Files for BC's Attorney General (and probably future BC NDP LEADER) David Eby July 18, 2017

Maybe David Eby could open up an inquiry into the sale of BC Rail, eh!

I wonder how many people would go to jail over that one.

http://thebreaker.news/miscellany/premiers-proxies/

http://www.straight.com/news/940886/sarah-leamon-how-can-icbc-be-saved-f...

If they were to do this, the BC NDP would be both playing games, and making a huge mistake.

Ban on big money in politics could be delayed by lobby reform: BC NDP

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/british-columbia/ban-on-big-money-i...

http://www.straight.com/news/942631/gabriel-yiu-fixing-icbc

How stupid does Andrew Wilkinson think BCers are, eh!

Good: Cut NDP some slack as it navigates minefields

Well it didn’t take long for silly season to start in Victoria.

A report commissioned by ICBC is leaked and warns that B.C. drivers will be hit by rate hikes of almost 30 per cent in the next two years if the government doesn’t dramatically overhaul the insurance corporation.

Immediately Liberal critic Andrew Wilkinson demands the NDP come clean on its plans for ICBC.

If ICBC is a mess, the Liberals have to wear it. They were in power for 16 years. It’s their mess. Surely we can give the new government a few weeks, or months to figure out what to do.

http://www.nsnews.com/opinion/columnists/good-cut-ndp-some-slack-as-it-n...

David Eby if he isn't already will become an NDP super star

Let's hope this dick's driving career is put on hold for several years before he end up killing someone and himself

https://www.straight.com/news/954136/west-vancouver-man-charged-excessiv...

Tight Timelines for Electoral Reform Referendum Don’t Worry Greens, NDP

But supporter of change fears rush to hold vote next fall could guarantee failure.

https://thetyee.ca/News/2017/09/13/Tight-Timelines-Electoral-Reform-Refe...

Survey says: This is the gold standard

Conclusion

Based on the results of our cross-Canada analysis and our supporter survey, Dogwood has developed a bullet point list of what we think Ban Big Money legislation should look like. After years of being silenced by Big Money, British Columbians won’t settle for anything less than the gold standard. This is the standard we will use to measure any campaign finance laws that are introduced.

HERE IS A SHORT SUMMARY OF OUR RECOMMENDATIONS:

• Limit on individual contributions: less than $1,000 each year.
• A ban on all anonymous donations.
• Donations should be publicly disclosed in real time.
• In-kind donations and employee lending should not be allowed.
• British Columbia should reduce the amount of money a political party can spend in each election.
• A fair system of public supplementation of campaign expenses, including the current tax return system, may be allowable.
• Laws should be imposed retroactively back to May 9, 2017.
• The new legislation should include a provision that requires campaign finance laws to be revisited and reviewed every ten years.
• All these laws should also be applied to municipal campaigns and elections.

Please help us ensure Ban Big Money laws are the gold standard.

Sign our petition: www.BanBigMoney.ca

https://dogwoodbc.ca/gold-standard/

Why did they choose Eby's office?

Attorney General David Eby's constituency office occupied by opponents of fish farms

https://www.straight.com/news/967771/attorney-general-david-ebys-constit...

Bill Bell shared Bowinn Ma's post.

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The biggest cost to taxpayers of the current electoral system are the costs of a legislative and public spending agenda that is distorted by big donors.

I'm proud of your Government's new bill to ban corporate, union, and out of province donations and limit individual donations to $1200 -- the second lowest cap in the country and the absolute lowest cap for a province with no permanent public subsidy system in place.

The critics can go ahead and criticize -- the fact of the matter is that when this bill is passed, it will put an end to the "Wild West" of BC electoral financing once and for all and forever ensure that voters, not people and corporations with the deepest pockets, decide who wins elections.

Regardless, this warms my heart and every bit helps

Liberals Big Losers, NDP and Greens Winners in Political Finance Reform

Horgan defends party subsidies as ‘modest cost’ during transition to new system.

https://thetyee.ca/News/2017/09/20/Political-Finance-Reform/

http://thebreaker.news/news/icbc-info-share/

BC Liberals Complain New Cap on Big Money Donations is Unfair to the BC Liberals

https://www.pressprogress.ca/bc_liberals_complain_new_cap_on_big_money_d...

This is another serious transgression for the Wilkinson-led BC Liberals. What was Wilkinson's role in Clark's Cabinet?  Oh, yea, Wilkinson served as the Attorney General from June 12, 2017 to July 18, 2017. And what did he do about money -laundering? The silence is deafening!!!

'Suspicious' B.C. casino-cash transactions plummeted in February: Eby

B.C. Attorney General David Eby, pictured in February, told a House of Commons committee on Tuesday that that suspicious transactions to B.C. casinos had fallen to $200,000 in February from a high of $20 million in July 2015. 

In a presentation Tuesday to the House of Commons standing committee on finance, which is receiving input on amendments to the Proceeds of Crime and Terrorist Financing Act, Eby said that suspicious transactions to B.C. casinos had fallen to $200,000 in February from a high of $20 million in July 2015.

“We have reduced it by a factor of 100,” said Eby.

Following the peak in 2015, about $5 million a month in suspicious transactions were recorded, amounting to hundreds of millions of suspicious cash flowing through casinos, he said.

Not all of the money in the suspicious transactions was necessarily the proceeds of crime, noted Eby.

The drop occurred following changes introduced in January that put tighter restrictions on cash flowing into casinos and beefed up regulatory oversight around the clock at the biggest casinos.

Eby told the federal committee, however, that he didn’t believe the initial changes had solved the problem.

“I believe that money has moved elsewhere, and I also believe we have a concern that needs to be dealt with bank drafts,” he said.

As part of its rolling investigation into money laundering in casinos, Postmedia earlier reported that B.C.’s gaming enforcement branch is concerned that many bank drafts, which can be used to fund patron gaming accounts for high-stakes gamblers, could have suspicious origins.

http://vancouversun.com/news/local-news/suspicious-b-c-casino-cash-trans...

I agree these ads should not be happening 

http://thebreaker.news/news/ndp-icbc-ad-waste/

Pipeline polls are for fake news trolls

Perhaps the only real shocker in those findings is that the opposition to that project remains as strong as it is, given the relentless and massive effort exerted by the establishment in trying to build public buy-in for that filthy turkey of a pipeline.

The entire weight of the national media has been consistently and institutionally marshalled to sell that project to Canadians. Virtually all of the mainstream media is aligned to see that pipeline through, innately conflicted as they are as formal business partners, advertising dependents, and ideological corporate allies-in-arms with the agents of Big Oil.

The overriding media narrative reflected in the latest poll questions and results is a testament to the pervasive power of fake news, disguised as its opposite.

It is the false narrative that the federal government, Alberta, and Canada’s entire business community have all been peddling, in lockstep supplication to a tarsands industry. They all agree it must be grown at all costs, damn us all to hell, whatever the risks and costs.

It is the dishonest narrative that patronizingly discounts Indigenous rights and title, provincial autonomy, and the need for serious climate action and risk-avoidant environmental protection.

All of which are fundamentally incompatible with that “last hope” for a pipeline to tidewater. Which is aimed only at exporting greater volumes of Canada’s unrefined heavy crude at higher prices to more foreign markets, to yield higher profits for Big Oil, and to produce short-term economic and fiscal benefits to Alberta, Saskatchewan, and federal government coffers.

From Day One, those who have been opposed to that project and to its fundamental vision for increased dependency on fossil-fueled growth have effectively been cast as “enemies” of Canada.

“Led” by our duplicitous prime minister and by Alberta politicians all trying to do outdo each other in defending that absurd vision as “sustainable” development, the national media have dutifully carried that tattered banner forward as Canada’s flag to wave and advance at all costs.

As such, Kinder Morgan has effectively “owned” Canada’s asserted “national interest” as its ultimate argument.

It is in furtherance of that goal, we are told, that British Columbia is having that pipeline shoved down its throat, newly muscled by the Trudeau government, as a “core interest” of Canada.

Greenpeace activists recently mocked Justin Trudeau outside Canada House in London, England.

GREENPEACE U.K.

B.C.’s duly elected minority government has been cast as the villain in the piece, in no small measure because it has thus far been so reticent to play the part or fight back as need be on a political level.

Essentially, it has been defined by the politicians and the mainstream media as an anti-Canadian “law breaker” that is standing in the way of “progress” and frustrating the national interest by dint of it actions.

As if challenging federal government decisions and processes in court is a crime itself.

As if seeking legal clarity from the courts on the nature of B.C.’s constitutional authority in regulating environmental protection is an unlawful act. One that is justifiably “punishable” by unlawful wine wars, by unspecified federal government “sanctions”, and by threatened oil embargoes that are expressly prohibited by Canada’s highest law.

As if standing in solidarity with Indigenous peoples in court—in defence of their constitutional rights and title, and in honouring Canada’s international commitments to their human rights and to the imperative for reconciliation—is somehow a “radical” affront to the fabric of Confederation and to the “rule of law”.

Such is the context within which Angus Reid’s latest poll has been conducted, fresh off the first ministers’ meeting last Sunday wherein Horgan was told once again that his efforts at environmental protection in this pipeline debate are futile.

Ottawa will see to that, assuming Kinder Morgan’s capital risk as necessary by deploying untold billions of taxpayers’ dollars as unconscionable public risk capital to finance that entity’s assured profits. In addition to whatever legislative and constitutional authority the federal government plans to pass and invoke to build that pipeline, come what may. 

We have seen this movie before. Spoiler alert: it doesn’t end well.

To be sure, the Horgan administration has done little thus far to make its own case to Canadians. Save and except the premier’s periodic responses to his critics in Edmonton and Ottawa, in mostly asserting B.C.’s right to protect its coastal communities from oil spills

Without a determined paid media countercampaign, or any semblance of a strategically determined political effort to explain his government’s purpose, legal rationale, and environmental imperatives, it is not surprising that Horgan’s NDP government is thus far losing the public relations contest.

Or so it would seem from the latest public opinion research.

It suggests that the prevailing narrative on the pipeline is the one being defined and successfully driven by its proponents. An entirely predictable outcome, without an emotionally compelling and factually convincing public information campaign to elevate public awareness and understanding of the many issues and risks that should be of material concern to all Canadians.

John Horgan's NDP government has not countered the publicity campaign being mounted by Big Oil and the Alberta and federal governments, and their allies in the media.

Horgan’s measured tone and commendable restraint in fighting back in the face of all forms of provocation are simply insufficient to win the political war, which he has allowed himself to have been defined as unreasonably starting and perpetuating.

I am hoping that will change with Attorney General David Eby now being cast in the role of the premier’s top general in prosecuting B.C.’s case on Kinder Morgan.

He is no pushover in any sense—politically, intellectually, or legalistically. He is a force to be reckoned with, who is not known for turning or turtling.

Earnest and committed as Environment and Climate Change Strategy Minister George Heyman is, the guy who is most adept at bloodied combat is Eby. With him now leading the frontline fight for B.C., the tide may finally begin to turn in his government’s favour.

Above all, the polls suggest that simply standing one’s ground is not a prescription for political success when the attacks are coming from all sides and from above—and even from within B.C. 

As I have previously written, it is especially galling that public institutions that are technically entities of the B.C. government are using taxpayers’ money to sit as members of organizations like the Business Council of B.C., which are shills for B.C.’s oil and gas industry.

It is outrageous that entities like public universities and various Crown corporations pay expensive annual membership dues to sit on the BCBC–including serving as members of its governing bodies—while it holds politically charged news conferences declaring its fundamental opposition to the B.C. government’s legal efforts to serve all B.C. citizens.

That practice should be stopped, forthwith, by those entities, ideally, or if necessary, by provincial government policy.

It is equally offensive that the B.C. Liberals are now standing with Alberta, Saskatchewan, and the federal government against B.C.’s efforts to guard against heavy oil spills by fully exercising the province’s constitutional jurisdiction to regulate in that regard.

In my view, that lack of solidarity with the provincial government in safeguarding its constitutional authority is fundamentally anti–British Columbian, given the broader jurisdictional implications of the legal questions at issue.

The counteroffensive, if there is to be one, will surely kick off when Eby files B.C.’s reference case, which he announced will be done by April 30.

The Supreme of Canada’s new ruling is enormously important in that regard.

It upheld the rights of provinces to regulate interprovincial trade within their borders in ways aimed at serving legitimate constitutionally allowable purposes, such as strengthening environmental protection.

The key is that any such measures that might indirectly restrict the flow of goods cannot be actually aimed at restricting interprovincial trade as such, including by imposing costs on goods aimed at that purpose.

Yet, B.C.’s reference is not about establishing a right to restrict the interprovincial trade of oil, per se.

Rather, it is about ensuring that the flow of diluted bitumen through B.C. is done in a way to minimize oil spill risks and to ensure sufficient cleanup, remediation, and compensation safeguards are in place to facilitate the transportation of heavy oil in the interests of B.C.’s environment, economy, and communities.

The constitutional question(s) he puts to the B.C. Court of Appeal, and his arguments to have them favourably answered, will demand a major public information effort. One that might also help to inform pollsters about the nature of B.C.’s claims and the courts in which they are being addressed.

How do they feel about the lost tourism revenues, or about the economic damage that would be done to B.C.’s “super, natural” brand by any spill of serious consequence?

How do they feel about the potential fire- and health-safety risks posed by a spill on Burnaby Mountain near SFU or elsewhere? Or the lack of emergency protection to respond to any serious event?

How might they feel if they knew that, contrary to what Alberta premier Rachel Notley falsely asserted, there have been spills from double-hulled oil tankers? The recent Sanchi oil spill in the East China Sea puts the lie to her claim and puts the Kinder Morgan project in a very different light.

None of those issues were included in the list of choices that asked people, “Which one of these potential risks or dangers would you say you personally are MOST concerned about?”

Those risks did itemize “oil spills/tanker accidents, overall environmental/fossil fuels, pipeline leaks/breaches, tanker traffic detracting from natural beauty, pipeline construction impact, and none of these”. All in a general sense.

The risk of oils spills/tanker accidents was deemed most important by British Columbians, at 52 percent.

https://www.straight.com/news/1061011/martyn-brown-pipeline-polls-are-fake-news-trolls

http://vancouversun.com/news/politics/government-introduces-legislation-to-reform-icbc

Good. 

For once it will get the support it merits as opposed to the right-wingers blocking it since Day 1

http://vancouversun.com/opinion/columnists/vaughn-palmer-4

AFTER THOUGHT: ALL EYES ON DAVID EBY AS B.C. REVIEWS MONEY LAUNDERING REPORT

THE ATTORNEY GENERAL IS POISED TO CREATE POLICIES THAT WILL DETER MONEY LAUNDERING IN B.C. CASINOS

http://runnermag.ca/2018/04/after-thought-all-eyes-on-david-eby-as-b-c-r...