Lib Minister and ICBC Chair/casino lobbyist stories don’t jive

There is a very distinct difference in what ICBC chairman Rick Turner is saying about the telephone conversation that he had with BC Tourism Minister, Kevin Krueger, on behalf of Paragon Development Ltd. Paragon is the casino developer who got a sweet deal from the BC Liberals to build on BC Place grounds. (see here)

Turner’s version of conversation with Krueger about the BC Place’s roof being rebuilt:

“I am the local guy for Paragon, I phoned the minister responsible. What I didn’t do is say, ‘I’m the chairman responsible for ICBC’. I said ‘my name is Rick Turner and I’m phoning on behalf of Paragon.’

“But if the roof does not get built, we may have to revisit the size and scope of what we planned. “You figure out what’s right for British Columbia – leave the roof as it is, make it a pyramid, whatever – and that’s fine. Then we’ll figure out what we have to do.”

A bit different from what Krueger recalls:

“the roof was actually essential to the bid, that they wouldn’t proceed with the bid at the level they had if there wasn’t a retractable roof.”

The NDP has asked the lobbyist watchdog to investigate. (see story here)

Also: see Krueger post on “children may die” with expanded gambling quote here and comparison costs of BC Place roof to the new Cowboys Stadium here

Classless Don Martin at it again…

From Don Martin’s column in today’s National Post:

…Prime Minister Stephen Harper faces the worrisome possibility that Canadian soldiers are dying to defend a nutbar”

Ya, that’s why we are there Don. Nothing to do with freedom for women, democracy, human rights, terrorism… (see column here)

Ottawa Citizen trying to out “Star” the Toronto Star

For last couple of days we’ve seen Glen McGregor of the Ottawa Citizen scraping the bottom of the barrel in “gotcha” news stories with his hit-piece on Helen Guergis’ mortgage (see here) and today we get Dan Gardner’s column with this first paragraph:

“Having spent the last four years being amazed and appalled by Stephen Harper’s style of governance — cynical, ruthless, controlling, unprincipled, and proudly ignorant of basic facts — I thought I had seen the worst. But then the news of Graham James’s pardon broke” (see column here)

Blue Like You does a nice rebuttal on Gardner’s piece here and lo-and-behold, see Gardner’s smarmy response here

Update: Gardner should maybe read his own paper’s editorial here