Bill Good’s making it official. His show is now an arm of the BC Liberal communications operation. From Andrew MacLeod’s Tyee piece:
“In place of a formal Throne Speech, the Premier will be appearing on CKNW’s Bill Good Show to outline the government’s agenda for the spring session,” said an email to press gallery members from Clark’s deputy press secretary and communications officer Rebecca Scott (aka Bill Good’s former producer).
This is also known as killing two reputations with one stone.
I know I used this picture just the other day. But check out the words behind the salesman… “BC Rail Partnership Investment”. Partnership Investment? How did the sale of BC Rail to CN turn into a “partnership investment”?
The answer is, it never did. At no point in time was the BC Rail deal a partnership. That’s according to documents the ministry of Finance provided to the Evaluation team in the fall of 2002.
Earlier that year the Premier and staff met with Mayors of communities affected by the sale of BC Rail. The mayors were given a worst case financial scenario (more on that later) to soften them up for the government’s reversal of a key campaign promise.
According to Evaluation Committee notes, the mayors, amongst other things, told the Premier they wanted to see more of a partnership.
Bingo! Off they went trying to determine how a sale could be turned into a partnership.
So the Evaluation Committee asked about the definition of a partnership. And it seems that, unlike a sale, the deal would have to retain a significant measure of ownership and control on the part of the government to be a legally defined partnership.
That wasn’t going to happen. As I reported earlier, the Evaluation Committee was always clear – the restructuring of BC Rail was a sale, clear and simple.
But the “partnership” word stayed put in the BC Liberal discourse because someone wanted to fudge the truth. It’s called spin for a reason.
***
Throughout the fall of 2002 and spring of 2003 the Evaluation Committee, BC Rail Executives and various government ministers and staff toured a presentation on BC Rail around stakeholder groups, including the aforementioned Mayors group.
The presentation laid out a dire financial picture of declining revenues and increasing capital costs adding up to growing losses. It was helped along by some highly questionable charges that turned surpluses into losses, as Will McMartin has documented.
The presentation also casts forward for its bad news, in particular showing a significant decline in revenues related to coal shipments. In an April 2003 version of the presentation, under the heading “Narrowing and shrinking revenue base” the slideshow noted that “NE coal traffic ended in April 2003, ending BC Rail’s only efficient unit train operation.”
But was that the end of the coal opportunity?
Not according to Chris Trumpy, the head of Treasury Board staff. Trumpy, writing the day after an April 24th presentation of the slideshow, was concerned that the bid documents outlining the opportunity to prospective buyers, undervalued the railroad because they didn’t take into account future opportunities.
Like coal.
“i wonder wheter you feel it would be advisable to include in this para how much coal is in the province – there are huge reserves of high quality coal available and depending on what happens to commodity prices could present an opportunity (this is after all a marketing document)”, Trumpy wrote.
Telling stakeholders and the public one thing, bidders and donors another.
That might be the modus operandi for this government and this deal.
“Let’s make like the HST and move the BC Rail disclosure back, after the election… if ever.”
I may be putting words in the government’s mouth but that’s just about the only takeaway I can figure out from the notice I just received from the Information Commissioner.
It seems that a year hasn’t been enough for the BC Liberal government to figure out how to release the BC Rail documents. I’ve got 1,400 highly redacted pages out of an estimated 45,000.
Now they want to delay it for at least another eight months… which, using the way the FOI act allows them to count, may be after the next election.
Thirteen months ago I filed an application for the BC Rail documents disclosed to the defense in the Basi-Virk trial. Another applicant sought a similar group of documents 14 months ago.
After three extensions totaling almost a year, the Office of the Information Commissioner decided against a further extension January 17th.
Rather than release the documents, the BC Liberal government did what every bad government hiding something would do – they asked for a reconsideration of the ruling. And in their supporting material they laid out a new timetable of at least eight months.
A few delays and that takes them just past the next election. So HSTish. So wrong.
Their reasoning? We didn’t do a very good job and put no staff on the case the first year.
And what do the records contain? The deal, the lobbying, the playing both sides, the lies, the cover-ups, Kinsella, Campbell, Collins, Reid, Clark… Christy Clark? The new guard same as the old…
Dennis hearts Christy
Under Dennis Skulsky’s reign, the Vancouver Sun turned into an outright shill for Gordon Campbell’s Liberals. My favourite advertorial was the double page, ‘We love you, Gordon Campbell’ spread two days after the drunk driving charge in Maui. You can’t buy that kind of coverage… or maybe you can.
Now, Skulsky’s imposing his political views on the BC Lions and their fans, where he landed a gig as General Manager after he was terminated by the new owners of CanWest.
And he’s “partnering” with the BC Liberals at your expense.
The BC government is paying the Lions to tour the Grey Cup around Liberal ridings, featuring highly endangered Liberal MLAs posing with the cup and constituents, posting the resulting pics on the BC Liberal Caucus website.
Sports and cuts minister Ida Chong launched the tour back in January. From Chong’s press release:
“From Jan. 29 to Feb. 4, the tour will consist of 15 public events in communities throughout British Columbia. Families, football fans and sport history buffs will have the chance to see the cup, take a photo and meet members of the BC Lions team, including quarterback Travis Lulay. Tour participants can have their photo taken at each tour stop, and download their image through the site:http://www.Yourcup.ca
http://www.Yourcup.ca takes you straight to the BC Liberal Caucus website.
Their tour, your dollars. It’s amazing the Liberals/Lions didn’t charge hst on the pics.
And the Lions are supporting this? What kind of a marketing strategy is it to marry the BC Lion’s brand with the BC Liberals. The Titanic might be a better choice. After all the movie’s coming out in 3D.
But there it is, right up there on the Lions’ facebook page: we “like” the BC Liberal Caucus.
Dennis Skulsky strikes again, with your tax dollars.
In the Spring of 2003, Joy MacPhail asked a question during Premier’s office estimates about potential conflicts related to Patrick Kinsella’s role with CN. RossK over at the Pacific Gazetteer has a link to the Hansard excerpt.
The Premier sloughed off the question. ‘Use FOI’ he told MacPhail. Sitting next to the Premier in the Legislature, advising him on his answers was his Deputy Minister Brenda Eaton. Just a few months earlier BC Rail VP Kevin Mahoney told Eaton that he believed Kinsella was working for CN at the same time he was working for BC Rail on the privatization deal.
But Eaton wasn’t about to disclose that information and nothing came of MacPhail’s line of questioning.
Imagine if it had been disclosed.
BC Rail hires the most politically connected operator in the province, the chair of Gordon Campbell’s campaigns, to advise them on the billion dollar privatization of BC’s railway, knowing that he is also advising at least one of the main bidders. That bidder is chaired by one of Gordon Campbell’s most significant financial backers.
That is an optics problem as the Premier’s Chief of Staff admitted in court. But it’s not just an optics problem. It’s against government procurement policy and arguably raises criminal code issues.
Government procurement policy specifically demands disclosure from any employee aware of a conflict:
“An employee who is exposed to an actual, perceived or potential conflict of interest in relation to an actual or proposed solicitation must disclose the matter to his or her supervisor and/or the contract manager. If, after review, it is determined that there is a conflict, the supervisor or contract manager must remove the employee from this particular contract situation. An employee who fails to disclose a conflict of interest can be subject to disciplinary action up to and including dismissal. Any suspected conflicts of interest must be investigated and resolved.”
Clearly Eaton, Mahoney and Kinsella were all “exposed to an actual, perceived or potential conflict of interest” the moment Mahoney pressed “send” on that final email.
Canada’s Criminal Code also speaks to these kinds of conflicts. Under the Code a person or a company – for example a company bidding on a public railway – cannot have dealings with a government and pay an employee or official of the government with which the dealings take place unless the government consents in writing.
Similarly, an official or employee of the government cannot accept a payment from a company or person who has dealings with the government without consent in writing from the government.
The reasons are obvious: the person taking the payments is serving two masters with conflicting interests, one public, the other corporate.
The questions raised by Mahoney’s disclosure to Eaton of Kinsella’s possible dual role are significant:
And of course, there is MacPhail’s question. Did Kinsella use a dual role to arrange access for CN to the Premier or the government?
The conflict Mahoney discloses is not just any conflict. Mahoney communicated to the Deputy Minister to the Premier that his contract employee was to the best of his knowledge strategizing for the company considered by many to be the likely winner of a government process to sell a public asset worth at least a billion dollars.
And Eaton, Campbell’s highest appointed official, apparently did nothing. In fact she is currently the well-paid Chair of BC Housing. Mahoney is the board chair at BC Transit.
And what of Patrick Kinsella?
Premier Clark is wrong when she says all the questions about the sale of BC Rail have been answered. The questions surrounding her advisor continue to grow.
Still, Kinsella continues his backroom role with the current Premier. He is a key part of Christy Clark’s political team and his access to government is as great as ever.
Given Kinsella’s complicated role in the sale of BC Rail and the government’s awareness of that role, there is every reason for this Premier to do as her predecessor did and protect Kinsella and a corrupted deal from public scrutiny.
The Deputy Minister to the Premier knew
In November 2002, the members of the BC Rail Evaluation committee were working on convening the second of a number of meetings with key industry stakeholders in preparation for the release of the official Request For Proposals in the sale of BC Rail.
The meeting was important. These were the people who paid the bills at BC Rail and generally earned it a profit.
Prior to the meeting, BC Rail VP Kevin Mahoney wrote Brenda Eaton, the Deputy Minister to the Premier with a special request.
It seems that BC Rail contractor Patrick Kinsella wanted to attend the meeting as an observer.
Mr. Kinsella has claimed in the past that his involvement in BC Rail was limited to advising BC Rail on the implications of the government’s Core Review.
Here’s how his lawyers put it in 2009, when Mr. Kinsella came under intense fire in the Legislature: “Mr. Kinsella was engaged by BC Rail to assist in understanding and interpreting the Core Review Process as to its potential impact on the Corporation. BC Rail sought counsel on what implications, if any, might affect the Crown Corporation’s operations and their strategic plan going forward.
Translation: Mr. Kinsella wanted to go to an invite only meeting with BC Rail shippers to find out what shippers thought about privatization and its impact on their business, information that would be very valuable to say… a potential buyer as well as the Evaluation Team preparing the bid papers.
BC Rail VP Kevin Mahoney knew
According to an email trail released to me through an information request, Mahoney wrote to Eaton late in the day on November 1st, “I have had a request from Patrick Kinsella to attend as an observer. We have no problem with it however, I would like to run it by you before I get back to him. Any concerns with adding him to the list?”
Eaton responded an hour later, “On the Patrick Kinsella front, he doesn’t fit any of our categories of invitees does he?”
It is interesting that Eaton – the deputy minister responsible for the entire public service – didn’t ask questions about this request, given the security surrounding the process, security that was necessary to protect the bid process. Most likely Eaton and Mahoney both knew Kinsella was in some fashion involved in the file.
What follows is more than interesting.
Mahoney provides Gordon Campbell’s deputy minister with an overview of Kinsella’s role.
“Patrick doesn’t fit in any of the categories,” writes Mahoney to Eaton about 90 minutes later. “However, I believe he has been advising some of the railways (CN/BNSF) on how to approach the issue of the potential sale of BC Rail. Patrick has also provided us a bit of guidance from time to time however, we understand if he is not on the list as it may create a more obvious political link than you might want.”
There you have it. The Vice President of BC Rail tells the Deputy Minister to the Premier a few months before the Request for Proposal is tendered that BC Rail’s $300,000 advisor is working, he believes, for both BC Rail and CN, which at the time was already seen as most likely the winning bidder.
How wrong is that? Let’s let Gordon Campbell’s chief of staff Martyn Brown begin to answer.
In 2010, towards the end of the Basi Virk trial, Defense Attorney Michael Bolton asked Brown about such a situation. ”I talked about the problematic issue of Mr. Kinsella working for BC Rail,” Bolton led off. “I suggest to you that there’s an obvious optics problem working with BC Rail and CN Rail at the same time.”
Brown replied straight away, “I believe that’s true.”
An optics problem. That’s just the start of the problem, which we’ll explore tomorrow.
Sometime back in early 2009 I was thinking about Patrick Kinsella. About Patrick Kinsella and BC Rail to be precise.
Kinsella, it seemed, had a finger in just about every major project approved by the government of his close friend Gordon Campbell. The two-time chair of the BC Liberal campaign never registered as a lobbyist but Kinsella was rumoured to be in and out of government offices on a regular basis.
The rumours about Kinsella’s involvement in BC Rail were extensive. During the BC Rail trial it was said he arranged meetings between CN and the government. He advised BC Rail on privatization others said. But there was no conclusive evidence that he was involved in both camps.
In 2009 I worked with the crack NDP research team to try and nail some of these rumours to the wall, particularly his role with BC Rail. But no record appeared to exist of a payment of any kind outside of the BC Rail corporate offices.
And then I remembered that there was one other repository of corporate financial records I had access to: the Legislative Library. And sure enough it was there, the one publicly available record of almost $300,000 in payments over three years to Patrick Kinsella for his ‘advice’ on privatization.
The contract was untendered. And questions about it went unanswered as the BC Liberals resorted to an unconvincing claim of sub judice to cover-up the involvement of the BC Liberal campaign chair and lobbyist extraordinaire in the sale of BC Rail to one of the Gordon Campbell’s largest financial backers.
Here’s the current Health Minister Mike DeJong on Kinsella’s situation in 2009: “The honourable member chooses to make allegations that derive directly from information and material that are squarely before proceedings at the Supreme Court of British Columbia. It is, therefore, inappropriate to answer”.
When Stone Wally Oppal failed, it fell to the stonewall master to back him up.
As Gary Mason observed after the still unexplained plea bargain, those questions remain unanswered because the current Premier is continuing Campbell’s policy of refusing to answer questions and hold a Public Inquiry into the corrupt sale of the railway to a major Liberal contributor.
They also remain unanswered because media outlets refuse to look into the whole stinking mess after the trial was shut down by a suspect plea bargain.
Hundreds of thousands of pages of BC Rail related documents collected for disclosure during the Basi Virk trial now sit in government offices.
No media outlet that I’m aware of has sought disclosure, although many jumped at a small one-sided package carefully prepared by the Special Prosecutor which purported to show the government itself was innocent of any corruption.
All it really showed was the Prosecutor’s case.
So I filed an FOI request for all the documents released by the government to the defense during the disclosure process. And I’ve received the first batch, about 700 mostly innocuous pages. Another 728 pages were completely redacted. Blank.
Even with the somewhat dubious redactions there’s some very interesting revelations. I wrote yesterday about the fake ‘lease’ process. Over the next few days I’ll write about a shocking disclosure regarding the role of Patrick Kinsella.
“Premier Gordon Campbell announced a partnership with CN Rail that will significantly improve rail service in B.C. CN will sign a lease to operate BC Rail for the next 60 years in exchange for $1 billion. Although many critics are trying to convince people this is a sale, it is not. Taxpayers will continue to own the most important components – BC Rail’s tracks, railbed and rights-of- way.” Kevin Krueger, Dec. 1, 2003.
Remember how the sale of BC Rail was never really a sale, according to BC Liberal stooges like Kevin “thumper” Krueger? ‘It’s not a sale. It’s a lease’, Krueger and his mates repeated over and over, eyes focused on the talking points in front of them.
Of course the Liberal government knew it was a lie. And now, we know that they knew.
Heavily scrubbed documents obtained through an FOI request show that all the while the BC Liberal government was calling the sale a “restructuring through a lease”, government staff and political appointees were referring to the transaction as a sale.
For example in a routine email chain between Evaluation Committee secretary Yvette Wells and BC Rail executives in October of 2002, Wells exclusively referred to the transaction as the BC Rail “sale/purchase” or plain old “sale”, as in “Attached are two timelines for the project. The first is the sale timeline.”
In fact the “restructuring” word doesn’t pop up until the first “messaging” document turns up. A draft powerpoint presentation from the fall of 2002 intended for a meeting of “Mayors of BC Communities” refers throughout to the restructuring of BC Rail.
But the staff charged with preparing the document continued to refer amongst themselves to the sale of BC Rail. Emails sending the powerpoint draft to evaluation committee members for comment, referred to the transaction as a sale.
But then they would have. The Evaluation committee had internal opinions about the transaction that diminished the government’s ability to claim a simple lease and “partnership”.
One government CGA let the committee know that once the rail lines were leased for an extended period, the retained land was valueless.
On September 26th, 2002 – prior to Campbell’s “restructuring” announcement at UBCM – Kit Chapman, director of Corporate Financial Accounting with the Officer of the Comptroller General, wrote to Yvette Wells to tell her that the BC Rail railbed was worthless under the deal.
Chapman told Wells “I spoke to Barb Reuther and we’ve agreed that if there is a lease that effectively transfers the use of the land to another party for an extended period then the land would need to be written off as its value to Rail in now nil. In short the land would need to be written off.”
A lease that sucks the value out of the remaining public asset. Someone got hosed and it wasn’t CN Rail.
Did you catch Newt Gingrich’s salute to our great conservative PM, Saturday night?
Crazy Newt Gingrich, following a line that worked well for him all week in South Carolina, placed a major shout out to Harper in his victory speech, thanking Harper for supporting the Keystone pipeline.
But was he thanking Harper for supporting Canada’s interest? Not a bit. Newt made it clear that Harper was supporting US interests at the expense of Chinese interests. The Keystone pipeline, Gingrich said, made sure that tar sands oil would end up in the US rather than in China.
But that’s not the real oil news in Gingrich’s speech. Here’s what he said Keystone means to the US:
“We’d make money on the pipeline,” Newt said, his voice launching into demogogeury cadence, “we’d make money on managing the pipeline, we’d make money on refining the oil, and we’d make money on the ports of Houston and Galveston shipping the oil.”
That’s lots of money for the US to handle our oil. We’d only make money on getting the bitumen out of the sands. That’s about it. Americans get to manage, refine and ship.
Hewers of wood, drawers of tar sands. That’s about all we’re good for. And Harper serves their interests in maintaining that relationship. Not ours.
“Around the world today, the institution of the presidency has been degraded to the point that it is viewed as the rough equivalent of the Jerry Springer show — a level of disrespect and decadence that should appall every American.”
Ah Newt, you are so right.
