How much are BC Liberals responsible for BC Conservative dissidents' revolt? Every picture tells a story

Is the BC Conservative "revolt" being fomented or aided by BC Liberals?  Trojan Horse strategy in play?

BC Liberal Premier Christy Clark, BC Conservative Surrey-White Rock riding president Allison Patton at host BC Liberal MLA Kevin Falcon's "Jeans 'N Beans" BC Liberal fundraiser on July 14, 2012

Is the so-called BC Conservative Party revolt against leader John Cummins being fomented by BC Liberals intent on destroying their rivals' chances of electoral success in May 2013?

Is there a "Trojan Horse" strategy in play?

Or are the BC Conservative dissidents - a word they apparently hate - simply the BC political equivalent of pit bulls - bred to fight?

It's hard to know for sure but there is any awful lot of BC Liberal smoke if there's no fire.

Exhibit A - is above.  BC Conservative Surrey-White Rock riding president Allison Patton has been front and centre demanding in public that Cummins resign, then floating the bizarre story yesterday that Cummins had agreed to quit but reneged on the "deal" negotiated with one of the dissidents.  SEE UPDATE AT END OF THIS ITEM ALSO

The story got huge play in the media given that the entire story was based on hearsay, denied by Cummins himself completely and without any rational explanation for why Cummins would resign after just getting 71% of party members to reject a leadership review!

So - why was Patton hobnobbing with Premier Christy Clark at Kevin Falcon's Beans 'N Jeans fundraising event in Surrey just a few months ago if she is a dedicated BC Conservative who believes the BC Liberals are finished and should be thrown out of office?  

And did she quit the BC Conservatives and then "unquit" shortly afterwards this summer?  I hope Patton explains herself in her next news release or media interviews.

Exhibit B - BC Conservative sources told me last month that former BC Liberal MLA John van Dongen - who briefly became the BC Conservatives' only MLA after quitting Clark's government, then quit on Cummins as well - was in contact with BC Liberal MLAs Moira Stilwell and Donna Barnett about ditching Clark and Cummins and merging the two parties.  Van Dongen declined to comment about "private" conversations he might have had.

Exhibit C - John Martin.  The former BC Conservative candidate who placed third in the Chilliwack-Hope by-election in March announced he was joining the BC Liberals the day before his former party's AGM - with BC Liberal MLA John Les and other brass in attendance as he signed his new membership card.  

Pretty clearly this one was planned and executed at BC Liberal HQ for maximum negative impact on Cummins.

That would be the same John Martin who said during and before the by-election that:  

“Not even the most devoted Liberal supporter could argue with a straight face that this government has earned a fourth mandate. Theirs is a legacy of deceit, incompetence, and financial mismanagement.” – CKNW, March 28, 2012

“The Liberal government has failed the people of British Columbia and has squandered trust with the public on issues such paying $6 million in legal fees for two convicted criminals (Basi and Virk) and the introduction of the HST shortly after the last election when they said it was not on the table.” – Georgia Straight, April 19, 2012

“Everything costs more under this Liberal government.  Medical premiums, ICBC, BC Hydro, Carbon Tax, Gas Tax.  The list goes on and on.  It just doesn’t end. The only people getting ahead in Christy Clark’s British Columbia are cronies, insiders and lobbyists.” - Asian Journal, January 27, 2012

“The Liberals are in free fall and haven’t, by any stretch of imagination, earned a fourth term. The BC Rail scandal alone merits a trip to the penalty box. The deceit with which the HST was introduced was a disgrace and indicative of the contempt the Liberals have for hardworking, tax-paying British Columbians who play by the rules.” – Chilliwack Times, December 6, 2011

Exhibit D - Ben Besler. The former BC Conservative Party vice-president and 2009 provincial candidate was dead set against the BC Liberals - until he joined the party this month!  Besler was leading the anti-Cummins crowd but failed to get party support for a leadership review and was defeated in running for the executive, along with the other dissidents.

That would be the same Ben Besler who told the Chilliwack Times that:

"I don't think [the BC Liberals] can carry on the right-wing facade much longer with the carbon tax and bridge tolls and doing their best to push aside the light rail transit. The Liberals made a coalition with people of right wing mentality so of course they've tried to position themselves as right wing," Besler said.  The same Ben Besler who started a "Recall John Les" Facebook page.

Can there be any doubt that Besler and Martin will be paraded in front of cheering BC Liberals at their "Free Enterprise Friday" party convention day intended to encourage more defectors to join with Christy Clark?

Lastly, I fully expect comments and posts suggesting that I'm merely promoting the BC Conservatives to hurt the BC Liberals.  

I hardly think the BC Liberals need my help - they are damaging their brand daily - from their ridiculous and changing positions on the Enbridge pipeline to bringing Chinese workers into BC to run a Chinese-owned coal mine to the HST to a host of other bad decisions.

I don't agree with John Cummins or his supporters on a whole lot of issues - but he is a straight-shooter and he has dragged the BC Conservatives out of obscurity to have a real chance of electing MLAs and re-establishing a party that was lost in the wilderness for decades.  

So - say what you like about me - but try to deal with the facts here, because they are certainly pointing towards some real involvement of the BC Liberals and their supporters in sabotaging Cummins - for obvious reasons.

UPDATE 

Freelance journalist Bob Mackin kindly pointed out to me that he had posted the photo above on his blog Wednesday and that he also got this explanation from Allison Patton about it:

Before I could finish asking about a photograph from the B.C. Blue blog of her standing between ex-finance minister Kevin Falcon and Premier Christy Clark at a barbecue last summer, Patton flashed an 8x10 glossy of the photo. 

She explained she was invited to the event at Conservative Sen. Gerry St. Germain’s ranch. She was representing the B.C. Naturopathic Association, which had come to know Falcon while he was health minister. 

“In terms of the photo itself, I thought it was kind of funny two top Liberals were endorsing a B.C. Conservative such as myself, and that's why I'm standing in the centre," Patton said. 

I remain unconvinced by this explanation and would have thought that the Naturopathic Association wouldn't send a committed BC Conservative to a BC Liberal fundraising event but I appreciate that Bob asked the question and the Patton had an answer.  It is kind of funny, though perhaps not in the way she means.

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BC Premier Christy Clark's oily hypocrisy - criticize Albertans & oil sands pipeline in public - take big oil money in private!

Big Oil and Gas Pumps Money to Christy Clark

BC Premier Christy Clark

BC's premier criticized Alberta publicly while fundraising oil money there in private.

Bill Tieleman’s 24 hours/The Tyee column

Tuesday October 9, 2012

By Bill Tieleman

"I don’t think people from Alberta really understand how much we cherish our coast, how much we cherish our environment here." -- B.C. Premier Christy Clark quoted in the Edmonton Journal.

While Premier Christy Clark was loudly proclaiming her intent to protect B.C. from the Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline proposal, she was also in Calgary privately raising money from big oil sands companies for her party.

Talk about oily hypocrisy!

Clark had her hand out for the BC Liberal Party at a private dinner Oct. 1 at Calgary's Petroleum Club hosted by billionaire oilman Murray Edwards, chairman of Canadian Natural Resources Limited, owners of the Horizon Oil Sands plant.

Clark didn't want to give details, including which oil sands companies attended or how much it cost per plate when contacted by Sun News Network

"Well I had a private dinner when I was in Alberta but I will say this -- there are a lot of people in Alberta who have made big investments in British Columbia," Clark said.

"In gas, in tourism in a whole lot of other areas and in infrastructure, so just because people are in Calgary doesn't necessarily mean that they're not in the gas business and the gas business here in British Columbia is booming and it's something we really want to develop."

Clark also wants to appear to be fighting the Enbridge pipeline that would transport Alberta oil sands bitumen across northern B.C. to be shipped to Asia by tanker but at the same time is asking for big cheques from oil and gas companies to fund her party.

"The environmental issues are issues that I don't think Albertans have really thought about a lot," Clark said last week when safely back in B.C.

Given that Clark was trying to extract big money from the corporate executives attending her dinner, I somehow doubt that she also told Murray and his fellow Albertans that they are environmental pariahs who should pack up their expensive oil sands pipeline plans.

EnCana's $395,000 cash pipeline to BC Libs

But don't think that Clark doesn't have already her hand deep in the pockets of big oil and gas anyway.

EnCana Corporation alone has donated an amazing $396,000 since 2009, including contributions to Clark's leadership campaign and that of her rival George Abbott, the former education minister, according to Elections BC records.

EnCana's ex-CEO Gwyn Morgan was also a key Clark transition team member when Clark took office in 2011.

Clark's kindly Calgary host Canadian Natural Resources Limited has given the B.C. Liberal Party $61,000 since 2009, while Imperial Oil has donated more than $40,000, Chevron over $20,000, Conoco Philips over $14,000, Nexen over $12,000.

Enbridge's dicey investment in Clark

Enbridge itself has given over $40,000 to the B.C. Liberals -- but might put a stop payment order on any other donations.

If Clark was hoping that describing Alberta as a place where the environment is no big deal would improve her disastrous relationship with Premier Alison Redford, think again.

"It's absolutely not a fair statement," Redford responded Thursday. "Albertans are very proud of the fact that we have always been able to balance economic development and social and environmental sustainability."

"I believe that Albertans are very proud of... what our record has been, and I'm disappointed to hear those comments," Redford said.

But none of that likely bothered Clark's fundraising host Murray Edwards, who is also co-owner of the Calgary Flames hockey team and has been described as possibly having more at stake in the oil sands than any other individual in the world.

The CNRL board chaired by Edwards includes two former premiers, Manitoba's Gary Filmon and New Brunswick's Frank McKenna.

But perhaps the most unusual fact about Edwards is that despite being an oil patch baron, he is also well known as a federal Liberal -- as is Clark.

And Edwards likely isn't too choked about the fate of the Enbridge pipeline, as he publicly stated nearly two years ago that it faces very long odds against being built because of environmental and First Nations objections.

"For barrels to go off the west coast to China, I think that is a very, very difficult file," Murray said at a business forum in Nov. 2010. "If it's taken us decades to come to any consensus on a Mackenzie pipeline, the west coast pipeline will be just as challenging."

Perhaps that's why Clark knew that with Murray as her Petroleum Club host, she was in safe hands regardless of what she was telling the media about her opposition to Enbridge and thumbing her nose at Redford.

Oily hypocrisy

It may also be why Clark sang Edwards' praises in her speech to the School of Public Policy at the University of Calgary when she spoke there last week.

"So I'll give you one example. Murray Edwards, who is a great Calgarian, owns 45 per cent of the Red Chris mine. It's in the northwest of British Columbia. It's one of the top mining deposits anywhere in the world," Clark told students.

"When I became premier, I said I wanted people all around the world to know that you can do business successfully in British Columbia. You can work your way through the public policy issues, the First Nations issues and that you can make a profit if you come to our province."

"So we've been working really hard to take the Red Chris mine, which has been an idea for longer than it's been a fact, and help it get to fruition because resource development is what powers our province too. It's what puts people to work, and it's what funds health care and education and all the things that we care about."

"A significant part of our progress in British Columbia comes from people like Murray Edwards, it comes from investors and people who are located right here in Calgary."

"So I want to say, as I said to Murray, thank you for that because many of the companies that are invested in the oil sands are also invested in gas and mining in our province -- companies like Shell, Apache, Nexen and Trans Canada.

"And, of course, EnCana, which I just talked about, that has emerged as one of the most important investors in our province, an early believer in what we could do with natural gas," Clark said.

In other words, Clark told them: don't listen to what I tell the public, listen to what I tell you -- and I say write my party a very, very large cheque!

After all, it's money and not oil that greases the political wheel.

'Most desperate politician in Canada'

But it's no wonder that Calgary Herald columnist Don Braid was astonished by Clark's behavior last week during her visit to Alberta, including the premier describing the benefits of the $5 billion Enbridge pipeline as "chump change" compared to B.C.'s plans for liquefied natural gas.

"She is, by a wide measure, the most inconsistent, self-contradictory and desperate politician in Canada," Braid wrote, also describing her as a "peculiar unelected premier, who can seem perfectly normal for about five minutes."

And that's after just a two days of trying to follow Christy Clark's twisted logic. Imagine how British Columbians will feel next spring after two years of it.

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Omar Khadr case a travesty of justice - child soldier need help, not more harm but Conservatives using him for political gain

Canada's Omar Khadr Is No 'War Criminal' - he is a child soldier and need rehabilitation, not more punishment

Omar Khadr breaks down during Guantanamo interrogation

Omar Khadr

He's a former child soldier and needs rehabilitation, not further punishment.

Bill Tieleman’s 24 hours/The Tyee column

Tuesday October 2, 2012

By Bill Tieleman

"Omar Khadr is a Canadian citizen and a child soldier whose rights have been summarily denied, despite international law."

- Dr. Samantha Nutt, War Child Canada

Omar Khadr has finally returned from the notorious Guantanamo Bay U.S. prison to Canada, where he needs to be rehabilitated as a former child soldier, not wrongly be called a "war criminal" and further punished.

This travesty of justice is the shameful responsibility of both Canadian and American governments, who used Khadr's tragic case for crass political purposes instead of treating him like other child soldiers around the world.

And yet despite being rightfully criticized by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, War Child Canada and other human rights organizations over this case, the Conservative government is still intent on making Khadr's miserable life even worse.

Toronto-born Khadr needs maximum rehabilitation, not maximum-security incarceration in Ontario's Millhaven prison.

So here are the facts, rather than ongoing Tory spin.

Khadr was a 15-year-old Canadian citizen pressed into the role of child soldier in Afghanistan by his father, al-Qaeda member Ahmed Said Khadr, to fight U.S., British Canadian and other nations' troops in Afghanistan after the Taliban were deposed in 2001.

Khadr was severely wounded and captured in a July 2002 firefight with U.S. troops, and held responsible for the death of U.S. Army Sgt. Christopher Speer.

Conservative Public Safety Minister Vic Toews described Khadr Saturday as a "known supporter of the al-Qaeda terrorist network and a convicted terrorist."

Regardless of Khadr's actions in battle, he meets all criteria to be recognized as a child soldier -- not a willing combatant or "terrorist."

Read the law

As Amnesty International states: "International law prohibits the participation in armed conflict of children aged under 18."

Both Canada and the United States have signed and ratified the "Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the Involvement of Children in armed conflict" which was adopted by the United Nations in 2000 and which prohibits children under the age of 18 from being used in hostilities for any purpose.

But while Khadr's case is a textbook example of a child soldier, both Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper and before that former Liberal prime ministers Paul Martin and Jean Chretien refused to meet our international obligations.

Amnesty's Canadian secretary-general Alex Neve doesn't mince words about the role of the Canadian government.

"Canada's role has been a disgrace. Three prime ministers, representing two different political parties and presiding over five different governments, could have taken action," Neve wrote in July.

Retired Canadian general Romeo Dallaire, former commander of the United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda, also denounced Khadr's treatment in prison in Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba:

"Despite being a juvenile, Khadr was incarcerated with adult inmates and subjected to unlawful interrogation techniques that created a serious risk of physical and psychological harm," Dallaire co-wrote in a 2010 article with Ishmael Beah, a UNICEF representative from Sierra Leone and himself a rehabilitated former child soldier.

"It was under these conditions, and with no legal representation, that his self-incriminatory confessions were elicited and will be used as evidence in his Guantanamo Bay trial," they said.

"In the past eight years of detention, he has faced cruel and inhumane treatment, including the threat of rape, physical and psychological abuse, possibly torture, and survived over three years of solitary confinement," Dallaire and Beah noted.

And an Amnesty report to the United Nations last month outlined Canada's sad role.

"Canadian courts, including the Supreme Court of Canada, have ruled that Canadian officials were complicit in the violation of Omar Khadr's rights by virtue of a number of interrogation sessions he was subjected to by Canadian officials at Guantánamo Bay in circumstances where the ongoing violation of his rights there were allegedly apparent," the report stated.

Closing time

Harper's government did everything it could to abandon Khadr in Guantanamo, accepting his repatriation to Canada only under U.S. pressure.

"Obviously the Americans are closing down the prison and wanted to send him back," Foreign Minister John Baird said Sunday on CTV. "He's a Canadian citizen, he has the right to come back. We didn't have much of a choice... and he's back."

Khadr's lawyer John Norris says his client is eligible for parole as soon as summer of 2013 and that Canadians should not be worried about his release.

"We're at a loss to understand why the government continues to demonize Omar and to stoke public opinion against him," said Norris.

That's easy -- demonizing appeals to some Conservative voters.

Tweeting hypocrisy

Ironically, while successive governments abandoned Khadr, Canadian politicians have been keen to be seen opposing the use of child soldiers.

When the "Kony 2012" video documenting the savage use of child soldiers in Uganda by Joseph Kony's Lord’s Resistance Army when viral, eventually attracting over 92 million views on YouTube, Baird was quick to hit Twitter with his support.

"I am deeply troubled by the LRA's systematic abduction of children to wage its campaign of terror. #stopkony," Baird tweeted in March of this year.

It appears that Baird's opposition to the use of child soldiers stops where his ministerial responsibility starts -- with Omar Khadr.

But the world has recognized that all child soldiers are the pawns of adults, evilly used to carry out terrible, often unthinkable atrocities that scar them forever.

Khadr may or may not still harbour views that are abhorrent to Canadians -- and having been confined and abused in Guantanamo prison would likely make anyone twisted.

But Canada's moral and legal obligation is to help Khadr leave his child soldier past behind and do its best to let this troubled young man have a chance to lead a peaceful, productive life.

Even war-torn countries in Africa have shown that child soldiers can be rehabilitated to lead normal lives. Why should Canada not be able do the same?

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David Suzuki keynote speaker to Independent Power Producers - will he invite backlash?

Why was David Suzuki, the noted environmentalist and TV celebrity, having lunch at Bistro Pastis in Kitsilano with Paul Kariya, the head of the Independent Power Producers' organization now known as "Clean Energy BC", on Friday September 28?

David Suzuki

That's what I wondered and the answer wasn't hard to find - Suzuki is - rather astonishingly - the keynote speaker at Clean Energy BC's high priced "Generate 2012" conference October 27-30.

While IPPs have been roundly denounced by many environmental organizations as damaging to the environment despite claims of being "green" by the private companies that run them, Suzuki has been mostly absent from that debate.

The issue has been controversial within the environmental movement, with some arguing that IPPs are a good option - Tzeporah Berman created a group called "Power Up" to promote such projects - while others, most notably the Wilderness Committee, opposing them strongly over the degradation that has resulted to BC rivers, streams and waterways and the lack of local control over their construction. 

Without pre-judging what Suzuki will tell the IPP companies, his mere presence adds legitimacy to their cause - now under significant pressure as the Christy Clark BC Liberal government loses the fascination with IPPs that ex-Premier Gordon Campbell had.

Under Campbell's administration IPPs were given almost sole responsibility for new power generation, with publicly-owned BC Hydro prohibited from any new projects. 

That "liquid goldrush" made millions for IPP owners, who signed lucrative long-term contracts with BC Hydro to provide electricity at rates up to dozens of times more expensive than the Crown corporation's own hydroelectric dam system.

BC is now on the hook for over $50 billion in electricity contracts with IPPs!

Suzuki has been a lightning rod for the federal Conservative government - to the extent that he announced his departure from the group he co-founded - the David Suzuki Foundation - after attacks on its funding and charitable status.  

And Berman recently left Greenpeace for similar reasons.

Perhaps that's why in Suzuki's conversation with Kariya the words "fundraising" and "Tzeporah Berman" came up.

Certainly those attending the $1,075 per member/$1,275 non-member conference price have some money in their pockets.

I might ask him but given his past behaviour towards me, that's unlikely to be productive!

UPDATE MONDAY NIGHT:

Some comments to me and on Facebook have suggested I wait to see what David Suzuki says to the Clean Energy BC conference before making judgement.  I have two responses: 

1) Suzuki is almost surely being paid a big fee for speaking - and even if not, he won't be there to denounce their bad habits, because:

2) You can tell where this is going from Tweets from the David Suzuki Foundation's Ian Bruce - their "climate change and clean energy Team Lead":

Ian Bruce on Twitter:

"Wanna know the most under reported story on BC's economy? (1/3)

BC's clean energy sector now employs 9000 people /w avg salary of $77k (2/3)

BC cleantech sales increased a whopping 48% between 2008 & 2010. Awesome! (3/3)"


Looks like a "clean sweep" on what Suzuki will tell the IPP crowd.

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