Boessenkool, Burns Lake & Booze: 3 Bombshells

What a week.

Alberta import Ken Boessenkool got pushed/jumped from his job as chief of staff to Premier Christy Clark. Boessenkool submitted his resignation on Sept. 23, the morning after the B.C. Conservatives were licking their wounds after 71% of one-third of the party voted against reviewing John Cummins's lacklustre leadership.

It turns out this was one of those "uh-oh, they noticed, now we've gotta do something" matters. 

Global TV's Jas Johal was tipped-off about Boessenkool getting in trouble at a Victoria pub on Sept. 7 after Liberal caucus members and Press Gallery members had a round of golf in Metchosin. Clark started the week with a press conference where she released Boessenkool's resignation letter, but hid behind privacy laws and would only call it an "incident of concern."

Boessenkool lost his nearly $200,000-a-year gig and, under B.C. government employment rules, he must not lobby the B.C. government for the next year. That could hurt him in the wallet, since Boessenkool was a former Hill and Knowlton executive whose client list included Enbridge, Taser and Merck. 

Boessenkool allegedly got drunk and groped a junior female staffer in the Bard and Banker pub. Clark claimed the Public Service Agency investigated Boessenkool. But in a startling lack of leadership, it was revealed that Clark did not suspend her chief of staff, but instead let him carry on as the ultimate supervisor of the woman who was the alleged victim. 

Instead of giving Boessenkool the heave-ho on Sept. 20, BC Christy heralded the poaching of star third-place Chilliwack 

by-election candidate John Martin from the Conservatives. Politics before people, that's the Clark way. 

The million-dollar question: Why didn't the police become involved in the Boessenkool incident?

Boessenkool was replaced by Dan Doyle, the BC Hydro chairman who was the executive vice-president of construction for VANOC. Doyle was CC'd on the famous March 24, 2009 John Furlong email, revealed by CBC in February 2011, that indicated there were major safety concerns at the Whistler Sliding Centre. 

On Feb. 12, 2010, Georgian luger Nodar Kumaritashvili flew off his sled near the end of his last training run, struck an unpadded pole and died. The track's construction was partly to blame. Almost $2 million more is being pumped in to correct the flaws. 

Furlong under fire for Burns Lake secrets

Vancouver 2010 Olympics chief executive John Furlong wasn't in London for the opening of the 2012 Olympics on July 27. His absence was odd, to say the least. Furlong and London 2012 chairman Sebastian Coe both told me in 2010 how they struck a friendship, as Furlong advised Coe on the ups and downs of running an Olympic organizing committee. Furlong served as VANOC chief executive at the pleasure of Premier Gordon Campbell, now Canada's High Commissioner to the United Kingdom. Campbell told CKNW's Philip Till in July that he hadn't spoken to Furlong for "months." 

On Sept. 27, Furlong was slammed with allegations in the Georgia Straight that he abused students at a Burns Lake, B.C. Catholic elementary school after he came to Canada as a teenager. The RCMP confirmed it is investigating. 

Furlong vehemently denied their claims, which are contained in eight affidavits obtained by Georgia Straight contributor Laura Robinson. He suggested he was the victim of a blackmail attempt. Furlong and his lawyer Marvin Storrow said they would sue for defamation. They refused to answer questions from reporters. 

Furlong, however, conceded that he had actually lived in Burns Lake. He said it was a "brief" and "uneventful" time. That was news to anyone who bought his book, Patriot Hearts, or paid to hear one of his speaking engagements. It was also news to his co-writer, Gary Mason. Furlong's memoir only indicates he arrived in Canada with his wife and two children 

in 1974 at Edmonton and settled in Prince George. 

Odd that an immigrant to Canada would omit any mention of his first impressions of his new country. Also odd that he would use the word "uneventful" to describe a period of his life in which he married his first wife who bore his first two children.

Read more from The Tyee here. 

BCGEU beats Booze Barn bid

And then the third bombshell of the week. The Liquor Distribution Branch privatization was cancelled 220 days since it was announced and 18 days before the successful bidder was scheduled to be announced. 

This one came wrapped by the government inside the new deal for the B.C. Government and Services Employees' Union. BCGEU president Darryl Walker said the prospect of thwarting the government's planned sale of warehousing and distribution came as a surprise to him earlier in the week. Read more in Business in Vancouver here.

The government appears to have made the right choice by putting a cork in the plan. It published no business plan to justify the privatization and conducted no formal industry consultation. The privatization push was driven by the persistence of BC Liberal-allied lobbyists in an environment of a cash-strapped government seeking solutions to balance the budget before the May 14, 2013 election. 

Every step of the way, I discovered more questions than answers. Freedom of Information delays, denials and censorship. And, of course, the minister responsible for liquor, who avoided all my interview requests. 

I have heard from only one bidder so far. ContainerWorld president Dennis Chrismas hired the Liberal-friendly Pace Group public relations company to send out a prepared statement. ContainerWorld opposed privatization at first, but then submitted a bid out of self-preservation. The province's largest pre-distribution warehouse in Richmond would have had an uncertain future if it didn't win the contract because the pre-distribution program was to be phased out. 

I will have more to say in the coming days and weeks. I'm confident there is a story behind this story. 

This had the appearance of another BC Rail-style scandal in the making. 

Starting with the title of the Oct. 6, 2009, internal Exel memo that flipped open the lid on this procurement plonk. 

It was called "Project Last Spike." 

"Stee-rike" 1 at Liquor Distribution Branch

The British Columbia Government and Service Employees' Union is rightfully on the warpath during its 70th anniversary year.

After six months of negotiations with the B.C. government, the gloves are coming off and it could be a long, hot summer. The BCGEU wants a 3.5% increase for its 29,000 members across government for the first year of a new contract and a cost of living increase in the second. The government has offered only 3.5% over two years and Finance minister Kevin Falcon has drawn a line in the sand.

"The world economy is actually getting worse, it's not getting better," Falcon told CKNW on June 29. "I think the unionized workers really need to understand that our offer will come off the table, and I'd sure like to see them return to the table before that offer's removed for good. It is not going to get any better."

The first salvo fired by the BCGEU is to strike at three important Liquor Distribution Branch locations. The Vancouver headquarters, which includes offices, the main warehouse and the flagship store, will be behind pickets from 11:30 p.m. July 2 to 11:30 p.m. July 3. Similar strikes are scheduled for July 3 at the LDB's Kamloops warehouse (5:30 p.m. to 10:30 p.m.) and Victoria wholesale customer centre (6 a.m. to 5 p.m.). The disruptions are bound to cause a hiccup in the supply chain and the government will feel a pinch. But it will not be anything like the 1970s and 1980s when a summertime strike at government liquor stores in B.C. created chaos.

This is an intriguing strategic move. LDB is one of the province's biggest, most profitable retailers and the 3,500 BCGEU members who work in it are important collectors of provincial tax revenue. During the 2010-2011 fiscal year, LDB delivered an $890.4 million profit to government on $2.82 billion gross sales.

The government is amid a controversial program to privatize LDB's warehousing and distribution -- without a business plan and without formal industry consultation but with evidence that such a move is being done primarily to benefit BC Liberal party insiders. Evidence is contained in Exel Logistics' "Project Last Spike" internal memo from Oct. 6, 2009 that even suggests the BCGEU was an ally in its privatization push. UPDATE JULY 3: Exel and ContainerWorld are among the six companies that submitted bids by the June 29 deadline. The others were Hillebrand Westlink, Kuehne + Nagel, Metro Supply Chain Group and Schenker of Canada. A shortlist of as many as three companies is expected by July 20. On April 30, liquor minister Rich Coleman said the shortlist could be as small as one company. Companies related to Exel, Schenker and K+N were found to be involved in a price-fixing conspiracy and disciplined by the European Commission. Additionally, Exel has an intriguing connection with ContainerWorld, the biggest existing liquor warehouse in B.C.

BCGEU is now publicly opposing the privatization, after signing a March 21 memorandum of agreement for post-privatization job protection and early retirements. The June 29 news release announcing the three strikes said another reason to picket the LDB work sites is "to back our proposal for Sunday liquor store openings province-wide to generate more than $100 million in annual revenue."

That's odd. BCGEU president Darryl Walker (right) told me in a May 3 interview that the proposal was dead. Killed, in fact, by the government in negotiations leading to the March 21 agreement. The Sunday openings proposal was considered a deal breaker by the government, Walker said. Below is an excerpt from my interview with Walker.

Mackin: If BCGEU is opposed to the privatization of this asset, then why would it have made the deal, made the memorandum of agreement to get the job protection for the workers, for the members? Wouldn't it be better if the BCGEU went out on principle and said 'no, we're not going to agree to this, we're going to, on principle, oppose this entirely' and rip up the MOA? 

Walker: "Part of the reason that we sat down with the government and put the MOA together is to protect our members, and that is our primary responsibility as you probably know under our certificates with the Labour Relations Board. We're held highly accountable for the rights of our members and when you see an opportunity to protect the members, the first piece is to get that done. That's why we sat down and worked with the government.  

"You might also know that of course we had a proposal on the table to open stores on Sundays, thereby increasing revenues by, well, as much as $120 million to $140 million to $150 million annually. We were told by the employer that if we didn't take that off the table we would be unable to provide or get the protection in the MOA for our members. So we were in a position first off to protect our members and that's what we knew we needed to do.  

"Once that was done and we had those in place we then understood we were able to do the second piece, which is to oppose this on principle. Principle is one thing, quite frankly British Columbia needs revenues now and we need to be able to say to B.C. that we can show the government methods of providing and enhancing those revenues. We needed to be able to do that but we needed to be able to protect our members first. That was our primary responsibility. We saw it as a bit of a two-step, and we realized that one had to go first if we were to protect our members."

There may be reasons to limit Sunday openings. Chief medical officer Dr. Perry Kendall reported in 2008 that a government monopoly on the retail of alcohol and restrictions on hours and days of sale are among the 10 "best practices policies for managing the health and social harms of alcohol." Kendall told me the government did not consult him on the potential health or social implications of the privatization of LDB warehousing and distribution.

There are also 1,400 liquor retail outlets in B.C., of which only 197 are government-owned. The majority are licensee retail stores (672) and rural agency stores (221) owned and operated privately by companies that were granted Sunday opening privileges by the Liquor Control and Licensing Branch and their host municipalities. The licensee retail stores would obviously not be amused if they had to suddenly compete with the government for customers. (They are represented by the Alliance of Beverage Licensees of B.C., which opposes the privatization.)

There is no evidence, however, that government has recently studied any of the commercial or health implications of anything to do with the wildly lucrative and socially risky business of booze. If it has any, the government doesn't want to share any business plans or cost-benefit analyses with you or me.

I have made numerous requests to interview Coleman. He has not sat down for an interview with me.