In this world of arithmetic-challenged senators and celebrity mayoral sinners, we should be proud of three North Shore politicians of exemplary character.
As this paper's Brent Richter reported, City of North Vancouver council narrowly (4-3) passed a motion this month strongly urging future council candidates to not take contributions from developers or trade unions.
Mayor Darrell Mussatto and Coun. Linda Buchanan have been pressured to recuse themselves from voting on motions affecting big developers Pinnacle and Onni. Both - Onni through its parent company RPMG Holdings - donated $5,000 to the Mussatto and Buchanan 2011 election campaigns.
They, and Coun. Craig Keating, newly minted president of the B.C. New Democratic Party, also received donations from the Canadian Union of Public Employees.
Suspicious? Don't be. Said Mussatto: "... People think that there's some sort of return favour implied, and that's just not the case," and asserted he'd voted against developers
who contributed to his cause in earlier campaigns. "I think I've been very principled."
Keating declared: "The implication here of course. .. is that votes at this council table are for sale by campaign donations and that, quite frankly, is incorrect."
The third councillor, Buchanan, sat silent - maybe because the dastardly insinuation was unworthy of response? All three voted against the motion, moved by Coun. Guy Heywood.
Well, let me heap praise on these nobly principled politicians. Because, you see, I'm a sinner. And I know it. My heart is wicked. I have never been offered a bribe. But I am certain I can be bought. It just hasn't been offered. Clearly nobody thinks I have anything worth buying.
So I haven't been tested. I have no doubt, though, that if the price were right, I could be corrupted. If, say, the Bank of Horsefly gave me a $5,000 grant to write a series on reasons for the 2008-10 recession, I might avoid implicating the Bank of Horsefly. Friends? I'd favour 'em. If I had the power. Give them the best seats in the house. Enemies? I'd punish 'em. The three North Van city councillors are about such human frailty.
Weakness of character, weakness of the flesh. I once interviewed a thennationally prominent New Democrat. She sat down and showed a bit of leg. Inadvertently, I'm sure. I pulled my punches and wrote a much kinder story than if she had been, say, Ed Broadbent. (PS: Actually I liked Broadbent, not least because years after we met he remembered a huge woolly suit of mine that moved as if it had a life of its own.) But I digress. The good, those with pure lives and wholesome thoughts, readily accept that sizeable campaign contributions don't influence our elected representatives. They would accept that Keating and Mussatto, principled by their own admission (and are they not honourable men?), and the silent Coun. Buchanan, unhesitatingly erected a virtuous wall between the money donated and their votes at council vitally affecting the donors' bigdollar interests.
I couldn't. That is why I hold in highest esteem those who can - who can't be bought or influenced.
Nor, beyond doubt, were the donations tainted by the donors' hope of preferment. They must have been objectively given to candidates deemed to be worthy councillors. No benefit expected. No winks exchanged.
We are indeed fortunate to have such principled representatives on our North Shore: Neighbours, long serving the community, well known, respected. Because we know that in some distant places any politicians who denied that large campaign contributions influence them - well, I'd guess they were uttering some of the most gol-darned, bulldroppings, fork-tongued stretchers that ever came out of the mouths of mankind.
Ran into Russ Fraser the other day. Fraser was a Social Credit attorneygeneral and latterly the most effective member of the West Vancouver Police Commission, whose contract wasn't renewed by then-new commission chairwoman Mayor Pamela Goldsmith-Jones - a closet Liberal who early on insisted her party sympathies were a private matter.
Fraser and I discussed the scandal of Agriculture Minister Pat Pimm's repeated leaning on the Agricultural Land Commission to cut 70 acres of constituent Terry McLeod's land for a rodeotype operation - which McLeod is building anyway in defiance of the ALC (he scorned its members as "meatballs," Vaughn Palmer reported).
I asked Fraser: When should Premier Christie Clark drop Pimm into the deepest political black hole, when should she make absolutely clear the power and independence of the ALC?
"Yesterday," Fraser replied.
Sadly, St. Monica's Anglican Church above Horseshoe Bay, which has been struggling to attract parishioners for years, holds its last service Sunday.
Fine wit at the Hamilton-Toronto eastern football final: A woman in Tiger-Cat colours held up a sign near a totally surrounded (friends, foes, both?) Rob Ford: "Our mayor's better than your mayor."
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