Bennett_Nov2014

BillBennett
BillBennett
42 BCBusiness November 2014 November 2014 BCBusiness 43
the resurrection of
How the MLA for Kootenay East
went from Liberal pariah to Christy
Clark’s inner sanctum
by Matt O’Grady
por trait by Roth + Ramberg

proclaimed “redneck” persona and recognize that politics
is all about pragmatism. Bennett is the premier’s best com-
municator and one of her cabinet’s sharpest minds. A Grade
9 dropout who went back to school as a mature student and
got a law degree from Queen’s University in his early 40s, he’s
been given some of the most challenging economic roles: fix
BC Hydro (increasing rates and investing in infrastructure);
rebuild trust and create a new regulatory framework for the
miningindustry(aftertheMountPolleytailingsponddisaster);
and, as minister responsible for the Core Review—a key plank
in the Liberals’ re-election
platform—rethink how gov-
ernment delivers its services
(he’s already shaken up the
Agricultural Land Reserve,
axed the Pacific Carbon Trust
and shut down the Provincial
Capital Commission).
“Bill is prepared to be
imaginative,” Premier Clark
explained when I reached
her by phone in her Kelowna
riding. “He’s prepared to offer
ideas that maybe nobody’s
thought of, that some people
might be too shy to mention.
Bill is no shrinking violet.
If he comes up with a big
idea—even if it’s way outside
the box—he’ll present it if he
thinks it’s worth consider-
ing. Bringing that amount of
imagination to the table is
really crucial for me. I don’t
think you can run a modern
organization without it.”
Bennett, like his boss, is
also extremely media savvy.
That’s why, on this sunny summer day, we’ve ended up at St.
Eugene, with its panoramic views of the Purcell and Rocky
Mountains. A diverse group of residents and business people
(among them executives from Teck, Canfor and Columbia
Power, as well as Jeff Cynoweth, owner of the WHL Kootenay
Ice)arestrollingthroughtheresort’simmaculate18-holecourse
for the Ktunaxa Nation charity golf tournament. St. Eugene is
theembodimentofmodernCranbrook:asuccessfulnative-run
tourist business, on the grounds of a former residential school,
with close ties to the area’s resource companies.
It’s also a much better photo-op.
bcbusiness.ca November 2014 BCBusiness 45
of cabinet, twice, and forced to sit as an
independent for telling Premier Gordon
Campbell publicly that it was time to go.
He was considered so toxic, so disloyal,
that some cabinet ministers threatened
to quit if Christy Clark let him back into
cabinet when she became leader.
She did welcome him back—and
most of the dissenters stuck around.
To understand why, you have to look
past Bennett’s salty-tongued, self-
44 BCBusiness November 2014 roth + ramberg
The Heritage Inn Hotel, like just
about every other business in
Cranbrook, is on Highway 95,
or what the locals invariably call
the Strip. It’s exactly what you’d
expect in a working-class town
in the East Kootenays: comfort-
able, beige, overstuffed and a
little worn around the edges. In
the Skylight Café, the Honourable
Bill Bennett—wearing faded work
jeans, a short-sleeved check shirt,
Merrell hiking boots and the ruddy complexion of a
life lived outdoors—offers his hand in greeting, then
surveys the room.
“OK, change of plans. There’s a better place just
outside town—do you mind going for a bit of a drive?” I leave
behind my rental car and jump into Bennett’s white Toyota
Tundra pickup, our two photographers following close
behind.
On the drive to St. Eugene Resort—a casino, hotel and golf
course on the banks of the St. Mary River, 10 minutes from
town—Bennett explains why he finds his adopted home so
appealing. “It’s a very old-fashioned, blue-collar place. I chose
to come here—it wasn’t accidental. I like a rough edge. I like
loggers driving by in their pickup trucks with a dog in the back
and a rifle hanging in a back window. This town’s like that—it’s
tt
cranbrook
chronicles
(Counter clockwise from
top left) Bennett speaking
to constituents, young and
old, at Sam Steele Days; a
street scene.
raw, it’s real, it’s true.”
Not a bad description of Bennett
himself, actually. With over 13 years
in provincial politics, the MLA for Koo-
tenay East, Minister of Energy and
Mines, and Minister Responsible for
Core Review has earned a reputation
as the enemy of anything politically
correct. A rough and tumble entrepre-
neur, prodigious dropper of f-bombs,
Bennett’s the rebel who was kicked out
“Bill is no shrinking violet. If he comes up with a big idea—even if it’s way
outside the box—he’ll present it if he thinks it’s worth considering. Bringing
that amount of imagination to the table is really crucial for me. I don’t think
you can run a modern organization without it.” — Premier Christy Clark

Bennett spent summers with his father, hunting and fishing at the family
cabin in Northern Ontario. When he went looking for work in his late teens,
his grandfather hooked him up with a friend who had a fly-in fishing lodge
near Red Lake, Ontario—an experience that shaped his life.
who had accused him of favouring big
game hunters over resident hunters.
Bennett wrote: “It is my understanding
that you are an American, so I don’t give
a shit what your opinion is on Canada or
Canadian residents.... I will continue to
46 BCBusiness November 2014 Courtesy bill bennett
ack in the fall of 2010, few would have
guessed that Bennett would today be a popu-
lar MLA (re-elected three times, last year with
63 per cent of the vote) and ascendant player
in the Clark administration, basking in the
afterglow of an unexpected Liberal victory
in 2013. Back then, a lifetime in the political
wilderness seemed a far likelier scenario.
Bennett, like many of his caucus col-
leagues, had concluded shortly after the
2009 election that their leader, Gordon Campbell, had lost the
plot. The surprise introduction of the HST caused no end of
grief for government members. Campbell had grown increas-
ingly erratic and bullying at cabinet meetings, and he reorga-
nized the energy and mines ministry without even talking to
his minister.
At first Bennett vented his concern to the premier in per-
son. When that fell on deaf ears, he discussed the matter
with people he trusted. “I talked to [former education min-
ister] George Abbott,” he recounts over
breakfast at St. Eugene. “I said, ‘George,
I think he’s taking us down. I see signs of
a guy who’s really tired and at the end of
his tether. I think he’s desperate.’”
Ultimately, Bennett decided to make
what he calls “a surgical strike.” He went
to Jonathan Fowlie of the Vancouver Sun
to discuss his disenchantment with
Campbell, suggesting that the premier
should step down. “We need to think
about doing things differently,” he told
Fowlie in a front-page story in October
2010. “We are not well thought of by the
general public. Wouldn’t that suggest to
you that perhaps it might be time to try
a different approach?”
Nine days later, Campbell retired.
“Lots of people do not want Bill Ben-
nett to take credit for this,” Bennett con-
tinues. “All I can tell you is that on the day he announced his
retirement, everybody who was there—every prominent cabi-
net minister—got up and hugged him. Many of them had tears
in their eyes. At the next cabinet meeting, a month later, when
I got kicked out, there was nobody who’d wanted him to go or
would say to him that he should go.”
It irks Bennett to this day that he took the fall. “There was
this group—10 or 11 of us, including at least one minister—they
all encouraged me to do what I did. When the time came, there
wasn’t one person who ever acknowledged publicly that they
wanted him to leave. Not one ever stood
up and said, ‘I supported what Bill Ben-
nett did. I actually encouraged him to
do it.’”
It wasn’t the first time Bennett had
run into trouble as a cabinet minister.
In 2007, he’d resigned as minister of
mines after sending a harsh email to a
constituent—Maarten Hart, then presi-
dent of the Fernie Rod and Gun Club—
work for hunters and anglers in the East
Kootenay as I always have and you will
continue to be a self-inflated, pompous,
American know-it-all.” And he later had to
apologize after an email, sent in his name
by a junior staffer, referred to proponents
of a national park in the Flathead Valley as
“eco-fascists.”
Calling for Gordon Campbell’s resigna-
tion—and the consequences of mouthing
off—was much more consequential. “The
vast majority of cabinet ministers hated
my guts—because in politics, loyalty is
everything,” he says. “Pat Bell and Shir-
ley Bond told Christy that if she let me
back in the caucus, they were quitting.
Rich Coleman wouldn’t talk to me. He’d
turn around and walk
the other way in the
hallway when I was an
independent.”
Sitting as an indepen-
dent, an outcast, for five
long months, Bennett
contemplated his future.
“Icouldhavebeenleader
of the BC Conservative
party”—he says they informally approached him—“or
I could have stayed as an independent like Vicki Hun-
tington and probably gotten re-elected.” But Bennett
wanted to be in government, not in opposition. “I don’t
want to be the guy that leads that populist movement
that’s always being critical. I want to do stuff. I want to
get things done.”
In the leadership race to replace Campbell, Bennett
supported his old friend Abbott: “It was mainly because
George was a rural guy and I thought he would bring
that perspective.” When Clark won—with the support
of just one sitting MLA, Harry Bloy—Bennett, still a
shunned independent, was among the first people the new
leader took aside at her victory party.
“I felt it was important to bring Bill back into the fold
quickly because it was important that we repair our party,”
says Clark. “In 2011, after I became leader, the caucus was a
mess. We had to repair relationships, and Bill coming back into
BB
FAMILY AND FISHING
(Clockwise from top left)
Fishing in 1971; Bennett
with a pack mule; camp-
ing with Beth in 1973; their
wedding in 1974; a family
photo with their two sons,
Daniel (l) and Dylan.

the fold was a real signal of change.” As for the dissenters who
thought that Bennett should never be allowed back into the
party, Clark’s message was simple: “Listen, folks. If all of you
hope to win the election, and I know that all of you do, then
we must heal our internal divisions first.”
eing kicked out of cabinet and
caucus was, says Bennett,
“the most traumatic thing
I’ve ever been put through.”
But rebelliousness—and its
consequences—was noth-
ing new. Born into a family
of small-business people in
Ontario (his parents owned
Bennett’s Home Furnishings
in Campbellford, two hours east of Toronto), he
was asked to leave school in Grade 9 by teach-
ers who didn’t want to deal with a perpetual
troublemaker.
“I don’t know if I had attention deficit syndrome or what
it was,” he says, “but I just truly didn’t give a shit whether I
passed or failed. I would argue with teachers—and I could win
the debates at least half of the time. I didn’t lack for confidence
in my own ability, but I just didn’t care about the formal stuff.”
He spent summers with his father, hunting and fishing at
the family cabin in Northern Ontario. When he went look-
ing for work in his late teens, his grandfather hooked him up
with a friend who had a fly-in fishing lodge near Red Lake,
Ontario—an experience that shaped his life. He worked at the
lodge from 1968 to 1976, then managed it. “And then the light
bulb went on that I had some business acumen. I realized I
whole bunch of money.”
The key to that early success, he
says,was“understandinghowtomarket
yourselfandyourbusiness.Ihadtolearn
a lot about marketing—and I had a knack
forit,whichIbroughtintopolitics.Ireal-
ized that if you have a story to tell people
thatresonateswiththem,you’regoingto
connect with them in a way that they’re
probably going to buy from you.”
As Bennett approached his 40th
birthday, he felt it was time for the next
chapter. After selling the resort, he
returned to Campbellford and helped
raise his two young sons while Beth
ran a local dress shop. He also enrolled
in law school at Queen’s, in Kingston.
When he graduated, three years later,
the Bennetts moved again, this time
out west. He had a close friend in Cran-
brook, a doctor he’d played hockey
with, who sold him on life in the East
Kootenays. But the other reason for his
choice was practical.
“I did an analysis of all the towns and
cities in Canada that I’d consider living
in, and I got all the Canadian Bar Asso-
ciation information and Law Society
information and made a comparison
of lawyers per 1,000 population in all
these communities. Cranbrook was
under-lawyered.” He practised law from
1994 until he got elected for the Liberals
in 2001.
t’s the analytical side of
Bennett—the number-
cruncher, the problem-
solver—that Christy Clark
has called upon in her first
full mandate, putting the
entrepreneur-cum-lawyer
in charge of complex and
politically challenging
files. Bennett relishes tak-
ing on the unpopular files and seeing
them through because “it’s the right
thing to do.” It’s why he went catch-
and-release at his fishing lodge in the
late ’70s, when nobody else was doing
it. “All my competitors said, ‘If you don’t
let people keep all the fish they catch,
they’ll never come back.’” But they did,
and by instituting strict conservation
standards, Bennett built a reputation
for top-notch fishing at Nueltin.
That same determination—his critics
would say stubbornness—lies behind
his biggest win since being re-elected
in 2013: overhauling the Agricultural
Land Reserve (ALR) and the commis-
sion that governs it, the Agricultural
Land Commission (ALC). Bill 24, which
introduced those changes, created two
zones across the province: Zone 1, com-
prising Vancouver Island, the South
Coast and Okanagan regions, keeps
the status-quo imperative of protect-
ing agricultural land. Zone 2, compris-
ing the Interior, Kootenay and North
regions, now allows for consideration of
non-agricultural uses on what’s gener-
ally considered less desirable farmland.
“I have to be careful what I say,
because it was a cabinet process, but
the two zones was not our first choice,”
Bennett admits. “Our first choice was
to make the changes to how decisions
are made and allow more flexibility—the
way we did in Zone 2—across the whole
province.” Ironically, that’s what the
B.C. Agriculture Council also wanted.
“That’swhattheyaskedusfor.Wedidn’t
do that because the MLAs from urban
B.C. were afraid.” By Bennett’s account,
many urban caucus members—“MLAs
who have zero agriculture, flower pots
outside the windowsills of their apart-
ment buildings maybe”—didn’t want to
face left-leaning voters with a proposal
to take land out of the ALR, no matter
its agricultural value. “So we decided
it was better to limit these changes to
areas where it would be more accept-
able to the people who lived there.”
Critics, including NDP leader John
Horgan, say Bennett is trying to fix
something that isn’t broken—and didn’t
bother to consult with anyone before
making the biggest changes to the ALR
since its creation in 1973. “In my expe-
rience in public policymaking,” says
Horgan, “you usually have to identify
a failing, get the public to understand
that there’s a failing, and then provide a
solution. Mr. Bennett went straight from
‘I think there’s a problem’ to ‘Here’s my
solution—and I’m not even going to talk
to people about it.’ I think his haste
was the challenge here. If there was a
problem, the Liberals did not articulate
it effectively. And then they rammed it
through—because they had the power
to do so.”
Bennett makes no apologies. “There
are times when, if you really believe
should own my own place.” Borrow-
ing from friends and family, he and
his wife, Beth (a dairy farmer’s daugh-
ter and his high school sweetheart),
scraped together $75,000 and bought
“a rundown, crappy little busi-
ness” in northern Manitoba. “I
knew what I was looking for. It
had to be a big lake, virtually
untouched, really top-quality
fishing and a long ways beyond
where anybody else is.”
Bennett travelled North America
to promote the lodge at sportsmen’s
shows. “I was this young, brash Cana-
dian guy who wasn’t letting his custom-
ers take these big fish out. The lodge
was written up by conservationists and
outdoor writers who put two and two
together and realized, shit, he must
have really good fishing.” He built Nuel-
tin Fly-in Lodges into one of the premier
luxury fishing lodges in the country and
Canada’s first catch-and-release opera-
tion. He sold it a decade later for “a
BB
48 BCBusiness November 2014 Courtesy bill bennett
COMEBACK KID
Bennett sworn into cabinet
with Lieutenant-Governor
Judith Guichon in June 2013;
introducing Christy Clark to
constituents in June 2012.
ii
Bennett, like many of his caucus colleagues, had concluded shortly after the
2009 election that their leader, Gordon Campbell, had lost the plot. He had
grown increasingly erratic and bullying at cabinet meetings, and reorga-
nized the energy and mines ministry without even talking to his minister.

matt o’grady November 2014 BCBusiness 51
what you’re doing is right, you have to
put your head down and do it. We did
it in 2001 and 2002—we closed hospi-
tals, we closed seniors homes, we laid
off thousands of people, and we didn’t
consult with anybody. We did it because
we knew we had to do it.
“When the ALR was created
here,” he adds, gesturing out
the restaurant window toward
the mountains, “they drew a
line at the foot of the Rockies
over here at a certain eleva-
tion.Thentheywentovertothe
west and drew a line at the foot
of the Purcell Mountains. And
they said, ‘Everything within
those two lines is within the
reserve.’ It’s not this big fertile
valley that’s got 10 feet of top-
soil. It’s really rough and tum-
ble: there’s mountains within
the valley, there’s swamps, it’s
forested.”
Bennett rejects the notion
presented by Corky Evans,
the former NDP agriculture
minister and fellow Kootenay
resident, who wrote an open
letter that equated Bill 24 to a
plot dreamed up by the Fraser
Institute, corporations and
banks, “who will get richer
paving farmland than by leav-
ing it alone.”
“It’s sacrosanct. You can’t
fix it. You can’t do anything to
it. You can’t touch it,” Bennett
says mockingly. “Think about that from
a public policy point of view. You create
something 40 years ago, and you can-
not touch it? It can’t be improved? That’s
ridiculous.”
The changes to the ALR have proven
popular with most of Bennett’s constit-
uents. At a meeting with the Kootenay
Livestock Association the day after our
breakfast at St. Eugene, Faye Street,
general manager for the association,
praises her MLA for standing his ground
Bennett transitions seamlessly from the guy defending individual property
rights in the ALR to the guy who’s essentially raising taxes. “The fact is,” says
John Horgan, the NDP’s longtime energy critic before he became leader last
May, “Christy Clark has given him an almost impossible task.”
to push the changes through—and for his willingness to pro-
tect farmers and ranchers, not just farmland.
“There’re all talking up there [in Victoria] about subdivi-
sions,” says Street, an imposing middle-aged woman who
pounds the meeting room table for emphasis. “All Bill 24 is
going to do is subdivide, subdivide, subdivide. But you know
what? It has nothing to do with subdivision. This has to do with
whether or not it’s going to help agriculture sustain itself and
stay alive and bring some of our young people back.”
The pro-Bennett sentiment continues when I canvass the
crowd later that day at a barbecue celebrating Sam Steele
Days. It’s the 50th anniversary of the popular festival honour-
ing B.C.’s most famous Mountie, and Bennett’s here to unveil a
timecapsuleforfutureCranbrookresidents.Betweenburgers,
ice cream and cake (provided by lumber giant Canfor), he’s
rebuilding: (from left) Liberal MLA Don McRae, Bill Bennett
and BC Hydro CEO Jessica McDonald in Campbell River.

cornered by constituents who want to
congratulate him or have their picture
taken with him. When one complains
about how hard it is to find a family
doctor in town, Bennett tells her: “You
can’t pay them to move here.”
Bennett’s BlackBerry rings. It’s
Chris Sandve, his chief of staff, calling
from Victoria. Global TV wants him to
respond to comments made by Richard
Stout, executive director of the Asso-
ciation of Major Power Customers—an
industry lobby—who’s complaining
about the higher hydro rates that came
into effect last April.
The opposition to changes to the
ALR will be a walk in the park compared
to what Bennett faces at BC Hydro. The
utility is in desperate need of critical
capital investment: upgrades, rebuilds
and the potential addition of a third
dam and generating station on the
Peace River, the $7.9-billion Site C Proj-
ect. All of this means unprecedented
rate hikes, for both consumers and
industry, in the order of 28 per cent
over the next five years.
“In the 1990s, there were no rate
increases,” explains Bennett as we
head back to his constituency office,
where he’ll conduct the Global inter-
view by remote camera. “The NDP
bragged about it. But what other busi-
ness can you run where you don’t at
least keep up with the rate of inflation?
Your investment in infrastructure is not
going to happen if you’re not increas-
ing your revenue, and the only way for
Hydro to make that investment is to
reduce its expenses, yes—but mainly to
increase rates.”
month after Sam
Steele Days—at the
John Hart Generat-
ing Station in Camp-
bell River, with three
90-metre-tall surge
towers as his back-
drop—Bennett makes
thecaseforratehikes.
He’s here, along with
newly minted BC Hydro CEO Jessica
McDonald, to launch construction on a
$1.1-billion replacement project for the
67-year-old facility, which sits on the
banks of the popular salmon-fishing
river in northern Vancouver Island.
The John Hart revitalization, which will
take five years to complete, is the larg-
est infrastructure project undertaken
by BC Hydro since the 1980s.
“It’s a lot of money, even in today’s
terms, and it’s an indication of what BC
Hydroisfacingrightacrosstheprovince,
notjusthereonVancouverIsland,”Ben-
nett tells the crowd of Hydro workers,
First Nations leaders, local politicians
and media. While the necessary invest-
ment means higher rates, he says, BC
Hydro is working hard to control costs.
“And our part, as government, is to take
lessmoneyfromBCHydrooverthenext
10 years—and we’ll be taking consider-
ablylessfordividends,considerablyless
in terms of net income. That will leave
Hydro with several billion dollars that
they wouldn’t otherwise have had, that
they frankly don’t need to borrow and
repay with ratepayer’s money.”
Bennett transitions seamlessly from
the guy defending individual prop-
erty rights in the ALR to the guy who’s
essentially raising taxes. “The fact is,”
says Horgan, the NDP’s longtime energy
critic before he became leader last May,
“Christy Clark has given him an almost
impossible task, which is to rein in BC
Hydro after the government had inter-
fered so many times in the operation of
the Crown. I think it’s a bit of a poison
pill for him.”
Equallychallengingwillberepairing
damage to the mining industry caused
by the Mount Polley breach. Millions
of cubic metres of waste were released
into the Fraser River watershed from a
mine owned by Imperial Metals. While
the water was later deemed to be at safe
levels, the incident raised serious ques-
tions about the safety of tailing ponds
across the province. Within weeks,
Bennett had ordered two independent
investigations—one into the Mount Pol-
leyincident(tobecompletedbyJanuary
31, 2015), the other a series of inspec-
tions of all the tailing ponds in B.C. (to
be completed by this December).
It’s telling that Bennett, and not the
premier, has been out in front on both
issues—Hydro rate hikes and Mount
Polley. When there’s bad news to be
delivered, Bennett’s the minister who’s
trusted to do it, and do it well. “I don’t
think it was an accident that he was
given the energy portfolio, because
AA

on the other side of the floor is John
Horgan—he’s the energy guy, he’s the
expert,” says Gary Mason, The Globe
and Mail’s Vancouver-based colum-
nist. “Clark needed somebody able to
go toe-to-toe with Horgan on some of
these big energy questions.
“Bill Bennett will always have a
degree of maverick in him—that’s
just his nature,” adds Mason, “but I
don’t think he’s been as outspoken
as he has been in the past. I think
he understands that he was given a
fairly significant second chance by
Clark to get back into cabinet and to
play a senior role. Consequently, he’s
become one of Clark’s most trusted
cabinet ministers.”
Former cabinet colleague George
Abbott agrees that there’s been a
maturation in Bennett, a softening of
his rebel edge. “I think he was pretty
deft in his management of the Mount
Polley issue, which was—and is—a dif-
ficult one, given his position. I think
there’s been a bit of a rebalancing of
the persona with him back in cabinet.
Now he’s moving into a kind of senior
statesman role. He’s a little more cau-
tious in his choice of words. I think it’s
working well for him.”
Bennett acknowledges that he’s
had to modify his style since rejoin-
ing the cabinet. “As a politician, you
say to yourself: I want to be honest, I
really want to say what I think—peo-
ple want genuine, they want real. But
I’m tired of having the shit kicked out
of me. I’m tired of being made to feel
like I’m some sort of fucking weirdo
in politics.
“If I’m going to achieve the goals
that I have for myself as an elected
official, I have to adapt. I don’t want to
sacrifice who I am, but I have to adapt
to the extent that allows me to be suc-
cessful. Christy Clark knew—and we
had some discussions early on—that
the experience that I went through
with Gordon Campbell had been
traumatic. It was like electroshock. I
just would never allow myself or my
family to go through that again.
“I think I’m still open and honest,”
says Bennett, dropping me off at my
hotel on the Strip before heading to a
fundraising dinner. “I’m just a hell of
a lot more careful.” ■
54 BCBusiness November 2014

Bennett_Nov2014

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