Foreign money poses threat to democracy
B.C. Liberals should beware the donation dilemma Down Under
The storm over foreign political donations is peaking in Australia.
Australian voters are outraged by recent exposes, including an Australian Broadcast Corporation investigation that revealed China-related companies gave more than $5.5 million to Australian politicians.
Australian voters have become disgusted by the fact they live in one of the few advanced countries in the world that allows foreign companies, without restriction, to donate to its political parties.
Australia’s politicians are, in effect, finally facing censure for acting just like another outlier, the B.C. Liberal party, which has also taken in millions of dollars from companies based in Europe, the U.S. and Asia.
Independent B.C. MLA Vicki Huntington (Delta South) refers to B.C.’s practice, which is virtually unheard of in the rest of Canada, as “almost like legalized bribery” and as “a threat to our sovereignty.”
Given the furor Down Under, leading Australian politicians, including Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, have this fall pledged to ban foreign political gifts.
Australian indignation has been exacerbated by news that the powerful owner of a China-based real estate company has complained that wealthy Chinese donors aren’t getting the leverage they should with Australian politicians.
“(They’re) not delivering … We need to learn how to have a more efficient combination between political requests and political donations,” Huang Xiangmo, chairman of the Yuhu Group of developers, wrote in Mandarin in China’s state-run newspaper.
Like others around the globe, Australians have also been reading about the way a bagman for U.S. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump was caught on video preparing to accept a $2-million donation from undercover British journalists posing as representatives of a Chinese billionaire.
Since the U.S. and most democratic nations, including Canada, have made it illegal to accept donations from foreigners, the Telegraph newspaper’s sting exposed just how craven some Western political figures are: promising foreign companies special treatment in exchange for their illicit cash.
Despite international prodemocracy agencies warning against foreign political donations, the B.C. Liberals brazenly go their own way in Canada and rake in large donations from scores of companies rooted in China, Malaysia, the U.S., the U.A.E., Poland and Indonesia.
FOREIGN DONATIONS DRAW SCANT ATTENTION IN B. C.
The issue of foreign political donations draws little public attention on Canada’s West Coast, however.
That’s in contrast to the way Huntington and the NDP’s Gary Holman (Saanich North) and David Eby (Vancouver Point Grey) have been making headway in directing the spotlight onto a related problem: the way the B.C. Liberals permit corporate and union donations.
Although the federal government and most provinces ban corporate and union contributions, the B.C. Liberals in the past decade took in more than $70 million in corporate donations (while the NDP accepted $11 million from unions). More than $12 million was donated to the B.C. Liberals by the real estate sector.
The NDP, the Green party and Huntington have long been pressing to end corporate and union donations in the province, including at the municipal level, where real estate developers donate to politicians who make crucial zoning choices.
And Democracy Watch is also asking the courts to toss out a dubious decision that B.C. conflict of interest commissioner Paul Fraser made in the summer, which allows Premier Christy Clark to prop up her salary by $50,000 a year by speaking at private fundraising events.
Clark often sits down for dinner with intimate groups of wealthy and corporate donors, each of whom has paid at least $10,000 for the chance to sway her views. One media report has revealed that even though the B.C. Liberals are avoiding an autumn sitting of the legislature, it has not stopped the party from holding at least nine fundraising galas this fall.
For their part, Clark and B.C. Liberal cabinet ministers such as Mike de Jong, Rich Coleman, Suzanne Anton and Peter Fassbender consistently deny — and expect voters to believe — that corporate donors do not gain any business advantage at all. None.
Even while some progress is being made in highlighting the downside of corporate and union donations, Huntington acknowledged the public knows little about foreign donations — partly because the transnational money trail is particularly complex.
“It’s hard to prove a foreign donor is directly shaping policy choices. Still, you know the donations are made to influence decision-making. My mind goes to the question of sovereignty,” said Huntington, who added that donations from residents of other provinces should also be forbidden.
“You are not respecting voters when you allow foreign companies to shape local political decisions,” said Huntington, whose remarks echo a report this year from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development.
Titled Financing Democracy, the OECD report warned: “Political parties and candidates need to be responsive to their constituents and not influenced by foreign interests. Too much foreign interference in elections is a danger to a country’s sovereignty.”
Like the OECD and others who urge reform, Huntington recommends that only individual B.C. voters should donate and there should be greater public financing of election campaigns, with limits on advertising.
BIG FOREIGN DONORS TO B. C. LIBERALS
Which foreign companies are donating the most to the B.C. Liberals?
The independent watchdog Integrity B.C. has tracked the complex web of tens of thousands of donations made each year to politicians on the West Coast.
Executive director Dermod Travis this week compiled a list of the contributions made to the B.C. Liberals in the past decade by roughly 100 companies that are, directly or indirectly, based offshore.
Big donors from the United States include Colliers International, a real estate company that gave the B.C. Liberals $105,000. Hub International, a U.S. insurance company, donated $117,000. Weyerhaeuser gave $215,000, Chevron donated $140,000, Kinder Morgan donated $28,000, Pfizer donated $45,000 and Kiewit gave $101,000.
Two of the largest business donors from Asia include Indonesia-based Paper Excellence, which donated $90,000, and Woodfibre LNG, which gave $58,000.
China’s Kailuan Dehua mining company gave $59,000 to the B.C. Liberals. Japan’s Tanac Development gave $50,000, Dubai’s DP World gave $41,000 and Malaysia’s Holborn Holdings — it calls itself a Vancouver holding company, but is run by Joo Kim Tiah, son of one of Asia’s richest tycoons — donated $226,000.
Holborn’s massive contribution to the B.C. Liberals is significant not only because the Malaysia-based company controversially bought a large swath of B.C.-government owned land next to Vancouver’s Little Mountain, which up until then had provided social housing — the Holborn Group is also building Vancouver’s luxurious Trump International Hotel and Tower, named after the presidential candidate whose supporters have blatantly flouted U.S. election laws by seeking big gifts from foreign donors.
If Trump is elected president on Tuesday, is it possible one of the first things the real estate magnate would do is normalize his own fundraising tactics by trying to change American laws to legalize foreign donations?
If so, Trump could point to the North American example set by his fellow travellers in the B.C. Liberals, who have been in power for 15 years and seem never to have met a corporate or foreign donor they don’t like.
It’s hard to prove a foreign donor is directly shaping policy choices. Still, you know the donations are made to influence decision-making. My mind goes to the question of sovereignty. Delta South Independent MLA Vicki Huntington