Candidate selection sparks controversy
NDP actions seeking inner-circle candidates already causing internal party disruptions
The B.C. government has paid out almost $250,000 in fees and expenses to two former NDP MPs now contesting for the party in the current election.
Murray Rankin, the former NDP MP for Victoria, was paid $122,797.49 in fees and $19,471.23 in expenses for a total of $142,268.72 going back to 2019.
Nathan Cullen, the former NDP MP for Skeena-Bulkley Valley, was this year paid $101,930 in fees and $2,593.57 in expenses for a total of $104,523.57.
Both were on contract to the B.C. Ministry of Indigenous Relations and Reconciliation to assist in talks aimed at resolving an impasse with hereditary leaders of the Wet'suwet'en people. Despite the efforts of the two New Democrats, the talks remain unresolved.
Elected leaders of the Wet'suwet'en have protested at their exclusion from the negotiations with the hereditary leaders.
A major point of contention remains the Coastal GasLink natural gas pipeline, the focus of a standoff earlier this year that spread to the legislature and then across Canada. Though the line remains under construction, little work has been done on the section flanking a protest encampment established by some hereditary chiefs. Negotiators missed a mid-August deadline for reaching preliminary agreement on Wet'suwet'en rights and title, and announced the talks would be prolonged to mid-October.
“We will take the time necessary to get this right,” they said in a statement hinting at retainers and contract extensions to come.
But the talks will continue without the services of Rankin and Cullen. Both served notice recently of their intentions to run for the NDP, and the ministry terminated their contracts.
Rankin is now seeking the NDP nomination in Oak Bay-Gordon Head, where Andrew Weaver, the former leader of the Greens turned Independent, is retiring.
Also in the running for the NDP nomination in the riding is Michelle Kirby, a former Oak Bay councillor. But Rankin is the favourite in the inner circles of the John Horgan government, where he is being touted as a star candidate and future cabinet minister even before he secures the nomination.
Cullen, likewise seen as cabinet material, is running in Stikine, the northwest B.C. riding where NDP Doug Donaldson recently announced his retirement.
The New Democrats wanted Cullen so badly that they have frozen out Annita McPhee, a member of the Tahltan First Nation, who announced her candidacy soon after Donaldson announced his exit.
In launching her bid, she cited the NDP's equity mandate. It dictates that when incumbents retire, the next nominee should be from an under-represented group, such as an Indigenous person.
Cullen wasn't a member of any group that was under-represented within the NDP — there being no need for affirmative action for party insiders who have been on the receiving end of lucrative government contracts.
McPhee asked him to make way. But Cullen refused, insisting that he'd followed all the rules laid down by the party in the course of stacking the deck in his favour.
“Annita McPhee is a friend of mine,” he told Mike Smyth on CKNW this week. “I have a great deal of respect for her.”
That didn't keep the Stikine riding association from trashing McPhee in a news release that insinuated she was embittered by the earlier loss of a nomination to run for the federal NDP.
Enter party president Craig Keating to suffocate her bid as only a party bureaucrat can do.
The NDP tried to give McPhee a fair shot at the nomination, he insisted. But “there was simply not enough time to process the application.” With that, he announced that Cullen, being the only candidate, had been acclaimed.
McPhee, who learned of being frozen out via social media, is now considering legal action.
Horgan, at his first media conference of the campaign, twice ducked questions about the Stikine fiasco: “I'll direct you to the party president,” he told reporters.
But when the issue came up again Tuesday, he realized that buck-passing to as weak a functionary as Keating was probably not an effective strategy.
So he fell back on telling reporters that he was “confident” that the NDP equity policy had been respected, never mind that the outcome — the nomination of a Caucasian man over an Indigenous woman — was not, shall we say, entirely in keeping with the spirit of affirmative action.
Then again, Horgan's defence of what happened in Stikine was at least as plausible as his rationale for calling an early election.
Nor was Stikine the only riding where NDP headquarters flexed its muscles to promote a candidate sought by the premier's inner circle.
In Fraser-Nicola, the Horgan-approved candidate was an Indigenous man, First Nations lawyer Aaron Sumexheltza.
The party gave him the inside track by scheduling an early nominating meeting and cutting off the list before anyone else had a chance to enter, as Rob Shaw reported in The Vancouver Sun earlier this month.
The fix prompted a mass resignation from the local riding executive, including the president, Harry Lali, a former cabinet minister and four-term NDP MLA.
“We really don't want to do this,” departing vice-president Dennis Adamson told Shaw.
“You are a member of a team and suddenly you have to go to the world and tell them the team is no good and it's corrupt,” he added, in what might turn out to be one of the defining quotes of Election 2020.
The nomination of a Caucasian man over an Indigenous woman was not ... in keeping with the spirit of affirmative action.