"I made a choice when I left politics to leave politics and I'm enjoying myself in Arizona. But thanks for the question."
That's what ex-provincial cabinet minister Rick Thorpe said in April when we asked if he had been doing any organizing work relating to the harmonized sales tax (HST).
But Public Eye has learned Thorpe did suggest the president and chief executive officer of the British Columbia Restaurant Association should moderate the industry's opposition to the HST.
In a recent interview, Ian Tostenson confirmed the rumour, noting he and the Okanagan-Westside MLA are both friends and former competitors in the wine industry.
"So it's very natural for me to reach out to Rick or Rick to give me some observations.
"I don't want to give you the impression he phoned up to talk about the HST. We were talking about life in general. But certainly when HST came along we had many conversations about HST," he continued.
Tostenson said the restaurant industry's initial position on the tax "was no tax."
But he and Thorpe discussed how "that's probably not a real position to take. So what else can you do besides just screaming and yelling about no tax?"
Tostenson added Thorpe wasn't trying to "represent a government perspective."
Instead, he explained Thorpe is a "master of trying to find a win-win solutions" and "I think it was upsetting him to see that business was sort of fighting a government that was traditionally known and has been traditionally friendly to business."
Asked if Thorpe had anything to do with the restaurant association's decision to not back Bill Vander Zalm's petition campaign against the HST, Tostenson said, "No. Not at all."
The association head said he did meet with the former premier. But he couldn't deliver what Vander Zalm wanted - namely having the "restaurant industry be an outlet for his campaign."
In addition, Tostenson said restaurateurs "actually believe the Liberal government is the right government for the business climate in British Columbia. And we really felt we weren't here to destabilize the government" - which, according to him, seemed to be one of the purposes of the petition campaign.
"We just wanted to solve our particular issue. And we felt that had we openly endorsed the Bill Vander Zalm campaign we would be getting into partisan politics. And that wasn't what this was all about for us."
Thorpe, who is presently attending the British Open, hasn't yet responded to an interview request.
In 2005, according to Business Edge magazine, the then economic development minister told a Vancouver Board of Trade luncheon the Campbell administration wouldn't harmonize its sales tax with the federal goods and services tax because "we do not want to give our sovereign tax rights away."
Three years later, speaking in the legislature, Thorpe said, "It sounds very attractive to talk about harmonization" but warned the elimination of the provincial sales tax and its exemptions would have "far-reaching ramifications, and I can say that harmonization has not been on our agenda."
In his retirement, Thorpe told the Penticton Western News nobody had any prior knowledge of the HST before the election.
California likely won't water down hydro requirements
A former California assemblyman who spearheaded an effort to increase the use of green energy has said he doesn't think it's likely his state will count British Columbia's run-of-the-river power as renewable.
The provincial government has been lobbying California politicians to do just that so it can be sold at a premium to the state's electric utilities - which are required to use renewable sources for 20 per cent of their retail sales by 2020.
But, in an interview published last week, the executive director of the industry association representing independent power producers Paul Kariya acknowledged the chances of such a change happening in the "short-term" are "pretty slim."
Under the state's so-called renewable portfolio standards, hydro projects that produce more than 30 megawatts of electricity or, in certain cases, have an adverse impact on a river aren't considered renewable.
Kariya suggested a change in California's political leadership may improve those chances. But Paul Krekorian, a Democrat who represented the state's 43rd assembly district from 2006 to 2010, questioned that analysis.
Speaking with Public Eye, Krekorian explained, "The existing eligibility definition was hammered out with exceptional difficulty" eight years ago.
And that's why, when California looked at amending its renewable portfolio standards in 2008, "there wasn't a lot of will to really dive into changing [that definition] because just by opening it up, whether you're a large hydro producer or an environmentalist or someone in labour or otherwise, the concern is you'll end up with something you like even less."
Moreover, by doing so, "it creates dramatic divisions and people who might otherwise find areas of agreement then become divided, particular on hydro." As an example, Krekorian, who is now a Los Angeles city councillor, pointed to the environmental community.
"If your focus is on greenhouse gas reduction, then you probably want to have more hydro. If your focus is on protecting wild rivers, then you encourage policy makers to find other ways to reduce carbon emissions. That's why it gets a little tricky."
That being said, though, Krekorian added the need to hit emissions targets could accomplish want a change in political leadership won't.
"With each passing year, our ability to reach our imperative greenhouse gas reduction goals becomes more and more difficult to do unless we do more and more dramatic things to change it," he said.
"So whether that means changing eligibility definitions or fundamentally changing the way we do transmission, how we develop a grid that meets those exceptions - dramatic changes are going to become more and more imperative with each passing year that we fail to significantly advance toward reducing greenhouse gas emissions."
Sean Holman is editor of the online provincial political news journal Public Eye (publiceyeonline.com). He can be reached at [email protected].
