In the latest controversial use of caucus funds, the BC Liberal party has targeted every postal code in NDP MLA Rick Glumac’s Tri-Cities riding, delivering partisan postcards urging constituents to put pressure on premier John Horgan to lower the provincial gasoline taxes.
“Are you paying to much for gas?” reads one side of the card, “Contact your MLA Rick Glumac to tell his boss, John Horgan, to lower your taxes,” reads the other. Nowhere on the card does it say it was paid for by the BC Liberal party.
The ad targeting Glumac is the latest salvo in a wider BC Liberal campaign to blame Horgan for record gas prices. Last week, several digital billboards along commuter routes across the Lower Mainland read “Gas prices?” and “Spending more to commute?” followed by “Blame John Horgan.”
“These are so-called free-market politicians who should understand the basic concepts of supply and demand,” Horgan fired back in a recent interview with The Tri-City News. “We don't have enough gasoline and that's why the prices are going up.”
Horgan has appointed his deputy minister to explore regulatory options for relief and asked the B.C. Utilities Commission to investigate why gasoline in Metro Vancouver and Vancouver Island is so much more expensive than the rest of the country. But he also noted the government's carbon tax increase this year only added one cent per litre to the cost of gas.
Gasoline prices in the Lower Mainland have reached record levels over the last couple of months and continue to hover over $1.70 per litre at several gas stations in Coquitlam.
In an email to The Tri-City News, BC Liberal spokesperson Carlie Pochynok confirmed the ads came from the party’s caucus funds, adding that Glumac was targeted this time around because of the controversy surrounding the speculation tax in Belcarra, which lies in the MLA’s riding.
“We wanted to give him another chance to stand up for his communities who are paying the highest gas prices in North America thanks to the inaction of his government,” wrote Pochynok.
BC Green party leader Andrew Weaver has come out strongly against the use of caucus funds for partisan ads, and says the Port Moody-Coquitlam ad campaign is symptomatic of a wider problem.
“This is the kind of crap that comes out when you desperately try to preserve the status quo and all you care about is a quest for power instead of public policy,” he said.
Despite a campaign promise do away with partisan attack ads, in March, the BC NDP party was called out for a series of radio ads slamming BC Liberal leader Andrew Wilkinson for working for the richest two per cent.
“The Liberals have responded by saying, ‘Oh, the flood gates have opened,’ and they've just taken it to a whole new level,” said Weaver.
Received in the mail this morning. No indication of who paid for it. #bcliberals ? Gas companies? @RickGlumacBC to mine for emails? #bcpoli pic.twitter.com/65lpDoYaX5
— Ramona Chu (@AhChu) May 10, 2019
Shortly after the radio ads aired, Weaver said he raised his concerns with Horgan in one of their weekly Wednesday meetings and received assurances that it wouldn’t happen again.
Weaver is now calling for a firewall between caucus funds and partisan ads, and has dispatched Green house leader Sonya Furstenau to take the issue to the Legislative Assembly Management Committee, the body that overseas the legislature’s finances.
But the committee is made up of representatives from all three parties, and if coming to a consensus on the limits of caucus fund spending wasn’t hard enough, the committee — and the legislature as a whole — is also preoccupied with the fallout from the spending scandal involving the legislature’s former sergeant-at-arms and clerk, as well as the ongoing revelations around money laundering.
All the more reason, said Weaver, for the three parties to boost transparency around partisan spending before the public’s confidence dips even lower.
“We're in positions of authority and we've been given the privilege of operating with funds that the taxpayer provided us and it behoves us to be responsible in the use of those funds,” he said.
— With files from The Canadian Press
@StefanLabbe
