Parks Report Has Advice on Partisan Recalls

Should political parties be involved in fighting recall campaigns?

NDP President (and former cabinet minister) Moe Sihota may have suggested parties should, even if that is on the down-low, unofficially and covertly. Carole James appears to believe these efforts should be non-partisan and parties should stay out of it.

The 1998 Parks Report investigation into some previous recall efforts suggests it might be best for parties to not be involved at all!

What follows is a lot of detail.

In 1997, three recall campaigns were initiated against sitting NDP members.

Prince George-North MLA and minister of education Paul Ramsey was one target. Skeena MLA Helmut Giesbrecht was another. The third petition sought to remove Comox Valley MLA Evelyn Gillespie.

If all three recalls were successful, the NDP government, with a three-seat majority, would presumably fall (1996 election seat count: NDP 39; Liberal 33; Other 3).

The NDP felt the recall attempts were about fighting the previous election more so than rebuking and removing each of the individual MLAs due to their possible and debatable poor performance.

Ramsey’s constituents – well, the ones that wanted to recall him – had a number of bees in their bonnets, nonetheless. These included a broken NDP promise to expand Prince George Regional Hospital ($40 million did come for this at a convenient time), Ramsey’s “pro-homosexual” views, his “threat” to fire a democratically elected school board in Surrey for removing three books that apparently presented favourable depictions of same-sex parents and the infamous, alleged Fudge-It Budget.

All three campaigns failed.

For “Recall Ramsey,”  the amount of unverified signatures was of such an amount that the petition would have been short about 600 signatures.

The recall organizers, sour grapes or not, claimed that the recall legislation set the bar too high for anyone, ever, to be recalled. It would be impossible given, particularly, the time constraints. It would be impossible, given Elections BC’s poor voters list that had to be used.

For instance, in Ramsey’s riding, 8,909 signatures would have been required to turf the man. But a flawed voters list that contained many inaccuracies and that was in serious need of updating, effectively meant – and I am giving the recall proponent side of the coin here – that 60 percent and not 40 percent of signatures would be required by the deadline of February 3, 1998 to meet the threshold. At the time, Ramsey himself tossed out the statistic that 25 percent of the voters list was inaccurate. Indeed, a woman who moved to California in 1991 was still on the 1996 voters list, and under her maiden name. These kinds of things made it difficult for organizers to verify and collect the signatures they needed. And to find the people to sign.

Recall organizers took this information to court. They wanted to argue that the voters list was responsible for the failed bids. They eventually lost interest in pursuing this. Other developments became more high profile.

According to the recall law, there was an expense cap for both recall and anti-recall organizers of $30,000 per recall. For each of the three recall campaigns, it turned out that both sides received more money than they claimed in their reports and spent more than they reported. It took Elections BC to order a forensic audit in September 1998 to sort it all out. The order was made following Vancouver Sun allegations of spending improprieties.

The resulting Parks Report came out two weeks following the raid on Premier Clark’s home, the same week the audit came out regarding the Fudge-It Budget and around the same time as Fast Ferry costs were coming to be known. What else could go wrong for them?

From the get go, the NDP promised that the recall campaigns would be opposed locally, and not centrally, such as from Victoria and by the party headquarters.

Indeed, the NDP claimed that the recall proponents were using outside interests to help their cause. Premier Glen Clark said, “Recall has been hijacked by outside special interests upset about government policy who are trying to refight an election and play politics with it.” Clark was likely referring to the interest group the Canadian Taxpayers Federation that spent a considerable amount of money, something in the neighbourhood of $23,000, drumming up recall support prior to the actual campaigns (and thus, exempt from expense limits). Thus, an anti-recall campaign slogan was “Say NO to Outside Special Interests.” The Anti-Recall team for Paul Ramsey called themselves Citizens for Local Democracy, or C4LD for short. It was headed by John Backhouse, a former Prince George Mayor and later head of the NDP’s Northern Development Commission (now the ND Initiative Trust).

The Parks Report found that the NDP used all sorts of outside help to avoid the recalls from succeeding. According to the report, this outside help, whether it was directly solicited by the party or came more organically, should have been included as campaign expenses, such as by third parties. Here are a few examples:

• The Hospital Employees Union paid the salary of a Prince George member to work on “saving” Paul Ramsey;
• The Teamsters Local 213 based in Vancouver did a mail out to its members in Prince George, urging their participation. “As Teamsters, we have a role to play in the defence of democracy,” the letter stated;
• The BC Federation of Labour spent $3926 on 10 airline tickets to fly volunteers and NDP activists with government jobs to Prince George. I believe some of these volunteers came straight out of the premier’s office;
• Several unions allowed anti-recall organizers to use their phones. This is a service of which its cost should be recorded at fair market value. No costs here were ever disclosed;
• “Secret polls” were conducted, the cost of which would have been properly itemized in the expense report. One, paid for by the NDP, never had its costs revealed. Another should have been reported as at around $2,000.

The two most egregious examples of anti-recall outside involvement come from Mission and Ontario.

The Canadian Auto Workers union, in Ontario, paid for an organizer who provided “peripheral” support to beat back the Skeena campaign against Giesbrecht. The man, Buddy Kitchen, of all names, claimed to be simply in the area as part of a union membership drive.

Sam Bridge, looking like a cross between Richard Simmons and an 80s hair band lead singer, from Mission, BC, who used to work for NDP cabinet minister Dennis Streifel, was sent by the NDP to all three anti-recall campaigns. Bridge’s “cover story” was that he was involved in a membership drive for the NDP. In fact, Bridge did all sorts of things for the anti-recall camp, including writing bogus letters to the editor for signature by others.

As if the spy came in from the cold, Bridge later turned informant to the Vancouver Sun, and this ratting out is a prime reason for the initiation of the Parks Report.

Bridge told the Sun that he was paid in part by the NDP and the anti-recall campaign team, to fight the recall attempts. “Everything I did in Prince George was directly related to recall,” confessed Bridge.

Since elected members were involved in the allegations of outside involvement, and since money was an issue, too, a special prosecutor – meaning, the RCMP – was  involved. Any MLA subject to a recall petition found to have misled Elections BC officials would lose their seat.

Well, perhaps only in BC, but the NDP felt vindicated and even jubilant when the report was released, damning as it was, because it recommended no charges would be laid. And as well, because both sides ran afoul of things.  This post has focused on NDP transgressions, but, for example, the recall proponents should have declared the full value of discounted legal fees from a pro-recall law firm in Prince George.

Later, Paul Ramsey launched legal action against the Vancouver Province newspaper and the Prince George radio station CKPG, for falsely reporting that he made comments critical of constituents. The NDP went to court to sue the Vancouver Sun over their coverage of the three recall campaigns.

Elections BC had some explaining to do in terms of how the recall campaigns were conducted. A spokesperson commented that, “The unique and untested nature of the legislation was a contributing factor to the errors which occurred.”

Premier Glen Clark called for a “review” of the legislation. That did not happen. The BC Liberal’s long time call for more effective recall and initiative legislation has yet to happen.

Recall campaigns are nasty, messy and dangerous. Parties may wish to think back to this story here before helping out recall campaigns. It’s hard to stand back, though, when a party wishes to protect its own, or would like to see an opponent removed from political office.

See also: Public Eye Online/CFAX 1070 Radio Victoria (on October 17, 2010, Jason discussed the Parks Report and recall in general; you may download the podcast here (segment begins at 32:00 in);  Survivor MLA Trivializes BC Politics (blog post); Would You Rather Be Recalled or Eat Rotten Fish? (blog post)