Columnists from the Vancouver Sun and the National Post have piled on in outrage after the revelation from Gary Mason of the Globe and Mail that Christy Clark received a $50,000 stipend last year, over and above her pay as premier, from the B.C. Liberal Party and she has received more than $300,000 since becoming leader in 2011.
They took to Twitter on Wednesday night in disbelief, after the conflict of interest commissioner ruled that neither Clark or the B.C. Liberals were breaking any of the rules as they now stand.
Most of them agree with the NDP's David Eby that Clark is in a conflict of interest but none have provided evidence to show exactly how that conflict is more than a figment of their overheated imagination.
Saskatchewan's Brad Wall also accepts additional payment from his political party, but no other Canadian premier does and the practice is outright banned in most other jurisdictions. That's fine but it still doesn't explain how Clark (or Wall) are doing their constituents a disservice or how their decision making is compromised.
The main charge is that Clark is basically being paid for be a fundraiser for her own party, compensated for her time spent at dinners where it costs as much as $25,000 to sit at her table.
Senior business leaders are buying access to the premier and senior ministers and this money is being shovelled into party coffers.
It sounds terrible except that the NDP is fundraising the same way and the process is largely transparent for both parties, with financial figures disclosed to Elections B.C. and available online.
If anything, the party payment makes perfect sense. Clark's salary as premier is for her work for B.C. citizens and her wage from the party is for her work for the party.
The two are kept separate, despite the insistence that they are not.
For all the sound and fury, not one critic has been able to demonstrate that Clark and the B.C. Liberals are guilty of any corruption, that the fundraising money is actually cash for political favours and that Clark's stipend is a direct tap into the cash trough. They're sure that must be the case, however, just like they were sure the NDP was going to win the last provincial election.
Four years ago, the urban news media was already writing off Clark and the B.C. Liberals. The polls pointed to a landslide NDP victory, the pundits wrote in glee.
The Vancouver Sun's Vaughn Palmer had the Liberals winning just 10 seats with the only area Liberal left standing as John Rustad in Nechako Lakes. The Liberals were going to be deservedly punished by an angry electorate for the HST debacle and a host of other indiscretions dating back to the Gordon Campbell days. The caucus was ready to revolt against the leader forced upon them by the general membership. And people just didn't like or trust Clark.
Except none of it came to be.
In the aftermath, Mason, Palmer and company labelled the win as one of the greatest comebacks in Canadian political history but how was it a comeback if the polls were wrong in the first place? They also agreed that a combination of NDP leader Adrian Dix's incompetence and Clark's sleazy sales pitch had pulled the wool over the eyes of the hapless electorate.
What an interesting way to say they got the election all wrong and they didn't see the results coming.
The current lashing out at Clark reveals a deeper resentment.
The Sun's Stephen Hume dusted off his Occupy Wall Street pin and charging that the premier is a member of the one per cent because she's paid so much money. Thankfully, Hume's colleague Pete McMartin, also no friend of Clark but a more rational critic, pointed out that there are more than 2,700 members of the provincial civil service who are paid more than the premier and she isn't even the best paid Clark in the public sector.
Meanwhile, a tweet gleefully shared by the Post's Andrew Coyne on Thursday morning shows Clark's smiling face set on the sponsor covered shirt of a Nascar driver, with the names of the major B.C. corporate donors to the Liberals.
So now the strident criticism is both personal and sexist.
It appears there are now male political pundits who would like to dictate how the female premier of British Columbia should dress.
An unfair conclusion?
It's no worse than what's been masquerading as insightful political analysis in Vancouver and Toronto newsrooms.
-- Managing editor Neil Godbout
