Wednesday, December 14, 2011

How Many Horses Can One Ownership Group Ride?

AllTheInfluenceThatFits
HedgingAllTheBetsVille


Historically, Mr. Patrick Kinsella mostly backs winners.


"...Patrick Kinsella has become a member of the esquestrian classes. According to our operatives, Mr. Kinsella (who runs a communications firm) claimed a horse - C J Come Home - this past weekend at Hastings Racecourse. And he also co-owns another thoroughbred, Miss Rainier with Glen Todd of Empty Wallet Stables. Miss Rainier has been entered in a number of races at Hastings, including The British Columbia Breeders' Cup Oaks, The BC Cup Stallion Stakes and The Nanaimo...."

And at the BC political corral, as Charlie Smith noted not so long ago.....

....Kinsella has been around politics in B.C. since the early 1980s when then-premierBill Bennett imported him from Ontario. Kinsella was a key member of the Ontario Big Blue Machine, which helped the Conservative premier of the day, Bill Davis, win provincial elections.

Bennett, a Socred, nearly lost the 1979 election, and he needed someone who could create a more modern political marketing machine.

Kinsella portrayed Bennett as a tough guy, according to a very good book of the same name by Allen Garr, which helped Bennett's reelection campaign in 1983.

However, Kinsella's reputation took a beating 10 years later when former Bennett advisor Kim Campbell was trounced in her attempt to get elected as prime minister. Kinsella was the major campaign operative.

In recent years, Kinsella has kept a low profile even as he quarterbacked Gordon Campbell's two successful campaigns to become premier..."



Luckily for all British Columbians, the magnanimous Mr. Kinsella also likes to offer up pearls of wisdom and 'strategic advice' to all manner of fine folks, groups and corporations (crown or otherwise) to help make our province run like an elegant swiss clock that might or might not be perched proudly on his mantel.

And, because he is so generous with his time, sometimes Mr. Kinsella is even willing to keep gifting us with his advice, at our expense of course, for years and years...

BRITISH COLUMBIA RAILWAY COMPANY

March 12, 2009

I can confirm that Patrick Kinsella's company was retained by BC Rail for a 49 month period between August 2001 and September 2005 to provide strategic advice to our new President, Board of Directors and Chair.

The counsel provided was specific to the Core Review process which Government was undertaking during that period, and general business communication advice.

The value of the contract was $6000.00 per month for 49 months.

John Lusney



Heckfire!

There are even times when Mr. Kinsella, sometimes together with his most Progressive of associates such as Mr. Mark Jiles, will make like a good neighbour and offer up his services.....errrr....strategic gifts (not to mention his political horses) to the very finest of fine folks in foreign lands.

This is a story that was also unearthed by Mr. Holman....

Patrick Kinsella, an architect of the provincial Liberals' election success, has apparently been reaping the benefits of his close relationship with the Campbell administration. His firm, The Progressive Group, has helped win major government contracts and benefits for powerful corporate and foreign interests over the past five years - although Mr. Kinsella has never personally registered as a lobbyist for any of those clients.

According to records exclusively obtained by Public Eye via an access to information request with Washington State, a May 2006 contract between Mr. Kinsella's company and Washington State boasted the firm has strong relationships with Campbell administration cabinet ministers Kevin Falcon, Colin Hansen and Olga Ilich.

Those relationships extended to BC Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games secretariat president and chief executive officer Annette Antoniak and then deputy tourism, sport and the arts minister Virginia Greene.

When asked in 2004 whether he ever talks about his clients with cabinet ministers and their staffers, Mr. Kinsella said, "Absolutely not. That's an understanding that I have...I suspect there's no one in government who would say they've ever been lobbied by me."

But, as part of the company's work for Washington State, Progressive's president, Mark Jiles, promised to "facilitate opportunities for Washington State to develop important relationships" with Ministers Falcon, Hansen and Ilich, as well as Mses. Antoniak and Greene. And, if that wasn t enough, the firm stated, it was "able to engage" other "ministers."...


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So, given all the above noted largesse we were not the least bit surprised to learn that Mr. Kinsella and Mr. Jiles went out of their way to back more than one horse in the recent BC Liberal Party Leadership stakes race.

Mr. Kinsella chose Horse 1, Ms. Christy Clark, who charged hard out of the gate but who now appears to be fading badly in the backstretch....

"Lobbyist Patrick Kinsella's company Progressive Strategies Ltd. has made a major contribution to Christy Clark's bid to succeed Gordon Campbell. According to a donation list released by her campaign today, Progressive kicked in $20,000 toward that effort. Pacific Customs Brokers Ltd. also contributed $10,000. The chief executive officer of that company, Glen Todd, co-owns a number of horses with Mr. Kinsella..."


Luckily for all those Progressive and Tobias Funke Bluestoneman Group fans out there however, Mr. Jiles chose Horse 1A, Mr. George Abbott....

Lobbyist Mark Jiles has confirmed he's among those supporting Education Minister George Abbott's bid for the provincial Liberal leadership - which will announcedtomorrow morning at 11:00. In an interview with Public Eye, Mr. Jiles stated, "I like George Abbott. I don't really have a defined role on his campaign. But I've definitely been helping him out...I think he's a good leader and a great guy and provides a balance approach."....


And, guess what?...... According to a well-placed and fortuitously timed announcement by veteran horse race caller, Mr. Vaughn Palmer, we have now been told that the 1A horse is starting to pick up a little steam at the clubhouse turn.

****

But here's the really real thing...

Despite the timely shilling for Mr. Abbott, all involved can no longer be certain that the BC Liberal stables, and all of the horses locked up in them, are not doomed.

And, given that, we would not be flummoxed if it were to turn out that Mr. Kinsella and friends were looking to buy a stake in that other consortium that rides their charges with crops held high in left hands.

And, surprise!.....A horse caller of a very different kind, Mr. Bill Tieleman, has just printed something that most certainly does not refute the possibility that such a potentially crazy, mixed-up exercise in maximum longview, lobbshop-purposed bet-hedging just might be in its embryonic planning stages....

The B.C. New Democratic Party convention last weekend was a public display intended to show voters it's ready to govern moderately and wisely, but another earlier event was actually the more important signal.

That took place Nov. 9, when 650 people attend a $395 per person dinner at the Hotel Vancouver -- making it the party's most successful fundraiser ever.

{snippety doo-dah}

...Among those spotted: Mark Jiles, business partner of B.C. Liberal top operative Patrick Kinsella at the Progressive Group; Mark Reder, a senior vice president at Fleishman-Hillard Canada and a former B.C. Liberal constituency president; and Byng Giraud, Imperial Metals vice president and part of B.C. Liberal Education Minister George Abbott's past leadership campaign....


Imagine that!


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All snark aside, despite the fact that he has stepped away from the daily grind, Sean Holman's Public Eye archives are filled to bursting with important, relevant and topical information that is just waiting to leap out onto other proPundits pages if they will just do a little dot-connecting and then tell us what they actually know (or even think they know if they will offer it up as real opinion, possible loss of insider access passes be damned).

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6 comments:

Grant G said...

Bob Mackin had an interesting segment with Simi Sara at 1:30 pm to 1:45 pm today....


http://www.cknw.com/other/audiovault.html


It invovles Christy Clark and David Mclean


Cheers

RossK said...

Grant--

To quote Patti Smith....."Horses!"

(although I like the NASCAR analogy thing, I think it highlights thosethat just rent a little influence for awhile until the next lobbyist comes along and buys more ad space...The real owners, however, don't need [or want] to be labelled as such)

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Now, to get specific for a moment....Who, precisely runs the Vancouver Board of Trade that provided the Horse Owners with a little cover when Mr. Black left suddenly for that 'great opportunity' he couldn't refuse?

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Mr. Beer N. Hockey said...

It is called dutching in the gambling world when a punter backs more than one horse in a race. When doing so it is preferred that a profit be made no matter which horse wins. That, if I am not mistaken, is the Dutch Kinsella way.

RossK said...

Thanks Beer--

Now...

Get back to bar and/or the beach!

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Anonymous said...

I disagree with Vaughn Palmer about George Abbott's a year-long development of a policy platform for the B.C. Liberals in advance of the next provincial election.

I think Premier Christy Clark has put Abbott out there to 'submarine' Kevin Falcon if she goes down.

There were only three in the race to succeed Campbell that really had a chance: Clark, Falcon and Abbott. Abbott was clearly third, but he could have come up the middle.

If Clark goes down in the next election - or if Tsakumis tanks her with some hard (not hearsay) evidence - then Falcon is the de facto frontrunner.

This little team building excercise lets Abbott run around the province and make solid connections with the grassroots convention voting base in a way that the penny pinching Falcon can only dream of.

The year long tour will also allow Abbott's team to solidly identify and recruit local rainmakers so that Falcon won't be able to out spend Abbott in the lead up to the next BC Liberal leadership convention.

...or maybe CC is really putting the interests of the party ahead of her own...

RossK said...

Anon-Above--

Fantastic comment - thanks.

I completely agree with you in regarding your larger thesis....And that is why I have called Abbott horse 1A since before the leadership race went down..

I do disagree with you, however, in another respect, which is that I do not think this is being done by Clark, but rather the fine folks riding 1 and 1A.

Lastly, I completely agree with you re: hard vs. hearsay which is why I have stayed out of that for the moment.


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And what the heckfire....I'll throw it in here....Do you really think that Mr. Palmer doesn't know about this stuff in more detail than we do?


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