The Ben Mulroney Show - Exclusive -- The unseen hand guiding BC politics

Episode Date: August 14, 2026

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At Real Canadian Superstore, when you're ready, we're ready, with a whole world and more. hear that it's your money calling it wants a promotion elevate your savings with the scotia high-interest savings account always earn high regular interest rates that grow the more you save and invest conditions apply visit scotia bank.com slash h-i-sa to learn more scotia bank you're richer than you think british columbia votes on october 17th and if you've been watching that province lately you may have thought to yourself, they're getting away with a lot that some people probably didn't vote for. So how did people actually end up in power out there? Well, it's far more complicated than simply saying, well, residents vote. There are groups that hide in plain sight, yet they are extremely

shadowy in how they conduct business that are in play, advocacy groups that don't run candidates, don't endorse anybody, and don't legally have to tell you about where a single dollar of their funding comes from. Yet, they have an incredible and documented track record for winning elections. And by the way, many of those people pulling the strings, they don't hide their end goal, decolonize British Columbia. Do I have your attention? My next guest runs a civil accountability publication in Victoria called BC Politics Watch, which most recently was the first to report on how the BCNDP were moving to transfer vast swaths of land over to indigenous groups with no public consuled They published under a collective byline.

He will explain why. And he goes by David. David, welcome. Ben, thanks very much for having me. Great to be with you on the show. All right. Let's get into this first and foremost. Why the anonymity?

Well, as you can tell, we're probably persona non-grata around British Columbia at the moment. And questioning City Hall in Victoria has historically come with real consequences. Some of you may or may not recall, in 2024, a firefighter was the same. for writing a letter to Premier David Eby, raising his concerns for the opening of a consumption site in a family neighborhood. He was subsequently suspended without pay, and ever since then,

there's been a chill across the city, from whether you like an Instagram post to signing your name to a petition, that has now come with personal and professional consequences for people. Our publication has been called racist and anti-Indigenous by MLA Grace Law for raising the, I'd say, you know, what's happening with the land treaty here, land treaties here in Victoria. So there are consequences and that's why we're anonymous. But why should our listeners pay attention to this? Why should they care? Well, I think across Canada, there's a lot of attention that's paid to politics at the provincial level. But what's happening here, local government is increasingly shaped by the public you didn't elect. And it isn't the end of the line. It's the on-ramp.

So you have local politicians, they get in at the municipal level, and then they progress to the provincial and then to the federal level. So what happens here in Victoria, it may actually be impacting federal politics. It all starts right year local issues. And we need more attention to that. It's not just the land. It's everything from rezoning to drug sites and we need to pay more attention to local politics. I guess if you look at this issue and say this doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Chances are there's a reason for that.

So let's unravel this. And we'll start with the heart of it. How do these groups? How are they able to influence votes and voters? Because there's a loophole in the system. It is a loophole. And I'm so glad you use that word because it is it's hiding in plain sense. So the BC law, so this isn't actually Canadian law. It's unique to BC. We have a local elections campaign financing act. It is strict, but it has a loophole. And if a third party group opposes a pipeline, for example, there are caps on advertising, Ben. Let's be clear. And it's capped at 184,000, and that's across the province. Fine. But what the cap actually covers, BC law, and bear with me for a moment,

BC law defines election advertising as any transmission of a communication to the public. But read what the cap actually covers. The law defines election advertising as any transmission of communication to the public. But what they're not covering is the organizing forces behind them. So none of the groups, you know, how many paid volunteers they have, how many paid professional staff, whether they're full-time, part-time, they have hundreds of trained volunteers, door knocking, targeting neighborhoods, voter lists. None of that is regulated. There's no limit or cap on that. And so one of the groups I think we're going to talk about in a bit,

they have built up voter lists over 20 years. And so those numbers add up, and they add up, especially at the local level, where it is not controlled, it is not regulated, and that's where the loophole and the scrutiny of that loophole is so important where it counts. So it's like they capped the cheapest thing in a campaign completely ignoring the most valuable ones. And that's a significant ground game, word of mouth influence. So the loophole is that these advocacy groups can campaign around ideas, but not specifically for candidates. That's right. So the moment you name a candidate is when it's regulated. But there's nothing to stop them from having, as I said, volunteers, professional staff, full-time staff.

and door knocking across neighborhoods. And those voter lists are becoming increasingly more importantness because this is where they identify who to target. And the phone banks, their own data and their own website does publish, does give you some insight into the scale of these nonprofit organizations. One has claimed 42,5151 live calls in a single campaign. I don't have the time to make 510 phone calls, Ben. let alone 42,000.

So they're big. They're big and that's the loophole and that's where it should be scrutinized. Okay, so we've set the table. Let's serve the meal. The advocacy group in BC that is the best at this, the top of the top, they're called Dogwood. Who are they?

We've got to give credit what credits do because they are big and they have been around since 1999 in Victoria. based off our estimates, probably about 15 to 20 staff. They have an annual revenue of $1.9 million. So nobody's getting rich in this organization. It's not as if they have a $20 million revenue here. It's 1.9, but it's the structural fact that everything that follows them is what matters.

They're not a registered charity. So Dogwood is a society and it is deliberate. Because charities face limits on political activity, whereas societies, they don't. So there's no Canada Revenue Agency return, nothing that we can see publicly. And there's no line. This is crucial. There is no line asking about money from outside Canada. There's no public filing at that.

So I leave this to you to deduce where I'm going with this. Yeah, well, they always say follow the money. So where does the funding come from? Well, and just one thing, they're not, they are, say, on the whole, they are described as an environmental group in the conventional sense, but it's really an electoral organizing machine. They get their funding. What we used to see it, a lot of that was coming from the United States.

They used to tell you. And so prior to 2021, on their annual reports, They used to list their funders by name in their annual ports. And some of those American foundations that have been contributing to them historically were the Tides Foundation, USA, and they're based in San Francisco, the Bullitt Foundation in Seattle, Brain Nerd Foundation, also Seattle, the Wilberforce Foundation. You guessed it, also Seattle. And the West Wind Foundation.

They are all very prominent, progressive, environmental-focused U.S. philanthropic foundation. and the last report that named anyone, Ben, was in 2020. So they used to name them, and then now it's dropped off a cliff. We don't have any visibility on that, and they are under no legal obligation to share that with us. They don't actually have to say where they're getting their funding. And so that's concerning to Canadians. From 30,000 feet from where I'm sitting,

it sounds like foreign interference or American interference. I wish I could call the elbows up crowd, but we can't say that it is because they're following the law. They were funded by American foundations, as we know, up until 2020. But we have no evidence, and neither does anyone else been, because there's no filing that would contain it. And we're not describing a crime here. This is a loophole.

And I'd rather talk about it now, and thank you for bringing this up. nine weeks before an election rather than nine weeks after the fact. Your summer travels deserve an upgrade. With select Chevrolet, Buick, GMC, and Cadillac vehicles connected by OnStar, you can stream, game, and more on the go. Whether you're headed to a music festival or a cottage getaway, you can access hundreds of apps on Google Play right from your center display. Explore OnStar Tech today at OnStar.ca and discover how to take your summer to the next level.

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David, we were talking about listed funders of the group Dogwood, at least up until 2021. And they all used to be listed as all about environmental advocacy. Has that changed? Definitely. And this is the part that is not necessarily being broadcast, at least I think it's on their website, certainly. But this is the part I really want people to hear because the frameworks that we were talking about, they were all built for something else. That has shifted. In 2008, Dogwood's mission was about local control.

So communities and First Nations, co-management, collaboration, and that kind of crossed from whether it was coal bed methane and oil tankers. But it has shifted, and it's shifted dramatically, particularly since 2019, but even in the last year and a half or so. And today, as sitting board members, his official bio describes, submission as to, and quote, I quote this. This is on their website, Ben, to democratize, decarbonize, and decolonize British Columbia. So those are the big three objectives. And one of them, only one of them is environmental. So big shift, noticeable shift. And I think this thing we need to

pay attention to. Yeah, from their own annual report, decolonize BC. It's there, front and center. And it's, And I'm going to read it from you. You can go on to their website. Dogwood is committed to dismantling colonial systems and ideas in BC. And then on their indigenous... So they have a number of different pages. It's all there front and center.

Anyone can read it. Look it up. Their indigenous rights page says, British Columbia is a resource colony founded on land theft, white supremacy, and genocide. And their 2021 annual report describes the province it goes further as unseated, stolen indigenous territory. So that is how they characterize British Columbia and the people who live here.

And like anyone else, they're entitled to every word of it. And I want to be absolutely clear about that. But that is the characterization that this organization is making about our province. This is remarkable. I want to be clear. It's my opinion. It's brazen and terrifying. So let's talk about what they do.

Start with the issues, anything we might have heard of. Well, they've been successful. They have been really successful. At least they claim to have been very successful. They claim on their website, let's start out with again, they initially described themselves as an environmental advocacy group, but as they noted, the issues and concerns have shifted. But the environmental issues, they were claimed to have been involved with

and impacted those decisions where the North Coast oil tanker ban. So that law came into effect in 2019. They began, they campaigned on it from 2007. So they have some history, Ben. The Enbridge Northern Gateway, that was cancelled. Dead in 2016. The Fraser Surrey docks coal port, in their own words, after six years fighting a U.S. thermal coal terminal.

The port of Vancouver finally canceled the permit. So that is, they also claim to have influenced BC's 2017 campaign finance reforms. They launched a campaign, a pretty smart campaign, pretty catchy. They ran a campaign called Ban Big Money and the province banned corporate and union donations. And so the track record is real and it's proven, which is why we all need to be aware of their organizing. Yeah, I want to repeat this.

some of the biggest environmental stories of the past decade, the oil tanker ban, Northern Gateway. Dogwood claims to have influenced them. And I believe it. People do not realize how big this particular group is, but also just the entire sector, environmental advocacy, with, it's enormous and they're effective. But the one thing that really irks me, the American tankers are still coming through, Ben. The American tankers are still in. So it's kind of selective.

It's almost selective campaigning. The Americans are getting through, but the Canadian tankers are not. Okay, so we've talked about individual issues. Let's talk more generally about elections. Do they make claims about their effectiveness there? They do. They do. And more than that, they actually name.

the MPs and even in some cases the MLAs, who they've beat. So this is, I think, I need to find some, can't find more recent data, but their 2016 report claimed that in 19 writings, they worked in and they advocated and volunteered in. Conservative candidates lost 82,000 votes. So they don't claim to have elected anyone. They claim to have beaten people. So that's an important, something to distinguish. and they name them. They name who they beat, but they don't name who they support it.

Now, how do they do all of this? They're organized. They're very open about it. They hire people and they hire full-time. So right now, so they're headquartered here in Victoria in a small neighborhood called North Park. They posted a municipal election campaign position for just under, I believe it was $59,000, I think for a nine-month position. and then organizing coordinators, again, $59 to $61,000. And to compare those, just for comparison's sake, what a Victoria City Councilor will make after this October election is $59,000.

So the people hired to shape who sits on council are paid the same rate as the people who sit on it, except they're working full-time. They have hundreds of trained volunteers behind them. and they don't have to get elected to keep the job. Okay, so I want to see if I can envision this. You've got entire election teams, machines running independently, but parallel to the candidates that they actually want to elect. Yes, precisely.

And let's go back to what I said before. There is no rule against coordinating. So the infrastructure and the organization behind that is not capped. So you could have 500 volunteers running around Victoria at door knocking. And they do. I don't know about this particular election if it's 500, but they do. And they're effective. And it's only the advertising, which is capped.

So it's pretty effective. Okay, so we got to recap this. Non-profit societies in British Columbia are legally allowed to advertise during elections, and we have no way of knowing who's funding them, and it's entirely legal. Totally legal, totally above board. And this is where the loophole matters. And it's not just one group, Ben. There are roughly 12 registered third party sponsors here in Victoria.

We're a city of 90,000 people. So, you know, and they coordinate, I would say also with other organizations. That's something we should probably mention. They share voter data with and on their website, quote, like-minded organizations, such as Homes for Living, which was registered in 2022, but most of the donors for these organizations, the filings are anonymous. So they're not breaking any rules. That is the rule. Under BC, only contributions of only of $100 a more get named. So this isn't a conspiracy. 12 organizations, each following the law, exactly, and a voter in Victoria cannot find out who was

funding them. So it's all above board bend, and that's the loophole. I think my last question is probably my most obvious one at this point. Why don't more people or organizations speak out against what groups like Dogwood are doing? They are and have been litigious. Dogwood in particular, they teamed up with four other environmental groups to sue former Alberta Premier Jason Kenney for defamation, alleging he twisted the results of a $3.5 million public inquiry to falsely claim that they were running a foreign-funded campaign of misinformation against Canada's oil industry. And that case has not been resolved. Well, thank you so much for joining us, David. We appreciate it. And if you'd like to follow

David, you can go to BC Politics Watch on Twitter. Thanks very much, Ben. Look, there's always been a shadowy element to politics, but nothing like this. Let me put this way. If an American company, wants a stake in a Canadian mind, there's a review. If a foreign firm buys a pipeline, we know the percentage. But money into a non-profit society that turns around. Ozone gives you a better way to play in Canada. Perfectify practice.

With so much experience to draw on, it's like having your own coach. Whatever your favorite game, we have your playbook. Ozone. Well played. Discover free sports tips, casino games and poker guides at Ozone.net. Advertises in municipal elections and helps stop natural resource development, that's legal? Look, the Hog Commission recommended sweeping changes for foreign interference, but I don't think they envisioned applying that to the provinces and municipalities.

Depending on where you live, municipal elections are either in October or November. Canada, pay attention to where you get your information.