A reporter has discovered that a few days after Langford Council passed the interchange financing bylaws at the now infamous unadvertised December 27th meeting, and started the process to borrow up to $25 million dollars without public approval, the Bear Mountain Master Partnership made a sizable donation to the BC Liberal party. Monday reporter Jason Youmans discovered that $38,329 has been donated to the BC Liberals by Bear Mountain and that fully 65% of that ($25,000) was donated on Dec. 31st, four days after Langford passed two bylaws that relate in no small way to Bear Mountain.
This is all the stranger given Transportation Minister Kevin Falcon was quoted in the legislature a year and a half earlier, regarding what was at that time called the Bear Mountain Interchange, saying the following:
The interchange largely benefits the developer. They’re creating all the traffic as a result
of their development. Therefore, they would like to see an interchange, and therefore,
most of the benefit will go to the developer….We will require the developer to pay most,
if not all, of the costs.
You know, they’ll make all the arguments — right? “Gee, it creates all this great
economic development. Taxpayers should get into this,” and blah, blah, blah. I remind
them that this is not a government that’s in the business of subsidizing business and that
we will look at every project on this basis: is there a benefit for the Trans-Canada?
Whatever the motivations for the Bear Mountain Master Partnership in donating sizable sums to the BC Liberals during that timeframe, it wasn’t because of how well they were getting along in public. Whatever the reasons, the optics look very bad indeed when you have City Hall rushing through a pair of bylaws at an unadvertised meeting, passing those bylaws on to the province for approval, and then having the developers that “the interchange largely benefits” making a sizable donation to the party in power whose Ministry then has to give final approval to the project.
The bottom line: if it was an innocent donation, then the timing was not well considered; if the donation was not innocent in its intent, then it raises serious questions.
- Steven Hurdle -
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Monday Magazine, April 16
A mountain of politi-cash
Bear Mountain critics have lately been decrying the apparent absence of provincial oversight, both in environmental stewardship of the sensitive ecosystem on which the resort community was built, and in monitoring the political machinations the have ensured its expansion.
Monday couldn’t help but wonder what the price tag is on a blind eye from the province.
A quick scan of the Elections BC political contributions system shows that Read the rest of this entry »
