Conflict commish clears NDP minister

Bob Mackin

The B.C. Legislature’s ethics watchdog ruled Aug. 30 that an NDP cabinet minister did not break the conflict of interest law after a charity that bought her husband’s land received a major government grant. 

Lorne Doerksen, the BC Liberal MLA for Cariboo-Chilcotin, complained in late June about Land, Water and Resource Stewardship Minister Jodie Osborne.

NDP Minister Josie Osborne (BC Gov/Flickr)

George Patterson, the husband of the 2020-elected, Mid Island-Pacific Rim MLA, sold his Tofino Botanical Gardens last September to MakeWay Charitable Society. In April, Osborne announced the organization, formerly known as Tides Canada, received a $15 million grant through the Healthy Watersheds Initiative [HWI] program.

“Minister Osborne was not involved in the decision to make the grant to MakeWay instead of [Real Estate Foundation of B.C.] and did not take any steps to influence staff in making that substitution,” Conflict of Interest Commissioner Victoria Gray wrote in her Aug. 30 decision. “Minister Osborne’s participation in lobbying on dates including March 30 did not have any impact on the HWI 2.0 grant to MakeWay. Minister Osborne’s participation in the public announcement on April 21 about the HWI 2.0 grant to MakeWay was not an apparent conflict of interest.”

Patterson sold Tofino Botanical Gardens to MakeWay for $2.3 million in September 2021, sold all shares in his Coastwise Holdings company to MakeWay for an undisclosed sum and entered a one-year operation and maintenance contract with MakeWay through Sept. 15, 2022. Gray wrote that Patterson’s remuneration was not dependent on MakeWay receiving the grant. 

Gray’s report said Patterson rejected three offers, including one formal, because the potential buyers didn’t want to continue the garden. He eventually made a proposal to MakeWay with Eli Enns of the IISAAK OLAM Foundation. 

Osborne was Tofino’s mayor in August 2020 when Patterson listed the property for $3.75 million. She became Minster of Municipal Affairs after the 2020 provincial election, joined Treasury Board in March 2021 and was shuffled to the new ministry on Feb. 25. 

Josie Osborne (left) and George Patterson in 2011 (Ofelia Svart/Ecotrust)

Just over a month later, on March 30, she met with Zita Botelho of Watersheds BC [WBC] and lobbyist Coree Tull of the B.C. Watershed Security Coalition and B.C Freshwater Legacy Initiative. The latter, Gray wrote, is an affiliate of the MakeWay “shared platform project.” 

While Osborne was provided background information to prepare for the March 30 meeting, Gray said it did not refer to MakeWay. But, on or about March 30, staff explained to her that MakeWay would “provide administrative services to WBC to facilitate WBC delivering funding to Indigenous or Indigenous-led watershed projects.”

March 30 was also the date that Assistant Deputy Minister of Environment James Mack signed the funding agreement with MakeWay CEO Joanna Kerr and finance director Danae Maclean.

Gray’s report refers to Osborne’s April 1 letter to Deputy Minister Lori Halls. A copy of the two-paragraph letter, obtained Aug. 24 via freedom of information, says: “I am aware that MakeWay Foundation has a relationship with the Ministry of Land, Water and Resource Stewardship. 

Josie Osborne’s letter to a deputy minister omitted facts about her husband’s land sale (FOI)

“The purpose of this letter is to advise you that my spouse, George Patterson, has a contractual relationship with MakeWay Foundation as an advisor to Naa’Waya’Sum Coastal Indigenous Gardens in Tofino, B.C.”

The letter, however, contains no reference whatsoever to Patterson’s sale of land and company shares to MakeWay. 

The FOI disclosure included an undated document that states Osborne set up a screen with Halls to recuse herself from decision-making about MakeWay.

The ruling on Osborne was the first such investigation for Gray, a former B.C. Supreme Court Justice who was appointed to the $250,000-a-year position in early 2020. 

In an unusual move, Gray also used the report to tell MLAs that she has no jurisdiction to do what Doerkson originally wanted, which was to investigate a potential conflict of interest and provide a full accounting of facts. She accused Doerkson of causing “confusion and delay” in his original complaint. 

“I do not have the jurisdiction to investigate a matter based on suspicion alone,” she wrote.

The Members’ Conflict of Interest Act gives the commissioner power to conduct an inquiry, which includes ordering a person to attend, in person or by electronic means, to give evidence under oath or affirmation and to produce a record in a person’s possession or control. Gray’s report indicates Osborne provided letters and supporting documents only, instead of in-person testimony. Gray did reveal that she was able to inspect certain confidential Treasury Board documents.

Doerkson did not respond for comment. 

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Bob Mackin The B.C. Legislature’s ethics watchdog ruled

Ex-B.C. Legislature clerk MacMinn passes

Bob Mackin 

British Columbia’s Legislative Assembly announced the death Aug. 31 of its longest-serving official, who retired more than a decade ago.

Ex-B.C. Legislature clerk George MacMinn

“It is with sadness that we learned of the passing of E. George MacMinn, OBC, QC, who served as a Table Officer for 54 years and as #BCLeg Clerk from 1993 to 2011. Our condolences to his loved ones,” said a message on the official Twitter account.” 

MacMinn, 92, was predeceased by his wife, Ann Louise, in September 2020. They had three daughters and four stepchildren. He was born March 21, 1930 in New Glasgow, N.S., and graduated in 1953 from University of B.C. Law School. MacMinn became a clerk assistant in 1958 at the Parliament Buildings until his 1973 promotion to deputy clerk. In 1993, he was appointed to the equivalent of CEO and received a Queen’s Counsel designation. 

MacMinn received the Order of B.C. in 2005, while still in office, for his longevity and for authoring Parliamentary Practice in British Columbia, originally published in 1981. The fifth edition in 2020 was edited by today’s clerk, Kate Ryan-Lloyd. 

In Canadian Parliamentary Review, Sandy Birch, Clerk of Committees at the House of Commons, called MacMinn’s work “an interesting, easily disgestible reference book for parliamentarians and for those who practice this fascinating art.”

“Instead of listing summaries of speaker’s rulings, he has inserted elaborate extracts of the parliamentary proceedings from which the precedents were established, thereby relieving the reader from the burden of determining what the exact situation was at that earlier time,” Birch wrote.

MacMinn also received the Queen’s Medal for Outstanding Service to the Legislative Assembly and honorary life membership in the American Society of Legislative Clerks and Secretaries.

At the time of his retirement in 2011, MacMinn was the longest-serving table officer in the Commonwealth. Beside his book, one of his legacies was the establishment of the public education and outreach office at the Parliament Buildings. 

MacMinn was succeeded by protege Craig James when the BC Liberals used their majority to promote him into the job, rather than rely upon an all-party committee. Seven years later, in late 2018, James and Sergeant-at-Arms Gary Lenz were suspended due to a police investigation after Speaker Darryl Plecas complained about corruption. They both retired in disgrace in 2019 — James after a misconduct probe by retired Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin and Lenz after a Police Act investigation by former Vancouver Deputy Police Chief Doug LePard. 

James was sentenced in July to a month of house arrest and two months of curfew after being found guilty in B.C. Supreme Court of fraud and breach of trust. 

Clerk George MacMinn swore-in Christy Clark when she became the Vancouver-Point Grey MLA in 2011 (BC Gov)

In a brief, March 2019 interview, MacMinn declined to comment on the scandal at his former workplace.

“I spent 50 years there and they were all non-controversial, cooperative and pleasant. That’s really the whole story of my life, I’m retired now and happily watching the world,” MacMinn said. “I’m not going to go near this thing in terms interjecting myself into the difficulties.” 

In a scathing July 2012 report, Auditor General John Doyle probed the last three years of MacMinn’s management and found the Legislative Assembly “clearly falls short of the basic accounting and financial management standards that the rest of the provincial public sector is required to meet.”

After he retired, MacMinn received a two-year, $500,000 consulting contract from the Legislature. He buckled to pressure from the NDP opposition and agreed to amend his will so that the sum, minus any taxes, would be donated posthumously to the Legislative Library. 

“When people retire they get a gold watch and they move away. They don’t get a two-year contract,” said then-NDP house leader John Horgan. 

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Bob Mackin  British Columbia’s Legislative Assembly announced the