The 2014 financial reports from B.C.’s political parties are out and my face hurts from all of the eyebrow raising.

Donations to political parties from corporations are banned federally, but here in B.C. — the wild west of political donations — the corporate cash is free-flowing.

Here are the Top 5 disconcerting revelations from this year’s disclosures. (Thanks to Integrity BC for drawing my attention to many of these.)

1) Let’s start with the $40,950 that accounting firm KPMG gave to the BC Liberals in 2014. KPMG is the company BC Hydro hired to “independently review” the costs of the $8.8 billion Site C dam. The B.C. government has pointed to the KPMG report to defend its decision to ignore an expert recommendation to send the project to the B.C. Utilities Commission for review.

Since 2005, KPMG and its related companies have given $284,994 to the BC Liberals and $13,150 to the NDP.

2) In the words of IntegrityBC’s Dermod Travis “the 2014 Award for Incredibly Bad Taste in Donations goes to Imperial Metals, owners of the Mount Polley mine.”

The mining company donated $7,150 to the Liberals, including a $1,500 cheque in October and another for $250 in November, in the months following the company’s enormous Mount Polley tailings dam failure.

“The spill may have been toxic, but Imperial's cash wasn't,” Travis quipped.

3) Oil and gas transportation companies got in on the action, too, with Kinder Morgan ($4,500), TransCanada Pipelines ($5,600), Coastal GasLink Pipeline ($12,500) and Enbridge Northern Gateway ($13,450) all filling up the Liberal’s bank account.

Woodfibre LNG, which is proposing a liquefied natural gas export terminal in Howe Sound, gave $28,000 to the Liberals and $8,000 to the B.C. NDP. Woodfibre also spent more than $18,000 on newspaper and radio ads in Squamish during the November 2014 local election.

4) As the high-stakes Metro Vancouver waste debate raged on last year, BFI Canada gave the Liberals $91,300 and Belkorp Environmental Services gave $37,200.

Those companies didn’t like Metro Vancouver’s garbage plans, so they also hired lobbyists to pressure the provincial government. According to B.C.’s Office of the Registrar of Lobbyists, Belkorp hired John Les, former MLA for Chilliwack, and BFI hired lobbyist Dimitri Pantazopoulos, who was the Liberals’ chief pollster during the 2013 provincial election.

5) Perhaps the most bizarre donation of all is one for $28,750 from the Alberta Newspaper Group to the Liberals.

Alberta Newspaper Group has no papers in B.C., but is run and partially owned by British Columbian David Radler. Yes, that David Radler. The one who went to jail, along with his business partner Conrad Black, after being convicted of defrauding their company Hollinger Inc.

Alberta Newspaper Group is a subsidiary of Glacier Media, which owns the Victoria Times Colonist. Radler was named the acting publisher of the Victoria Times Colonist a year ago.

Radler also runs Continental Newspapers, which publishes the Kelowna Daily Courier and Penticton Herald.

As traditional media players face unprecedented hardships to stay alive, it’s a wonder how any newspaper company can afford to scrounge up tens of thousands of dollars to curry political favour.

Sadly, this is far from the first time a B.C. media company has donated to a political party. In 2013, Postmedia — which owns the Vancouver Sun and The Province — donated $10,000 to the BC Liberals. In 2009, Glacier Media gave $100,000 to the Liberals. And between 2006 and 2011, Black Press — which owns more than 70 community newspapers in B.C.— contributed $5,430 to the BC Liberals.

It’s exactly the kind of impropriety that would typically set the press off on a feeding frenzy — alas, the only organizations to escape the news media’s often savage scrutiny are the news media themselves.

Photo: Mary Crandall via Flickr

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Postmedia has struck a $316 million deal to buy 175 of Quebecor’s English-language newspapers, specialty publications and digital properties, including the Sun chain of papers, according to a report in the Globe and Mail this morning.

If it passes regulatory hurdles, the deal will mark a step further down the path of media concentration in Canada.

What does this mean for Canadians in practical terms?

In Calgary, for instance, the Calgary Sun would be owned by the same company as the Calgary Herald. In Toronto, the Toronto Sun and 24 Hours would be owned by the same company as the National Post. In Ottawa, the Ottawa Sun would be owned by the same company as the Ottawa Citizen. And in Edmonton, the Edmonton Sun would be owned by the same company as the Edmonton Journal.

It’s Vancouver that takes the cake for media concentration though — Postmedia already owned the Vancouver Sun and The Province, but if the deal goes through it will take over the free daily 24 Hours as well.

In a statement, Postmedia president and CEO Paul Godfrey said the company intends “to continue to operate the Sun Media major market dailies and their digital properties side by side with our existing properties in markets with multiple brands as we have in Vancouver with the Province and the Vancouver Sun for more than 30 years.”

Sean Holman, journalism professor at Mount Royal University, says the deal means three major things for the Canadian public.

“First, I think the Canadian public should be worried about what this potential sale could mean for press freedom,” Holman says. “If you have one media owner with the capability to dictate editorial policy across almost every single major newspaper in the country, that is not a healthy thing. There may be assurances of newsroom editorial independence, but we have seen over the years that newsroom independence has been violated by Canadian media owners.”

Holman also notes that as media companies encounter more financial trouble, business reasons are increasingly being used to compromise editorial standards. Case in point: In June, DeSmog Canada revealed that Postmedia had been running unlabelled oil advertorials.

The second major reason Canadians should be worried about this deal has to do with press criticism, Holman says.

“Right now, the Canadian media is not held to a very high level of accountability,” he says. “You look down in the States at the amount of media analysis and media criticism there is there and we simply can’t hold a candle to that. This potential sale will make that worse.

“If there is only really one major employer behemoth, how reluctant are newspaper journalists going to be to criticize one of their few major potential employers?”

Thirdly, Canadians ought to be worried about the capacity of the media to cover the important issues, Holman says.

“[Postmedia CEO] Godfrey has said that the chain won’t be closing any of Sun Media’s properties in major markets. I note that that statement does not include minor markets. Without further clarification, at this point in time, we could see closures there…We could see layoffs.”

“And as we reduce those newspaper resources and newsrooms themselves, that erodes the capacity of the media to perform its societal role which is to hold power to account.”

Media capacity is getting to such a point in Canada that Holman says Canadians need to be having a serious national conversation about how we are going to hold power to account in the absence of companies that seem to be concerned with that.

“I think this is certainly going to increase the pressure on independent and activist media to perform some of those tasks, which mainstream newsrooms may not be able to fulfill,” Holman says.

At DeSmog Canada, we are trying to fill that gap and hold power to account. Please give what you can today.

Photo: Rachael F. via Flickr

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

It is always difficult to know what to publish on Earth Day. It’s been around for 34 years, which means that much of what’s worth writing about has already been covered. Then there’s the question of whether to inform your readers with facts, inspire them with positive stories about solutions or just overwhelm them with the beauty and wonder of nature.

Despite the challenge, it’s still a little perplexing why one of Vancouver’s two major newspapers published, on Earth Day, a column about climate change that is so poorly written, so haphazardly argued, so lacking in any genuine concern for the truth, that had a freshman submitted it in one of the university courses I teach, I would have given it an F.

The column to which I refer, “Earth Day is cult indoctrination,” was published by The Vancouver Sun on April 22 as a “guest editorial” by Michelle Stirling-Anosh. Nothing I read in the mainstream media shocks me anymore, and most of it doesn’t even deserve a response, but Stirling-Anosh’s contribution to the climate change debate is worth some critical attention, if only as a warning to others.

Although she did cobble together a few of the selective and decontextualized “facts” commonly used by climate change deniers, Stirling-Anosh’s real currency is fear. Earth Day, she claims, is nothing but an insidious opportunity to “bombard” us with treacherous “appeals to protect the earth for our children.”

This may seem like a laudable goal to most of us — I’d certainly like my daughter to enjoy a planet at least as healthy and livable as the one my parents bequeathed to me — but Stirling-Anosh is quick to point out this irresponsible barrage of dangerous information is part of a campaign of “agenda-driven indoctrination” to brainwash our children “that would make Stalin proud.”

To support her claim equating climate scientists and activists with mass-murdering dictators, she cites a report, published by a UK non-profit with close ties to fossil fuel companies and the climate denial community, which reached the terrifying conclusion that “global warming/climate change propaganda has infiltrated every aspect of education.”

Apparently, the 'Climate Change Cult' has convinced universities not to push students into “hard sciences like petroleum engineering (sic) or geosciences” (you’d never know it from a stroll around the University of Calgary). Elementary schools, too, “have successfully destroyed the basics of scientific inquiry in children,” though she forgot to provide a reference for this ‘factoid.’

Putting aside the factual inconsistencies, you’re just left with the vague and nefarious “they” who are out there in our schools, terrorizing children with the terrifying consequences of climate change, inducing in them a psychological state, similar to Stockholm Syndrome, that leaves them bereft of critical thinking skills and “unable to liberate themselves from their tormentors.” Which, of course, then allows the ‘Climate Change Cult’ to tell them how they “should live, as well as … what they should think.”

Who would spend the time and energy writing such a hopeless piece of drivel? According to her byline, Stirling-Anosh is communications manager for Friends of Science. Ah ha. Five minutes of research on the Internet indicates that she is, as one might have deduced by now, an ideological soldier in the legions of faithful climate change deniers.

Friends of Science is a controversial public relations project, funded by Big Oil through the University of Calgary, whose raison d'être is to cast doubt on the overwhelming scientific evidence that indicates human activity (namely, burning fossil fuels and levelling forests) is causing the temperature of the planet to rise dangerously high. (In case you missed it: 97 per cent of the world’s climate scientists agree that manmade global warming is real and that the burning of fossil fuels is a significant factor.)

She is also a research associate for the Frontier Centre for Public Policy, another think tank that goes out of its way to debunk reputable climate science. On LinkedIn, she calls herself a “creative writer,” not in the realm of novels and poems but in the dark art of “corporate communications.” 

(Read more background information on the Friends of Science and the Frontier Centre for Public Policy)

Perhaps most enlightening is her blog, DarkGreenDevils, dedicated to the “dense network of interests keen to manipulate markets and make you, the taxpayer, pay for ideological dreams of ‘free’ and ‘clean’ energy.”

To quote from one among many paranoid rants, Stirling-Anosh argues that, “Self-important artists pose a threat to life as we know it. Such as using their advanced communications skills to advocate for eco-causes, the science of which they know nothing about, they are killing industry and causing global warming through all their hot air.”

Perhaps I shouldn’t be so hard on Stirling-Anosh. In a way, I almost feel sorry for her. It’s as if she’s the one who has been indoctrinated into a cult, the Cult of Free Market Extremism, where ideologues dispense with imagination and critical thinking and gather together to worship at the altar of the mythical “free” market. It is this unassailable belief, rather than the falsity of the causes and costs of climate change, that makes the notion of regulating greenhouse gas emissions out of existence (and creating a clean energy economy) such a heresy.

But none of this explains why The Vancouver Sun would publish this column at all, never mind on Earth Day. When I first read the headline “Earth Day is cult indoctrination,” I thought the paper was putting us on, a late April Fool’s joke of sorts. Or perhaps the editors were aware of just how absurd it is and were trying to be ironic. But then I discovered the Sun’s sister newspaper, The Province, published a similar column by Stirling-Anosh two weeks earlier.

The Province column is another attempt to convince us that “global warming stopped before [the] Kyoto [Protocol] was even implemented,” and that, the “overall benefits of ‘carbon’ far outweigh the alleged social costs.” Both of which are patently untrue.

In a democracy where freedom of speech is sacrosanct, there’s little to be done about voices like Stirling-Anosh. But the editors of the Sun and the Province should know better. Please don’t insult the intelligence of your readers by printing baseless propaganda written by PR hacks lurking in the darkest corners of the oil industry. Climate change is too dangerous and we’ve already dithered for too long. Leave what little space you have for climate coverage for those with more honorable intentions.

Jeff Gailus is the author of Little Black Lies, about the use of propaganda in the war over the future of the tar sands. Originally from Alberta, he now lives in Missoula, Montana. 

Image Credit: Edward Musiak via Flickr

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