Editor: Re: Corporate political donations, as referred to in your stories published Nov. 27 and 29.
Here is an exercise question for a law faculty class: Company A and B donate big dollars to political party L, expecting to influence market protection in return. Company C donates more dollars lately to party L and C’s president offers gifts at a fundraiser, to influence L’s minister. Political party L’s minister returns the favour and grants company C its increased production tax relief. Is there any malfeasance?
It looks like Big Beer thought some $327,000 in the last decade should be plenty to persuade our liquor policy minister, Deputy Premier Rich Coleman, to make the right decision and protect their market status. Maybe when you’ve been in power so long, you can’t remember all the really big donors.
With the two big breweries in B.C. donating generously in the last five years — Molson gave $60,308 and Labatt gave $65,666 (for a combined total $125,974) to the BC Liberals — the politicians are expected to play the quid pro quo game with complementary reciprocation.
The medium-sized brewery, Pacific Western from Prince George, with its low-priced Cariboo beer, knew it would need some big production tax relief favours too. It has slipped the Liberals $134,033 since 2005. It would be rewarded by Coleman’s penchant to seek votes from all the small brewers, and benefit in the multi-millions.
This would all have gone unnoticed, except that brewery president Kazuko Komatsu gave a donation to Coleman’s Nov. 8 political fundraiser, which featured complimentary Cariboo brand beer, and donated an auction prize of two one-week stays at a Bahamas resort, worth $27,000.
After Coleman gets embarrassed accepting the gift, he tries to slough it off, saying he returned it and should have checked that party donations were not solicited from those doing current business with his ministry.
Did he not know he was doing business with Pacific Western Brewery, when he was working on changes to the law to accommodate them? How is this not political skulduggery, or at least brazen deception?
Big Beer was contacting other Liberal MLAs, trying to get Coleman’s favourable Pacific Western decision reversed. Hey, they put their trust in the Liberal politicians and they got screwed. Now they know how the rest of us overtaxed debt-inflicted victims feel.
This is why there is much to be said about the federal electoral system, where corporations and unions are not allowed to make political donations.
Roland Seguin,
Langley
