Home »
Someone is lying
Letter to the Editor
This letter is in response to Bill Bennett’s claim that I have not communicated with his office at any time about the HiTest project.
In my last MLA report, I laid out the critical problems with a government that is willing to waste taxpayer dollars on advertising that isn’t really being honest with British Columbians. Too often we see misleading claims made, including the BC Liberals’ election promises around job growth and LNG.
And locally, we’ve seen prominent BC Liberals like East Kootenay MLA Bill Bennett and former candidate Doug Clovechok up the misleading rhetoric into blatant, and easily disprovable, lies. The latest of these lies is Mr. Bennett’s recent letter to the editor claiming that I never once contacted his ministry about the HiTest Sand project in Golden.
If Mr. Bennett had bothered to check with staff he would find my letter dated December 9, 2014 from bringing to his attention this project. He likely read it. But instead of being honest he tried to score a political point against me by lying about it.
This is a pattern for Mr. Bennett. Recently in the House he stated not only that he never attended the fundraising dinner co-hosted by Imperial Mines owner Murray Edwards in Calgary to raise money for Doug Clovechok and the BC Liberal campaign in 2013, that he never even knew about it. But virtually every news outlet in the region had a story featuring Mr. Clovechok saying that Bill Bennett had attended. So, either Mr. Clovechok is lying, or Mr. Bennett is lying.
This is not a singular occurrence for Mr. Clovechok. There’s this whopper, told to Columbia Valley media about why I didn’t attend a meeting held with the Minister of Transportation. He claimed that I was invited but refused to attend. When journalists pushed back on this claim his promise to get them proof never materialized – no invitation was ever issued therefore it could not be refused. That’s what the record showed.
As I said in my MLA report, we need to have meaningful discussion about how to make our province better. But that real discussion can never begin with mistruths.
And putting political ideology and partisan preferences aside, people in this region do not want to be lied to. People in this region want truthfulness from those who ask to represent them. It’s a simple as that.
Norm Macdonald,

Columbia River-Revelstoke MLA