Travesties in Leg. hide Liberal scandals

The Daily Twigg  Vol. 1 No. 44  May 15, 2012

Travesties against democracy in B.C. Legislature
meant to aid coverups of B.C. Liberals' scandals

By John Twigg

If you are a regular long-time follower of proceedings in the B.C. Legislative Assembly you may be aware of some recent events in there that are an extraordinary travesty of democracy, namely the government forcing through a tsunami of major social-engineering reforms with little time for debate and virtually no consultations with affected interest groups.

A remaking of the legal industry even while a policy review is ongoing, a new regime for settling civil disputes, a rewriting of the pre-election advertising rules to in part gag small voices, a new drunk driving law and other changes in ICBC, a re-regulating of B.C. ferry services, some Bills to fix previous mistakes, the massive reintroduction of a provincial sales tax system - and more, even a restructuring of how the legislature itself will operate.

But even regular watchers of B.C. politics may not realize that that odious railroading is also part of an even worse ploy to minimize the time and attention available for MLA questions about the Premier's Office budget and operations and for the B.C. Liberal Party government to thereby maintain coverups of numerous scandals involving Premier Christy Clark and other prominent supporters of her and her regime.

Now that former Liberal MLA John van Dongen has openly questioned in and outside the Legislature the mechanics and propriety of the government's $6-million payment of legal bills for former aides David Basi and Bob Virk in an apparent exchange for their guilty pleas in the BC Rail scandal it is a more open season for new questions about that old scandal and other questions about the former Gordon Campbell government's very tainted sale of BC Rail to Canadian National Railway, a company chaired by one of Campbell's most influential political supporters, and a deal consulted on to three competing interests at once by his most influential strategic advisor.

To be specific, blogger Alex Tsakumis apparently has documents from the Basi-Virk trial which reportedly demonstrate "a clear link between Christy Clark and her close friend, fellow federal Liberal operative and briber of public officials [name removed] (which) .... van Dongen tells me ... is PRECISELY the work that made him stand up and take notice of the OBVIOUS issues "  - dating from when Clark was a senior minister in the Campbell regime.

Furthermore, van Dongen and Auditor General John Doyle are litigating to get their own copies of those and other court documents which apparently could implicate Premier Clark and other prominent Liberals in the perversion of the process to sell B.C. Rail, and in coming days in the Legislature van Dongen in theory as an now-Independent MLA could and arguably should get some opportunities to quiz Clark about those and other issues, such as exactly who, how and why the offer was made to Basi and Virk to plead guilty and shut down a trial just when it was about to involve senior players giving testimony.

Those would be fair questions for Estimates debate on Clark's budget but because the Clark Liberals are flooding the Legislature with last-minute Bills van Dongen may never get a chance to do so.

In the legislature the NDP Opposition tried to get a two-week extension to House sittings past the scheduled adjournment on May 31 but the government offered only the addition of a temporary third committee to simultaneously do House business and a few extra hours on four nights. And perversely the new provisions may prevent Independent MLAs from speaking in that new committee or perhaps any committee unless they first get permission from one or possibly both of the two party whips [which wasn't clear from the live broadcast of proceedings].

But there's lots more involved, including transcripts of wiretaps which include prominent business people and prominent journalists, particularly Vancouver Sun columnist Vaughn Palmer who has been chastized by Tsakumis and others for allegedly having been somewhat less than zealous about digging in to and exposing the flaws in the BC Rail sale, such as in his column of May 12.

The way Tsakumis puts it, Palmer “ ADMITS on intercepted RCMP wiretap evidence from the ‘Basi-Virk’ trial (that the BC Rail sale) is “fixed” and appears “slanted” in favour of CN??? When he falls just short of admitting, on a different tape, that he was getting his information from [name removed], then Deputy Finance Minister to Gary Collins, and someone charged with the task of being head of the bid committee”.

So therein we have published allegations that the province's top politician and its top pundit are both allegedly named in police wiretap transcripts (along with many other people) and if that isn't something deserving some questions and answers in the Legislature then what does? But given the history of B.C. politics and media it's quite possible that all of that will get lost in the likely furores over other outrageous measures in the Liberals' flood of social and political reforms.

Of course there are lots of other sensitive issues on which Clark could and should be questioned, such as why there have been so many personnel changes in the Ministry of Attorney General (remembering that in B.C.'s system the deputy ministers all report directly to the Premier's Office), who does exactly what now in the Premier's Office and why (re importation of Harper Conservatives), whether she or someone close to her instigated the recent smears by MLAs Harry Bloy and Kevin Krueger against NDP Opposition leader Adrian Dix, how much her office is spending on polls and advertising and communications and why, what her relationships are now with strategist Patrick Kinsella, with certain government lawyers and other of her appointees, and so on. Not to mention federal-provincial relations and finances, resource development issues, job creation statistics, environmental cuts, income disparities, policing, municipal policies, health, welfare, education, forests and raw log exports, Crown corporations, water . . . . and various lawsuits against the government, not least of which are the Water War Crimes story and related litigation which may have precipitated recent personnel changes.

In fact there is a lot of dysfunction in and around the Clark Liberal government now, illustrated by the flood of late Bills, but it would be wrong to assume it's all due simply to incompetence, as Dix seemed to suggest in an eloquent speech earlier today (Tuesday May 15) on Motion 47, the unprecedented plan to split the Legislature into three simultaneous committees, in which Dix raked "the presidentialization of government in British Columbia".

That's because there is evidence suggesting that Bloy's remarks were deliberate (it looked like he was reading a script - see DT39), that Krueger's hallway remarks were deliberate (a colleague asked if it was a skit, then Krueger the next day did an almost word-for-word repeat of it on the Bill Good Show), and there is weapon, motive and opportunity to suggest that the Clark Liberals are deliberately avoiding a Fall sitting of the Legislature, or even an extension of the present sitting.

Their desire to avoid the legislature is not merely a fear of some embarrassing questions but even more it's a fear that the Liberals' majority in the seat count is decaying and soon could be precarious with only a few more defections or absences due to health or travel (such as Clark now being away in Asia on a hastily-arranged trade mission, which itself appears to be also part of the bad-news-avoidance strategy).

The NDP's two byelection wins give them 36 seats in an 85-seat House, with 3 Independents, 45 Liberals and 1 Liberal Speaker; in today's vote on Motion 47 the division produced 43 yeas and 38 nays. But if the Opposition mustered full attendance and full votes plus some defections while the government had some absences then the government could lose its majority and possibly trigger an early election call.

Though a fall of the Clark government is not yet likely, it should be noted that one Liberal MLA last week had a health emergency, and Tsakumis reports that when van Dongen rebelled against Campbell in 2010 he was part of a group of nine dissidents, so there are about as many reasons for Clark et al wanting to avoid a Fall sitting at all costs.