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From May 16, 2001, the British Columbia election night was covered live on MYCityRadio.com, a pioneering Vancouver webcast company that ran from summer 2000 to summer 2001.

Featuring Joe Keithley, Nardwuar the Human Serviette, Brian “Godzilla” Salmi, Faye Leung, Gillian Guess, “Hunky Bill” Konyk, Jamie Lee Hamilton, Brian “Who?” Else and more. There was never anything like this before and there has not been anything like it since. After all, Frank Zappa said government is the showbiz wing of industry. 

With a special appearance by Liberal leader Gordon Campbell. Hosted by Shannon Nelson and Chad Varhaug, produced by Bob Mackin.

Enjoy the highlights of that madcap night, when the Campbell Liberals won 77 of 79 seats, while you wait for the results of the May 9 election. But, please, vote first. 

From May 16, 2001, the British Columbia

Bob Mackin

Hands up if you’ve heard someone you know say they’ll stick with the status quo on May 9, because they prefer “the devil you know, versus the devil you don’t”? 

Or, they’re “voting for the lesser of two evils”?

Hands up if that’s the way you intend to vote. 

Do you reallly know the devil you’re talking about or what evil they’ve been up to for the last four years?

If you’ve been following coverage of provincial politics over the last four years, you are not a low-information voter and you know that British Columbians are not getting bang for their buck when it comes to good governance. The BC Liberals have been party first, people second, on a non-stop campaign to perpetuate their power and raise more money for campaigning than all other parties combined. 

If they win the election today, they’ll have a fresh mandate to 2021 — that would be 20 years of the same party in office. No matter where you are on the political spectrum, it is never healthy in a democracy to become a one-party state, because the lines blur between party and government. The people suffer, while the cronies cash-in. 

A Liberal loss on May 9 could be just what the doctor ordered for B.C. and the Liberals themselves. The centre-right coalition would be forced to find a new leader or face the departure of many members on the conservative side, who could form their own party. Diversity of opinion on the political spectrum is good for any democracy. B.C. has too few major party options. 

The BC Liberals came to power 16 years ago next week, promising to make British Columbia the most open, accountable and democratic province in Canada. That hasn’t happened. On many counts, they’ve gone backwards. 

Gordon Campbell’s New Era platform in 2001 contained that promise. The NDP in the 1990s had brought B.C. the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act. By the time they were finished, they watered down many of the measures, scared of letting out too much information. An informed populace is a dangerous thing on election day, for those who are hungry to stay in power for self-gain. Campbell didn’t get around to restoring the FOI laws, because he found it politically convenient to maintain secrecy. 

Secrecy can be addictive, especially in a system where there are no term limits, no donation limits, lobbying is under-regulated and archaic, top-down traditions are kept alive. Over the decades, power has been centralized in the Office of the Premier, who dictates the shots between elections. 

The BC Liberals under Campbell and then Christy Clark took extreme measures to keep even their staunchest supporters from knowing and understanding what they do on taxpayers time with the taxpayers dime. Municipal governments are creatures of the provincial government, so the secrecy at your local city hall is partly the fault of the BC Liberals. 

The chances of any democratic reform, to put more power in the hands of the people, under a re-elected Clark Liberal administration, are zero. How can you believe this party, which claims to be a prudent money manager, when it spends so much time, energy and your money to prevent you from knowing how much it really spends and how it awards contracts. It won’t show you or me the business case or cost-benefit analysis for the $3.5 billion (plus $8 billion interest) bridge to replace the Massey Tunnel, for example.  

You wield a powerful weapon — a pencil on a slip of papter in a voting booth. If enough of you cast votes in one direction on May 9, the government will change. Peacefully. In other parts of the world, that is simply not possible. 

The Greens and NDP have promised democratic reform. The upstart Your Political Party of B.C. has a platform that includes full proactive disclosure of government spending and contracting and an end to party discipline.

The NDP has the best shot at forming a new government. If John Horgan overcomes the big business and big media-supported BC Liberals and their big money, it will be up to diligent citizens and the media to hold Horgan to account. 

Here are 10 ways the BC Liberals have tried to keep you from knowing. 

1

Clark came to power in 2011 promising open government, but actually gave B.C. the most-secretive one it has ever had. B.C.’s Information and Privacy Commissioner found personnel in various offices, including Clark’s, were mass-deleting email to keep it out of the hands of anyone asking under the freedom of information law. The Clark administration was also running what was termed an “oral government,” making decisions but not documenting them. No records became two common words in letters to FOI applicants. 

2

The story of the life and death of Paige Gauchier exposed systemic neglect that enraged many British Columbians, including the Representative for Children and Youth, who reported on the tragedy in May 2015. It took the government five months to respond. Someone in the Premier’s office decided that it would be a good idea to issue that response on 3 p.m. of the 2015 federal election day. An hour on a day when understaffed newsrooms across B.C. were focused on covering the federal election. A deliberate attempt to bury the news and keep the public from seeing the name and face of a young woman who deserved better from a government that looked like it didn’t give a damn. 

3

The BC Liberals have had an uneasy relationship with statutory watchdogs and have not been afraid to meddle in their affairs, so as to prevent or mitigate risks to the party. Statutory watchdogs are supposed to be checks on power. The BC Liberals viewed them as bothersome and, sometimes, they even muzzled them.

Christy cashes-in (Mackin)

4

The B.C. government invites reporters from the Lower Mainland to visit the Premier’s Vancouver Office at Canada Place whenever the budget is tabled or the province’s finances are updated quarterly. But it doesn’t want to hear their questions, lest they elicit an answer that doesn’t fit with the government’s propaganda narrative.

It used to be standard practice for the finance minister to take questions from the two-way speakerphone at the satellite location in Vancouver. Under Mike de Jong, the finance minister who says he doesn’t use email, that was kiboshed. Only reporters at the Legislature in Victoria get the chance to ask a question. The speakerphone is set to listen-only on the Vancouver side. 

5

Christy Clark was an open line talkshow host from 2007 to 2010 on CKNW. She returned to the other side of the mic on a few occasions, as a guest, between 2011 and 2013, but made herself scarce and didn’t even bother to visit morning drive host Jon McComb during the 2017 election. Clark doesn’t do one-on-one, live radio with random callers anymore. It is all about controlling the message and reducing the chance of fielding a question that could expose the true Clark to voters. Part of controlling the message included the sycophantic biography of Clark written by the wife of a patronage appointee and published the year before the election. 

6

The only file the Clark Liberals have succeeded on during their 2013 to 2017 term is liquor industry expansion via deregulation. Most government stores are open on Sundays and now have beer fridges. Craft breweries and distillleries have popped-up all over the place and some are glorified bars and stores. Some grocery stores even have a wine section, albeit B.C. only (just wait for the World Trade Organization to rule against this protectionist measure). Good things, if you like your hop and grape, eh? Too bad the prices were hiked. 

Booze releases have become a cliche — used strategically by the government to distract the press and the public from more important things, like the state of schools and hospitals, or the occasional scandal. 

7

Every year, on the last Wednesday of February, Christy Clark dons a pink shirt, poses for photos and says bullying in schools and workplaces is bad. Who can disagree? But, the rest of the year, she has kept an archaic system of governing alive and well. Party discipline means that MLAs must toe the line set by Clark’s office, instead of side with their constituents. You may think you’re voting for someone to represent you in Victoria, but you’re voting for the leader’s local representative. Sean Holman told this story in the 2013 documentary, Whipped. 

Analysis of voting records shows this is true. 

8

The Clark Liberals cancelled the Legislature sitting last fall, so they could go on taxpayer-funded offshore junkets and continue to raise money for the party’s campaign — even after telling their own members last September they had enough to fight and win in 2017. Why did they resist calls to enact checks and balances? Of course, power before people. They raised another $5.2 million before the end of April 2017; they already have more than a down payment on their 2021 election campaign. They also have many donors who feel they’re owed attention or worse: favours.

9

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

Imagine a government that preaches spending control and then turns around, goes out and hires friends of the premier to create a year-and-a-half-long ad campaign to polish the image of the government before the election. That’s exactly what the BC Liberals did under Clark, who attacked the NDP for doing the same on a lower budget in 1999. The total bill to taxpayers for the last two years of propaganda may be as much as $30 million. 

10

In summer 2015, the Clark Liberals had a bright idea. They were shellshocked from the headlines about the bungled 2012 firing of eight health researchers. One of them, Roderick MacIsaac, died of suicide.

There were calls for a public inquiry. Scared of letting all that dirty laundry out, the Clark Liberals decided on an innovative scheme. Send it to the Ombudsperson for a closed-door investigation. It’d be done away from the public eye. The office had never done such an investigation. The central FOI office was shifted to de Jong’s control and Clark’s closest confidante and political ally since the 1990s, Athana Mentzelopoulos, was named his deputy minister. Good luck for it to be done before the election, the government thought. 

For once, it was wrong.

The report, titled Misfire, exposed the depth and the breadth of the evil that went on under Clark and de Jong’s watch. 

Don’t vote for what you think is the least worst. You’re a citizen, you deserve better.

 

Bob Mackin Hands up if you’ve heard someone

Punk rock legend and Bard of Burnaby, Joe Keithley, is running for office again for the B.C. Greens. He is contesting Burnaby-Lougheed on May 9. 

Sixteen years ago, the D.O.A. frontman was host of The Joe Show on MYCityRadio.com, a pioneering Vancouver webcasting outlet that was online from 2000 to 2001. Keithley was part of the eclectic, live election coverage on May 16, 2001, when the BC Liberals won 77 of 79 seats in the B.C. Legislature. The NDP was left with just two seats after a rollercoaster 10 years in office. 

NDP leader Ujjal Dosanjh, B.C.’s first South Asian premier, conceded early and Gordon Campbell celebrated the win at the Wall Centre, owned by major donor Peter Wall. 

Sit back and enjoy Joe’s acoustic rendition of Alice Cooper’s “Elected.” Vote before 8 p.m. and then see who gets elected. 

Punk rock legend and Bard of Burnaby,

Vancouver lawyer Paul Doroshenko was a loyal supporter and volunteer for Gordon Campbell when he was Premier of British Columbia and leader of the BC Liberal Party from 2001 to 2011. Doroshenko initially supported Christy Clark after she took over the party in 2011, but, in 2017, Doroshenko is supporting David Eby, the Vancouver-Point Grey NDP MLA who defeated Clark in 2013. Doroshenko has also left the BC Liberal Party.

In part 2 of an interview with theBreaker, he further explains his decision and why the Greens have long been an ally to the Liberals.

 

Vancouver lawyer Paul Doroshenko was a loyal

Vancouver lawyer Paul Doroshenko was a loyal supporter and volunteer for Gordon Campbell when he was Premier of British Columbia and leader of the BC Liberal Party. Doroshenko initially supported Christy Clark after she took over the party in 2011, but, in 2017, Doroshenko is supporting David Eby, the Vancouver-Point Grey MLA who defeated Clark in 2013. Doroshenko has also left the BC Liberal Party. He tells theBreaker why in part one of this two-part interview.  

Vancouver lawyer Paul Doroshenko was a loyal

Former West Vancouver Police chief Kash Heed was recruited as a star candidate by Gordon Campbell in 2009, won a seat in South Vancouver for the BC Liberals and became solicitor general. He did not run in 2013, after Christy Clark took over the party in 2011. Heed spoke about a variety of topics, including his election prediction, exclusively to theBreaker on May 5. 

If you missed the first part of the interview, go to this link.

Former West Vancouver Police chief Kash Heed was

Former police chief and talk radio host Kash Heed spent four years in the BC Liberal cabinet after Gordon Campbell recruited him to be a star candidate in 2009. He did not run for re-eleciton in 2013. On May 5, he spoke to Bob Mackin about the 2017 British Columbia election, which climaxes May 9. This is part one of the interview. 

Former police chief and talk radio host Kash

Bob Mackin

Membership has its privileges and the BC Liberals have rewarded some of their most-loyal friends and insiders with recent multi-year board appointments.

A watchdog calls the unbridled cronyism an “affront” to electoral democracy.

“Such appointments should not extend beyond one year of an election cycle,” said IntegrityBC’s Dermod Travis. “Specifically on the basis that an incoming government will want to keep the current system in place until they manage to get their bearings straight.”

In the final year of the current Liberal mandate, cabinet has appointed numerous party donors, aides and ex-cabinet ministers to boards of agencies and Crown corporations. Some of the appointments last until fall 2020, when another election will be a year away. Some of the gigs well, others carry community prestige and the ability to quickly expand business networks. 

Cabinet-ordered board appointments are managed by the Board Resourcing and Development Office, a branch of the Ministry of Finance. Travis said it should instead be up to an independent office, such as the Auditor General, to review applications based on merit and make recommendations. The current system does not encourage service by the best and brightest British Columbians.

Bennett and Clark in 2013 (Twitter)

“The problem is any government likes to control this and the other side of the control is some of these jobs come with pay and nice stipends and it’s a way to reward party insiders and also a way to keep control, and to make certain you don’t have any little opposition centres in the province that are fighting your government policy,” Travis said. 

Who in the “Clark Clique” scored when their leader went on a pre-election appointment spree? The members are a grab bag of Liberal donors, lobbyists and ex-Clark campaign managers. 

Brad Bennett 

The son of ex-Premier Bill Bennett and grandson of ex-Premier W.A.C. Bennett was on Christy Clark’s Debt Free BC bus during the 2013 campaign, more than a year after Clark named him a BC Hydro director. He was promoted the $36,000-a-year chair at the end of September 2015, for a term ending in fall 2020. He is back on Clark’s bus in 2017. He justified it to theBreaker by saying that there were no BC Hydro board meetings scheduled during the same period as the election. 

Barry Penner

The 16-year, ex-Chilliwack MLA was environment and aboriginal relations and attorney general before quitting in 2011 for a short-stint at a law firm in Myanmar. After he returned to B.C., he was appointed a director of the College of Physicians and Surgeons (through Sept. 1, 2019); chair of ICBC (through March 31, 2019) and member of the New West Partnership Trade Agreement tribunal that sorts out interprovincial trade disputes (through Oct. 26, 2020). The ICBC role earns him a $30,000-a-year retainer plus $750 per meeting.

John Les

Penner’s former Fraser Valley caucus cohort spent a dozen years in provincial office, but didn’t run in the 2013 election. He was named $60,000-a-year chair of the B.C. Farm Industry Review Board, an assignment renewed through Nov. 30, 2019. Les has  organized fundraisers in the Fraser Valley for local candidates and Clark. 

Colin Hansen

Hansen was Finance Minister under Gordon Campbell and co-father of the plebiscite-defeated Harmonized Sales Tax. He also didn’t run in the 2013 election. He recently received good news on Family Day when his spot on the Transportation Investment Corporation board was extended for another two years. The Crown corporation behind the Port Mann toll bridge is overseeing the Massey Tunnel Replacement Project; according to documents obtained by the NDP, interest costs will be $8 billion for the bridge between Delta and Richmond. 

Hansen was in the New York Times in the final week of the election for being head of AdvantageBC, a B.C.-funded public-funded agency, beyond the reach of the freedom of information law, that entices companies with lucrative tax breaks. Which companies benefitted from $140 million in tax breaks since 2008 are a government secret. At most, 300 jobs were created. 

Ida Chong

After Clark lost her seat in the 2013 election, the next most-shocking result was Ida Chong losing Victoria-Gordon Head to the Green Party’s Andrew Weaver. The 17-year Liberal MLA occupied multiple cabinet posts and is on the B.C. Emergency Health Services and Provincial Health Services Agency boards through 2017. She is also on the University of Victoria board through July 2019, a volunteer position. 

Mark Reder

The vice-president of lobbying firm FleishmanHillard counts Kinder Morgan and Transcanada Pipelines among his clients. He was Vancouver-Fairview candidate Gabe Garfinkel’s boss after Garfinkel quit Clark’s office to become a lobbyist in 2014. Reder has also been active in the West Vancouver-Capilano BC Liberal riding association. He was reappointed chair of the Transit Police Board through the end of 2019, which paid almost $9,800 in 2015.  

Spencer Sproule 

The former Clark aide is now the spokesman for Pacific NorthWest LNG, the Petronas-owned B.C. LNG play. While that project awaits a much-delayed final investment decision from the Malaysian state-owned oil company, Sproule was appointed to the New West Partnership Trade Agreement tribunal through March 31, 2018. 

Alan Shuster

Clark’s campaign manager in her old riding, Vancouver-Point Grey, is getting a second term on the board of governors at the University of B.C., through Feb. 27, 2020. Like UVic, it only reimburses expenses. Shuster is a former executive vice-president at the Blast Radius digital ad agency. 

Phil Hochstein 

The former spokesman for the province’s non-union construction lobby and big Liberal donor, the Independent Contractors and Businesses Association, was named chair of the B.C. Turkey Marketing Board (through Jan. 14, 2018) and later a provincial appointee to the Port of Vancouver board (through May 18, 2019). The latter pays a $15,000 retainer, $6,000 to $8,000 more to chair a committee, plus $1,250 per regular board meeting and $750 for ad hoc meetings. 

Jim Cessford and Steven Puhallo 

Two Liberal hopefuls lost bids to run for the party in the 2017 election, but are kept busy with appointments. Cessford retired from the Delta Police as chief in 2015 and was appointed to WorkSafeBC. When he lost the Delta nomination to municipal councillor Ian Paton, he got two more years on WorkSafeBC to Dec. 1, 2018. Not long after Kamloops Mayor Peter Milobar got the nod to take over from Terry Lake in the election, Lake named Puhallo, a former aide to high-volume bloviator and ex-MLA Kevin Krueger, to the local patient care quality review board to Hallowe’en 2019. 

Dave Teixeira

Clark and friend Dave Teixeira (Twitter)

A longtime traveler in the Clark Clique, Teixeira spent two-and-a-half years as constituency assistant for former Burnaby MLA Harry Bloy, the only caucus member who supported her 2011 leadership run. Teixeira was appointed to a one-year term to the Douglas College board of governors in 2015 and then re-upped last July for a two-year term through July 2018, which comes with a $2,000 honorarium.

His bio says he co-founded the Pink Shirt Anti-Bullying Day that Clark made famous in B.C., as part of a personal brand-building exercise before her run for the premiership. (Clark has further centralized power in the Office of the Premier, rather than relaxing the archaic system of party discipline, which some call institutionalized bullying.)

Teixeira is now vice-president of marketing, public relations and communications for Dominion Lending Centres and was among the first to publicly congratulate Clark, minutes after she announced the interest-free, second mortgage scheme for first-time home buyers last December.

 

Michael Hillman

Before the 2017 election, there was one story after another about patients dying after visits to Fraser Health hospitals or being stuck on beds in hallways of overcrowded emergency rooms for days on end. 

The beleaguered board is stacked with friends of the government. One is Ernst and Young partner John Bethel, an assistant deputy minister under Mike de Jong in the Health ministry before the health firings scandal got out of control. 

Another director is Michael Hillman, who was reappointed through the end of 2018. His history with Clark goes way back. In 2005, Hillman managed her ill-fated bid to become Vancouver’s NPA mayoral candidate. Sam Sullivan got the nod instead. Hillman has also managed numerous federal and BC Liberal campaigns. In 2013, he helped veteran ad man and Langley mayor Peter Fassbender get by on a 200-vote margin in Surrey-Fleetwood. 

Bob Mackin Membership has its privileges and the

Bob Mackin 

The Duchess of Dunbar is deluged with donors’ dollars.

Christy Clark and her BC Liberals raked-in a whopping $5.2 million during the first four months of 2017, according to an exclusive analysis by theBreaker

That, after grossing $13.1 million last year.

A compilation of the party’s unaudited 2017 reports through the third week of April shows 10,159 donations of all amounts. In 2016, the party reported receiving 10,390 donations of $250 and up. Both the total dollar amount and the number of donations right before the election are jaw-dropping, according to IntegrityBC’s Dermod Travis. 

Political financing has been a central issue of the 2017 campaign, which ends with the May 9 election day. Travis published the definitive e-book on B.C.’s cash for access and pay to play political culture, “May I Take Your Order, Please?” He said the money raised by the Liberals in the last four months is almost as much as the entire $5.27 million the party raised in 2016. 

“It’s not entirely comparable but demonstrates very clearly they are on a mad press to keep raising cash,” Travis told theBreaker

The top six single donations so far this year are all from corporations: Goldcorp Inc. ($100,000), The Pacific Investment Corp. Ltd. ($50,000), Polygon Homes Ltd. ($40,000), West Fraser Mills ($37,500), Concord Pacific Developments Corp. ($30,000) and Fasken Martineau DuMoulin LLP ($27,000).

Christy cashes-in (Mackin)

Travis said the party continues to rely on a small group of big donors. “If you look at unique donors that have given more than $10,000, this year, we’re looking at 74 corporations that have provided $1.5 million.”

The Liberals say they release unaudited information in “real time,” but actually they publish their PDF lists in intervals of 10 days to two weeks. 

The NDP and Greens say they will release their donors’ lists in accordance with Elections BC deadlines. Both parties have promised to ban corporate and union donations if they take power, but the Liberals have only committed to striking a non-binding, expert advisory panel should they win. 

B.C. has no legal limits to the size or source of political donations. The RCMP is investigating illegal donations made by lobbyists who didn’t disclose their clients. The Liberals have returned nearly $250,000 in illegal donations. 

The Liberal disclosures analyzed by theBreaker include names, amounts and apparent dates of payment processing, but the releases do not indicate whether the donations were connected to an event. Half the $13.1 million raised in 2016 came from events, many of which featured special appearances by Premier Christy Clark and cabinet ministers. 

By comparison, the NDP raised $6.2 million and the Greens $757,268. 

The Liberals are on the cusp of unleashing an unprecedented advertising barrage on the last weekend of the 2017 campaign, but they won’t be able to spend all of their money before May 9. That is because Elections BC set a $4.88 million per party limit during the 28-day writ period. Candidates in each of the 87 ridings can’t spend more than $77,674.62 each . Despite that, Travis said there is a forward-looking, method to the Clark Liberals’ money madness. 

“This is a strategy to make sure they have one campaign in the bank in the event that they lose and the NDP decides to do campaign finance reform as they promised or they make the call on their own,” Travis said. “If they suddenly decided to have a conversion on the road to Damascus and after being re-elected and bring in the ban well guess what, they’ve got the next election in the kitty and they’ve left the NDP with one hell of an election debt still to pay off.”

The danger, Travis said, is that the Liberals are “writing incredible IOUs” while they keep collecting the lucre. Donors will inevitably demand attention, if not favours. 

“They’re writing IOUs to their favourite gang, Rennie Marketing, Dueck GM, casinos, Wesbild Holdings, Peter Armstrong/Great Canadian Railtour, New Car Dealers Association. All of the pals are right here on the list.” 

The Liberal campaign has included attack ads calling the NDP hypocrites for taking $670,000 in donations from the United Steelworkers. The Liberals called that a record single-year donation in B.C., but that honour belongs to developer Rob MacDonald, who gave $960,000 to the NPA before the 2011 Vancouver civic election. (There may have been bigger civic donations in non-election years, when municipal parties are not required to publicly report their donations). 

Coincidentally, MacDonald is also a BC Liberal donor who gave $18,600 in the first four months of 2017. The spin doctor behind the Liberals is Don Millar, who also works on campaigns for Vision Vancouver. Mayor Gregor Robertson’s party attacked the NPA for MacDonald’s big money contributions. Both the BC Liberals and Vision Vancouver are coalitions that include federal Liberals and they shared the same bagman, real estate marketer Bob Rennie. 

Travis calls the Liberal attack ad a “diversionary tactic” because the Liberals raised more money from 10 major donors between 2005 and 2016 than the NDP did from labour unions. 

“The numbers say you’re bringing in more money than any political party in Canada at the provincial level, you’re bringing in more money in than you need as compared to Alberta and Quebec,” Travis said. “This has gotten to the point  where it’s not really about providing a good political operation that’s sustainable, it’s about ensuring you can always beat up your opponents in every election campaign because you can outspend them and you can outspend them between elections by running a perpetual campaign.”

In his book, Travis revealed that the top 177 donors to the Liberals over the last five years got $3.5 billion in supplier payments and $74.4 million in government transfers. 

Liberal Donations Spreadsheet by BobMackin on Scribd

Bob Mackin  The Duchess of Dunbar is deluged with