A bill to get big money out of B.C. politics has been dismissed by the governing Liberal party before it even reaches the legislature next month.
B.C. NDP Leader John Horgan said Thursday that his party plans to introduce a bill to ban corporate and union donations for the sixth time since 2005. The previous five private member’s bills failed to receive government support.
“What we’ve seen since 2013 is fundraising by the B.C. Liberals raised to a fine art,” Horgan said, citing an NDP analysis that found 185 donors accounted for half of the more than $12 million raised by the Liberals in 2016.
Horgan said the figures suggest that a small number of wealthy donors have a disproportionate amount of influence over the Liberal government, while average voters face rising electricity costs, car insurance fees and medical premiums.
“[Premier] Christy Clark can change that,” he said. “When we table a new bill at the start of the next session, she can join with me and we can ban it right now.”
Advanced Education Minister Andrew Wilkinson, who was speaking for the government Thursday, made clear that the NDP bill will meet the same fate as its predecessors.
“We’re not heading down the path of banning any kind of donations because we think the public needs to know who is donating and that is the primary issue,” he said.
Wilkinson defended the practice in B.C. that permits individuals and companies to make unlimited donations to political parties.
“Some people and some companies think that it’s a good idea to support good governance and that’s what everybody’s after in this province,” he said. “So the idea that people participate in the political process through political donations is entirely legitimate.
“What we need is transparency and disclosure of where those donations are coming from in a timely basis, and certainly well before the election.”
The Liberals moved last week to begin more regular reporting of political donations, releasing a list of contributors to the party over the past year and in the first days of 2017.
Horgan characterized the Liberals’ move as a “gimmick” to deflect attention away from the party’s reliance on wealthy donors and corporate money. Of the $12 million the Liberals received in 2016, nearly $8 million came from corporations.
“We need to change the law and, apparently, in order to do that, we need to change the government,” he said.
“The B.C. Liberals are not interested based on their success in raising money.
“If I am premier in May of this year, we will ban union and corporate donations and we will put people back at the centre of our politics where they truly belong.” The next provincial election is slated for May 9.
Horgan said the NDP will release the results of its own fundraising efforts after tax receipts are issued at the end of February.
The B.C. Green Party, which banned corporate and union donations to the party in September, issued a statement Thursday criticizing the stance taken by both the Liberals and the NDP.
“The B.C. Liberals are just laughing it off, while the B.C. NDP will only do something about it if they win the election,” said B.C. Green Party Leader Andrew Weaver.
“In the meantime, both of them will accept the same potentially corrupting money that is making B.C. the wild west of politics, even by American standards.”
The Greens announced this week that the party raised $763,667 from 4,034 donors in 2016 — a 93 per cent increase over 2015. The party said 75 per cent of the donors contributed to the Greens after the ban on corporate and union donations in September.
The next session of the legislature is slated to begin on Feb. 14.
