Court rules against Socred government in decades-old dispute
Ex-premier calls judgment in favour of water company ‘very strange’
Former B.C. premier Bill Vander Zalm and members of the 1980s Social Credit government committed “misfeasance in public office” in their dealings with a B.C. water export company, a B.C. Supreme Court judge said this week in a ruling on a decades-old case.
A civil suit filed by Rain Coast Water Corp. claimed the company experienced “mistreatment by the Government of British Columbia through actions of Premier Vander Zalm, several Cabinet Ministers and a number of civil servants,” in the 1980s and early 1990s, according to reasons for judgment handed down Thursday. Rain Coast, which was originally called Coast Mountain Aquasource and incorporated in 1983 by B.C. businessman Colin Beach, had applied for licences to export water in bulk from B.C. to California.
Rain Coast’s lawsuit alleged the government of the day gave a rival company, Western Canada Water (WCW), “preferential treatment in an unlawful manner.”
In Thursday’s decision, Justice Peter Leask wrote the “initial selection of WCW was a clear example of giving favourable treatment to one competitor at the expense of others, including the plaintiff, and against the public interest.”
The original writ was filed in 1996. Reached for comment Thursday, Beach said that after nearly 20 years of involvement in the case, “Some people have called it a battle, but maybe it’s better to call it a war.”
The tort of misfeasance in public office, also referred to as abuse of power, has been on the legal radar in Canada since the 1950s, but “far more claims fail than succeed,” according to a 2007 report by Lisa A. Peters, head of the research department at Vancouver-based law firm Lawson Lundell. The matter went to trial in 2012, with lawyer George Douvelos representing Rain Coast. Prior to the trial, Leask dealt with the cancellation of the plaintiff’s foreshore licence at a summary trial, finding the government had cancelled the licence unlawfully.
In Thursday’s decision, Leask detailed the events surrounding the government’s cancellation of Rain Coast’s licence, and described the procedure as “Kafkaesque.”
“I am satisfied the behaviour described above amounted to ‘reckless indifference or willful blindness to the lack of statutory authority for the Act,’ ” Leask wrote.
Vander Zalm said Thursday he thought the judgment was “very strange.” The decisions at issue in the suit, he said, were made by cabinet, and not by him.
“I don’t know why I get to wear it, but it’s the cabinet that decided,” said the ex-premier. “Not having read the material, not being familiar, not having been (in court), I don’t know exactly what the judge ruled on, or how he ruled, or why he ruled as he did.”
In an emailed statement, a justice ministry official said: “We just received the decision of the court. We are still in the process of analyzing the decision and considering options.”
Regarding damages, the judge has not yet decided on the amount the plaintiff is entitled to recover, and will ask both sides to make further submissions on the subject.