Return donations from Kinder Morgan, groups urge Clark
Three environmental and public advocacy groups are calling on the B.C. Liberals to return hundreds of thousands of dollars donated by Kinder Morgan and its affiliated companies prior to the approval of their controversial pipeline expansion project.
The groups — Stand.earth, Dogwood Initiative, and Leadnow — say the party’s acceptance of more than $770,000 in political donations from Kinder Morgan and affiliated companies and lobbyists casts a cloud of suspicion over Premier Christy Clark’s decision to give the $6.8-billion project the green light in January.
“(The Liberals) have already accepted so much money from the pipeline company, they can’t ask voters to trust them until they return the funds,” said Sven Biggs, a climate and energy campaigner at Stand. earth, formerly Forest Ethics.
The groups have identified $771,168 in donations to the B.C. Liberals from Kinder Morgan and related companies based on Elections B.C. records. The figure could be higher if lobbyists associated with the project also made donations under their names. In an open letter delivered to the premier’s office in downtown Vancouver on Tuesday, the organizations asked the party to return the funds and conduct a new environmental assessment for the project.
Clark had said the pipeline project met the five conditions she had laid out, including a “fair share” of the economic benefits in a revenue-sharing deal worth up to $1 billion over 20 years. The federal government gave approval to the project in November.
The group’s appeal comes in the wake of heavy criticism of the Liberals’ fundraising practices, which prompted Clark’s promise last week to convene an independent non-partisan panel to look into ideas around campaign finance reform after the May 9 election.
In February, Democracy Watch and PIPE UP Network filed a court challenge to overturn the provincial government’s Kinder Morgan decision due to alleged conflicts of interest between the premier and project proponents, who have given $560,000 in political contributions over six years to the Liberal party.