How Much is Too Much in Political Donations?
The 2015 political donations were out this week and they contained some numbers that should cause a bit of unease. It’s not just the amounts that are of interest, it’s the running totals as well.
Since 2005, the B.C. Liberal party has raised more than $107.8 million, $70.2 million of it from businesses and corporations.
The B.C. NDP, $55.9 million, with $38 million coming from individuals and $11.6 million from unions.
The Liberal party’s Million Dollar Club has grown.
Five companies and one association have now donated more than $1 million to the party, including EnCana ($1.1 million), the Aquilini Group ($1.2 million) and Teck Resources ($2.3 million).
The party’s top ten donors have given in excess of $11.7 million.
Party executive director Laura Miller gave $2,520 in 2015, Rich Coleman $300 and Premier Christy Clark $0.
Clark has donated $1,400 since 2005, Gordon Campbell $4,750.
The Bank of China gave $388 to the BC Liberal party in 2015. Seven banks topped that up by $799,000 over the past 11-years, including CIBC ($245,410) and TD Bank ($130,440).
B.C. credit unions got into the spirit of giving too, contributing $163,448 to the Liberals and $31,425 to the NDP.
Lobbyists have donated more than $1.1 million to the Liberals, $80,629 to the NDP and $1,000 to the B.C. Green party.
Patrick Kinsella’s empire has given $271,266 to the Liberals, Earnscliffe ($133,000) and Hill & Knowlton ($72,380).
Over seven-years as a MLA, John Les donated $1,964 to the Liberals. In two-years as a lobbyist, he’s given $6,880.
Since 2014, three players in B.C.’s burgeoning LNG industry came through with $94,650 for the Liberals and two with $15,850 for the NDP.
Guess the Liberals got first dibs on building a LNG prosperity fund.
Seven players with a keen eye for public-private partnerships (P3) opportunities donated $310,690.
Ten of the construction companies who do the heavy lifting for the P3 number crunchers donated $674,000, including Ledcor ($257,850), Kiewit ($105,975), PCL ($141,879) and Emil Anderson Construction ($52,910).
Coincidentally, Emil Anderson was awarded a $36 million contract by the B.C. government last month “for the second phase of six-laning on Highway 97 through Kelowna.”
Texas-based Burlington Northern & Santa Fe Railway donated $7,000 to the Liberals in 2015. CN Rail has given $295,760 over 11-years and CP Rail ($136,782).
Twenty-one law firms have given $1.35 million to the Liberals, not including donations from partners and associates.
Fasken Martineau Dumoulin was tops at $356,760.
The developers behind Vancouver’s Trump Tower – the Holborn Group – donated $25,000 to the Liberals last year and its sister company – TA Management – $25,000.
Both companies are part of Malaysian-based TA Global.
Since 2005, property developers have donated more than $10.7 million to the Liberals, including $1.55 million in personal donations or roughly 10 per cent of the party’s total $107.8 million haul.
Here’s a first: the Liberals are accepting donations from casinos.
In 2015, Gateway Casinos gave $67,397 to the Liberals, Great Canadian Gaming $31,468 and River Rock Casino $3,300.
If you’ve got this far, you may want to crack open a cold one and consider that over the last 11-years Canada’s National Brewers gave $153,779 to the Liberals and $35,525 to the NDP, Ontario’s Beer Store $96,974 ($6,670), Labatt $159,366 ($30,550) and Molson $121,257 ($24,225).
The donations of 193 companies and individuals were considered for this column. Together they donated $35.7 million and they’re not the Liberal party’s top 193 donors.
Knock off the 104 smallest and 89 donors gave $31.8 million to the Liberals.
In the same period of time, the Alberta Progressive Conservatives raised $31.75 million from all its donors (corporate, individual and union).
What would B.C. parties be left with if there was a total ban on corporate and union donations?
Over 11-years, the Liberals raised $37.6 million from individuals and the NDP $39.7 million, both more than the Alberta PCs raised in total.
The Liberal party has deposited enough to cover what their Quebec counterpart and its 125 candidates spent in the 2014 election 18 times over.
Quebec has six million voters, nearly double the number in B.C.
Oh, there’s likely still four seats for sale at the premier’s table later this month in Prince George for the party’s annual dinner. They can be had for $25,000 a pair.
Dermod Travis is the executive director of IntegrityBC. www.integritybc.ca
Note: Unless noted all figures in parentheses are for the period 2005 to 2015.
Comments
disgusting
Dermod:”Over 11-years, the Liberals raised $37.6 million from individuals and the NDP $39.7 million,…”
A virtual tie! Quite surprising.
Not incredibly shocking when you consider the BC “Liberals” are all about business and the NDP are about people. What I think is telling is that when you strip away corporate/union donations, on paper, the NDP are the clear choice for the citizens of the Province. That, more than anything, is the tough pill to swallow and further indicates that governments are not working/speaking for the majority of the electorate, but a select few entities.
Without successful businesses people would be permanently in trouble, except perhaps those who are lucky enough to have a job with the government. But even that would not last, because if there are no businesses and just a small workforce to pay taxes and keep the whole thing going. So, we need both business and people who make a decent living. Too bad that there is no middle party which gives respect to both, without straying too far to the left or the right. One can hope that one day reason will prevail and extremes will be reconciled.
This is one of the reasons there is so much corruption in government and it is at a very high level in BC now.
Doesn’t matter what the Party, individual or government is be it local, provincial or federal they all rely on donations to get them elected
Personally I feel that donating to anybody for an elected position should be made illegal and the person/party get in based on their merits not who has the better ads or slander campaign or the most money
I despise politicians of all stripes as much as the next guy but to call this piece a “Submitted Article” is misleading.
It is an article that was submitted, what’s misleading about that?
While there is some obvious bias, the numbers can be confirmed by anyone suspicious of their legitimacy. Just takes a little work.
Misleading somewhat in that the PQ is the major campaign donation winner in Quebec. In 2013 the PQ received over 750,000 in donations compared to the Liberal 250,000. Also unions and corporations are not allowed to donate to provincial campaigns, and the max donation was lowered to 100.00.
In Ontario the provincial Liberals there collected 1.6 million in donations for just a single byelection. Max spending was 142,700 on the byelection so the rest went to their war chest. The provincial Conservatives raised 780,000 for the same byelection and won. The Ontario provincial NDP raised 51,319 for the same byelection in Whitby-Oshawa just a few months ago.
There is but one reason financial donations are made to political parties.
Comments for this article are closed.