B.C.’s wide-open campaign financing rules — they’ve been dubbed the “wild west” of political conduct — came under scrutiny Tuesday as Coquitlam-Burke Mountain MLA candidates faced off against one another in the region’s first all-candidates meeting.
It was one of the more dramatic issues in the 90-minute debate, which saw candidates spar over the Site C dam, affordable housing and transit. At one point, the debate became so heated that the moderator of the Tri-Cities Chamber of Commerce event had to step in and ask candidates not to speak over each other.
BC Liberal candidate Joan Isaacs said her party’s publication of political donations — which it calls “real time” but is actually delayed — and promise of an independent review were examples of efforts to reform political campaign financing, and she defended donations as reasonable in a democratic society.
“People that are donating to a party donate because they want to donate to that party because it matches their core values,” Isaacs said. “They want to see that party in power, they want to see their money go to that campaign.”
But her defence of campaign financing didn’t sit well with either the incumbent, BC NDP candidate Jodie Wickens, whose party has promised to ban union and corporate donations, or Ian Soutar, the BC Green Party flag bearer, whose party has already banned them.
“This is not something that we need to wait until after an election,” Soutar argued.
He was also skeptical as to why the BC Liberals waited until the lead-up to the 2017 election to consider reform.
Meanwhile the strongest criticism of current campaign financing rules came from the NDP’s Wickens, who slammed the BC Liberal government for permitting big donations, saying people are “disillusioned” about politics as a result.
“We’ve tabled the bill six times — the BC Liberals could call that bill if they wanted to [but] they chose not to,” Wickens said. “They like the rules as they exist because it works for them and their big money donors.”
But her comments were dismissed by Isaacs, who asked why “Mr. Horgan just took $672,000 from a U.S. union.”
“You do not unilaterally disarm,” Wickens fired back. “This election is important. You do not fight an election with one hand tied behind your back.”
“It sounds like we could use a lot more collaboration in Victoria,” said Soutar. “You can guarantee the Greens will be pulling from both sides — there’s good ideas here there’s good ideas there — let’s make the happen instead of just pointing fingers at whose fault it is that we’re in this crazy wild west that we are,” he said to enthusiastic response.
