christy.”

Clark was forced to apologize to Horgan after falsely claiming the NDP hacked the Liberal website — a scandal that took attention away from the report on Gervais. Independent MLA Vicki Huntington blew the whistle on Clark, calling her the “Diva of Deflection.” 

Clark left a voice mail apology for Horgan and told reporters about it on a speakerphone news conference. 

The photo op-loving career politician, nicknamed Premier Amor De Camera, evidently didn’t want the public to see her make a rare apology for one of her frequent falsehoods. 

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Bob Mackin More than 200 days have passed

News

Bob Mackin

The BC Liberal government opened the Port Mann toll bridge in 2012 without the required safety audit — a contravention of the Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure’s own guidelines.

That, according to the results of a Freedom of Information request filed by theBreaker before last Christmas while bridge crews grappled with a repeat of the 2012 ice bombs incident. 

Based on the ministry’s April 2004 Road Safety Audit Guidelines, road safety audits are “required to be carried out” in accordance with Transportation Association of Canada road safety standards.  

“A road safety audit is a formal and independent safety performance review of a road transportation project by an experienced team of safety specialists, addressing the safety for all road users,” says the 2004 policy manual. 

No Port Mann safety audit: FOI

A source familiar with major B.C. infrastructure projects — who declined to be named in print, for fear of retribution — contacted theBreaker and recommended an FOI request be filed regarding the $3.3 billion Port Mann/Highway 1 project for the independent safety audit that should have been completed prior to the bridge’s opening or its substantial completion. 

The transportation ministry transferred theBreaker’s Dec. 15 FOI request to the Transportation Investment Corporation. A response finally came Feb. 10 from the Crown corporation. 

“Please be advised that we have completed a thorough search of our records and have not located any records that are responsive to your request,” wrote Bev Hooper, TI Corp.’s access and privacy consultant on TI Corp. letterhead. 

On Dec. 1, 2012, with an election looming in five months, Premier Christy Clark and then-transport minister Mary Polak opened the bridge. Less than three weeks later, on Dec. 19, 2012, ice and snow that had accumulated on the bridge cables crashed onto vehicles below during a storm. There were 350 damage claims filed by drivers, costing Insurance Corporation of B.C. $400,000. At least one injury lawsuit was filed, alleging the government was negligent.

Documents released in 2013 showed the project’s 2008 design and construction requirements included a clause that the “cables and structure be designed to avoid ice-build up from falling into traffic.” The cables were later retrofitted with devices to clear snow and ice, but those were not properly deployed during snowstorms early last December. 

The Port Mann also opened in 2012 without a dedicated weather station. Before they installed a $100,000 setup, bridge operators were forced to rely on readings from far away ministry equipment in Horseshoe Bay and Abbotsford, as well as Vancouver International Airport.

The ministry’s 2004 road safety audit guidelines spell out four key reasons why a road safety audit must be conducted: 

  • minimize the frequency and severity of preventable collisions; 
  • consider the safety of all road users, including vulnerable road users; 
  • ensure that collision mitigation measures that may eliminate or reduce potential safety problems are considered fully; 
  • minimize potentially negative safety impacts both within and outside the project limits, i.e. to avoid introducing collisions elsewhere along the route or on the network.

The BC Liberal government designated TI Corp. as the agency in charge of building the $3.5 billion-plus, 10-lane toll bridge to replace the Massey Tunnel between Richmond and Delta. Late last year, Clark made Dan Doyle, her former chief of staff, the chair of the TI Corp. board. 

Retired Deputy Transportation minister Doyle was in charge of construction for the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics before becoming chair of BC Hydro. 

B.C. Transportation Ministry Guidelines on Road Safety Audits by BobMackin on Scribd

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Bob Mackin The BC Liberal government opened the

Miscellany

Bob Mackin

The electioneering BC Liberal government is desperate for positive publicity, but keeps shooting itself in the foot. 

This week began with the child protection watchdog’s damning report about the preventable September 2015 suicide of 18-year-old Alex Gervais. The abused and neglected Metis teenager with a drugs and alcohol problem was left alone, unsupervised, in a Super 8 motel in Abbotsford.  Yet another failure by the Ministry of Children and Family Development.

So the same ministry scheduled a photo opportunity on Feb. 9 in North Vancouver with the four North Shore BC Liberal MLAs — Jane Thornthwaite, Naomi Yamamoto, Jordan Sturdy and Ralph Sultan — to announce a new Vancouver Coastal Health office for youth with addictions will be opening in May.  

The 9,000 square foot Foundry North Shore  is described on a VCH website as a “one-stop shop for youth needing easy access to mental health, drug and alcohol services and social services on the North Shore.” VCH has pledged $2.5 million-a-year to operate the facility.

Sounds like a step forward. Except the building next door is a liquor store.

A North Vancouver liquor store’s new neighbour will be a facility for youths trying to kick drugs and alcohol. (Google Streetview)

The proprietor of Sailor Hagar’s Liquor Store (and the longtime corner brew pub of the same name) questions the wisdom of opening a facility for vulnerable 16 to 24-year-olds beside an existing booze retailer. 

“I don’t think it’s fair to put them in that position when they go for their counselling, they’re right next to a [beer, wine and spirits] store,” Brian Riedlinger told theBreaker. “I’ve got my sandwich board sign out there out front of my store that says come in and buy some cold beer.

“If, for example, this facility had been located at this premises for a number of years, I don’t see how the Liquor Control and Licensing Branch or provincial government would ever allow a liquor store to move right next to them. And yet they’re opening up beside a liquor store!” 

Riedlinger said he was visited by Terry Bulych, VCH’s child and youth mental health and addictions team lead and clinical planner, to notify him that the photo opportunity would be happening and warn him that he may be approached by reporters. Riedlinger found out that the facility already has civic zoning approval, a long-term lease and is beginning leasehold improvements. 

“I don’t really know what I can do,” Riedlinger said. “I was totally blindsided by this. There was no public input.”

Nobody from the Ministry of Health or Ministry of Children and Family Development responded for comment. Yamamoto, the North Vancouver Lonsdale MLA, also did not respond.

Bulych refused to be interviewed, but VCH spokesman Gavin Wilson said there was no formal requirement to consult neighbours. He claimed officials met with various government, community, social and police groups and “no one raised the issue of that liquor store as a concern. This is the first time we’ve heard any concerns.”

Wilson said the site was chosen because it is a storefront and close to a Ministry of Children and Family Development office, Hollyburn family services, John Braithwaite community centre and the Lonsdale Quay SeaBus terminal. 

“We feel there are a lot of good reasons for siting the service where it is,” Wilson said. “No matter where you place it in a commercial area, there’s going to be pubs and liquor stores and marijuana dispensaries. We can’t control the environment to that extent.”

Riedlinger said it will make it harder for his store and pub to operate. “We work hard to make sure that we don’t serve people that shouldn’t be served alcohol and we make sure we don’t serve minors, it’s going to make our job more difficult,” Riedlinger said. “It’s not going to help our business in any way.”

Former children’s protection watchdog Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond’s May 2016 Review of Youth Substance Services in B.C.  said 68,000 youth and young adults in B.C. aged 15 to 24 had substance abuse disorders, including alcohol abuse and dependence. There were only 24 dedicated, publicly funded treatment beds across the province. 

Imagine B.C. Place Stadium at full capacity and an overflow crowd of another 14,000 at Rogers Arena. That’s what 68,000 looks like. 

Turpel-Lafond wrote that between 2001 and 2015, 183 deaths of children and youth were attributable to substance abuse. The number could be greater, because, the report explained “substance use often contributes to accidents or death but may not be classified as the primary cause of an injury or death.”

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Bob Mackin The electioneering BC Liberal government

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