By Richard McGuire
Residents of Boundary-Similkameen wanting to know who funded local candidates in the May provincial election are left in the dark following last week’s release of financial reports by Elections BC.
NDP candidate Colleen Ross has not yet submitted her report on grounds of “extenuating circumstances.” Liberal candidate Linda Larson, who was re-elected as MLA, reports receiving no donations at all, with all contributions handled by her party, effectively making donations difficult or impossible to trace.
The law requires public reporting of donations $250 and over, but B.C.’s political donation system, which the New York Times has called “the Wild West of Canadian political cash,” makes it easy for parties to conceal information about donors.
Only the two fringe candidates – Vonnie Lavers of the B.C. Greens and Dr. Peter Entwistle, an independent – made public the names of their donors. Both candidates had only a couple of donors each.
Larson’s statement of income and expenses shows she spent $103,300.81, of which about $70,000 was on election expenses. But the total value of political contributions from all sources is listed as zero. Instead, she received the full $103,300.81 in transfers from her party. The 91 transfers appear to represent individual and corporate donations, but the names of the donors aren’t reported.
Melanie Hull, communications coordinator with Elections BC, said the names of donors would have been recorded by the B.C. Liberal Party, as the entity that handled the contributions. Under B.C.’s Election Act, this is legal. But those searching the Liberal Party’s report in hopes of finding who financed Larson will be out of luck.
The report lists every donor to the party in the entire province by name only. There is no identification of community of residence, as is the practice at the federal level and in other provinces. This creates confusion for donors with common names.
Osoyoos resident David Smith was taken aback when the Osoyoos Times asked him if donations from a David Smith totaling $1,010 to the Liberals were from him. Smith, who is a vocal opponent of both Larson and former Premier Christy Clark, says he voted for Ross of the NDP and he feigned outrage at the suggestion that the $1,010 donation was his. “Me? Donating to Krooked Krusty? Not even when pigs fly,” he said in a text message. The suggestion is even more outrageous, Smith insists, because he would never make a donation that big. “I’m a pretty cheap guy,” he said. “I don’t give anybody one thousand bucks. That’s not my kind of donation.” Smith has had other problems with his common name, saying he once had to get a lawyer to notarize an affidavit that he was not the David Smith who was in jail so he could do a real estate deal.
There are about 60 David Smiths in B.C. with listed telephone numbers, not including those with unlisted numbers and those like the Osoyoos David Smith, who just use a cellphone.
Dermod Travis, executive director of the non-partisan transparency group Integrity B.C., says it might be possible to identify Larson’s donors by cross-referencing dates and amounts of donations to the Liberal Party with transfers from the party to Larson’s campaign.
“There might be a complicated way to get around it, but regrettably, most people wouldn’t necessarily be able to make the connection on how to do it and might not even be successful,” said Travis. “In terms of the overall disclosure in B.C., it’s a joke.”
He said he was “stunned” to see that Larson’s report shows no donations, adding that some other Liberal candidates do report at least some donors.
The Osoyoos Times last week attempted to reach Larson’s financial agent, Everett Baker, but he had not responded by press time. Larson, however, responded that all cheques received during the campaign were sent directly to party headquarters.
“In this riding, I only had three corporate donors,” said Larson. “Copper Mountain, Vaagen and Interfor. All the rest were individual or small business in-kind support.”
Emile Scheffel, B.C. Liberal Party executive director, said the practice of handling riding associations’ funds centrally “has been in place since our party was constituted.” Asked if this method of reporting is intended to obscure the identity of donors to particular campaigns, Scheffel didn’t directly respond to the question.
“With respect to transparency, I would point out that, in the lead-up to the election, we were the only party to pro-actively and voluntarily report all our contributions online – going well beyond the standard required by law,” Scheffel said in an emailed reply.
Travis, of Integrity B.C., says any candidate receiving a political donation should be prepared to respond to public questions about the donation. Especially with corporate and union donations, which are banned in most other Canadian jurisdictions, but are legal in B.C., it raises concerns that politicians may take positions on legislation favourable to their donors, he suggested.
“That’s why the disclosure is important,” said Travis. “It’s to know who you may feel you owe something to… by having that disclosure and by you knowing that the public knows, ideally the check and balance is stronger. You will be less inclined to do something that might come back and haunt you in a future campaign.”
Travis notes that the B.C. Liberals brought in $7.5 million in corporate donations and more than half of that came from fewer than 345 corporate donors. Some corporate donors avoid public scrutiny, he added, by donating smaller amounts through multiple companies.
The NDP received nearly $3.4 million in union donations, with about $750,000 coming from the United Steelworkers, he said. Ross, the NDP candidate in Boundary-Similkameen, has been given an extension to Oct. 6 to file her report. Hull of Elections BC said the agency doesn’t comment on why candidates are given extensions because it’s typically for personal reasons. Ross, however, said in an email that it is due to an illness on her financial team.
Entwistle, the independent candidate, reported $3,904 in election contributions, with $2,910 coming from his own pocket and $1,000 from an Osoyoos realtor.
Lavers, the Green candidate, had the most frugal campaign, spending just $1,185. Of that, $800 was a donation from her campaign manager, David Cursons, and $366 was in-kind from Walnut Beach Resort.
