A Delta-based company that ships tractor trailers between Vancouver Island and the Mainland appears to have hired the premier's former special advisor Ken Dobell to lobby the government.
But the firm is tight-lipped about whether that lobbying has to do with increased competition from British Columbia Ferry Services Inc.
The government-owned private company got into the same business this year, letting truck drivers drop their trailers off at its Tsawwassen, Duke Point and Swartz Bay terminals.
Those trailers are then loaded onto the ferry for pickup on the other side of the route.
Seaspan Coastal Intermodal Co., which is part of the Washington Marine Group of Companies, has complained BC Ferries has an unfair advantage because it gets an annual subsidy from the provincial government, which amounted to $149 million in fiscal 2009/10.
Speaking with The Globe and Mail in July, Washington Marine Group executive vice-president Kevin Irvine said, "I view it to be slightly unfair given that they don't face the same cost structure," adding the competition has already cost the company one of its top customers.
"Too bad," is how BC Ferries president and chief executive officer David Hahn responded to complaints about the new service, adding the subsidy is only used to keep the company's minor routes afloat.
Now, four months later, Dobell has signed-up as Seaspan Coastal Intermodal's lobbyist.
According to his filing with lobbyists registrar, the subject matter of his activities will be "government relationships."
Dobell, who became government relations firm Hill and Knowlton Canada Ltd.'s British Columbia chair last year, didn't return a phone call requesting details.
When asked for comment, Seaspan Coastal Intermodal managing director Richard Plecas said, "My comment is no comment. It's confidential and privileged."
In addition to the premier and his cabinet, Dobell has also registered to lobby New Democrat legislator Guy Genter and independent legislator Vicki Huntington.
Washington Marine Group has been in the drop trailer service business since the 1960s.
Hitting the right keynote
The provincial New Democrats are promoting Hamish Marshall, a prominent federal Conservative member, as one of three keynote speakers at their upcoming convention.
But that was news to Marshall, who is also the research director for polling firm Angus Reid Strategies Inc.
In an interview with Public Eye, Marshall said the party spoke with him two months ago about being a member of a panel at the convention.
But he hadn't heard anything about it since.
"I thought I was going to talk for five minutes about where polling was going in the 21st century and some ideas for how political parties can better use polling," he explained.
But Marshall, a member of the Tory's national council and Prime Minister Stephen Harper's former strategic planning manager, instead got top billing in an email sent out last week to New Democrats.
"I'm going to make a phone call," he said.
In the meantime, though, Marshall had this to say about what he might tell New Democrats in his new role at the convention.
"Looking at the numbers, I think the biggest single change since the election has been the erosion of Gordon Campbell and the BC Liberals' economic credibility. But that's been coupled not with an increase in economic credibility for the New Democrats. And that's the gap they have to close."
"They can't just hope by default that - in three years - the BC Liberals are still going to have economic credibility problems. They actually have to show they can take a leadership position on this that's in tune with what the people of British Columbia want to see," he concluded.
That - and perhaps better coordinating the scheduling of their keynote speakers!
Also booked, according to the email, are Rahaf Harfoush - who spent three months as a member of then American presidential candidate Barack Obama's new media team - as well as Jerome Ringo, chairman of the National Wildlife Federation and President of the Apollo Alliance.
Sean Holman is editor of the online provincial political news journal Public Eye (publiceyeonline.com). He can be reached at [email protected].
