As soon as they started calling B.C.’s political-donation system the “Wild West,” we should have seen it coming.
If you live on the political frontier, sooner or later you’re going to have a shootout. Which is what developed over the weekend after the B.C. Liberals and the NDP started a “who’s the most compromised” crossfire. All the ammunition, in the form of public donations and endorsements, has been lying around in plain sight. The election campaign has both sides dipping into their armouries.
Here are the two most recent drive-bys:
• The Lumber Baron showdown — NDP Leader John Horgan went to town on the Liberals for accepting almost a quarter of a million dollars from Weyerhaeuser’s B.C. operation over the years, including $5,000 “on the eve of this election.”
That’s problematic because the U.S. parent company belongs to the lumber coalition that has spent decades fighting for heavy tariffs on Canadian lumber producers. And they are in the midst of another successful campaign, as U.S. authorities are expected to announce a harshly punitive countervailing duty this morning that could be a serious blow for the B.C. forest industry.
Horgan rapped the company for closing all but two of its B.C. mills in the past 16 years and slammed Clark for holding a fundraiser at the B.C. boss’s house.
But it’s a bit more complicated than that. There’s a tangle of cross-border ownership in the lumber world. U.S. firms have branch plants, but more Canadian firms have built up extensive holdings in the U.S. industry. Weyerhaeuser’s employment record in B.C. is a net minus, but it was the NDP government that welcomed Weyerhaeuser in 1999 when the firm bought MacMillan-Bloedel.
And the company has donated to the NDP. It has been a solid contributor to the Liberals, but has donated about $20,000 to the NDP over the years.
• Leo and the Steelworkers — Liberals have been manufacturing horror since disclosure forms were released showing the United Steelworkers made more than 30 donations to the NDP in 2016 totalling $670,000. For all the NDP concern about foreign-controlled firms donating to the B.C. Liberals, it took a $250,000 cheque last October from the Steelworkers’ U.S. headquarters.
The Liberals were also quick to highlight a picture of Steelworkers president Leo Gerard — who signed the cheque to the B.C. NDP — standing with U.S. President Donald Trump in solidarity recently as he signed off on an investigation of steel dumping. Gerard is the Canadian-born head of the international union, who stays close to the Canadian locals of the union, to the point where he is a life member of the B.C. NDP.
There are no circumstances where having one of your biggest supporters portrayed as a Trump supporter plays well in B.C.
But the photo op would have been obligatory for Gerard, given the subject matter, and his role. The union is also supporting the NDP more obliquely, by hiring campaign experts, then seconding them to the NDP. The Liberals object to that, but it’s authorized under the rules, as long as it’s disclosed, and has been standard practice going back years.
There is lots more to delve into in both ammo dumps. The NDP collects hundreds of thousands of dollars from public-sector unions in B.C. The unions have a big direct stake in any policy calls an NDP government might make. And the Liberals make millions off corporations that they regulate and control.
The back and forth about who is “bought and paid for” could go on for a while, except for two things.
One is that the B.C. Greens seem to be more of a factor now than in the past, and they have clean hands on the issue, since they renounced everything but personal donations last fall. Too much more Liberal-NDP arguing could just turn voters away from both camps, and into the Green fold.
The other is that the Wild West show looks to be coming to an end, as both parties have plans to at least review the situation.
Voters will eventually have to figure out whether it’s worth moving to subsidized politics and shelling out millions a year in taxpayers’ money to bring the sniping to an end.
