Liberal MLA Bill Bennett is seen in this file photo from 2013.Chad Hipolito/The Canadian Press
Mines Minister Bill Bennett should not be involved in the development of hunting policies in B.C. because of his personal and financial links to a guide outfitting business, critics say.
NDP MLA Katrine Conroy said Thursday that Mr. Bennett should have distanced himself from the decision-making process around controversial hunting regulations the government recently adopted.
"He shouldn't have been involved in another minister's file, and he also should have recused himself from cabinet when these decisions were being made," she said in an interview.
Last week, Ms. Conroy released leaked e-mails in which Mr. Bennett says he has "been intimately involved in the allocation file," which dealt with wildlife quotas. In December, the government changed its wildlife allocation policy, giving guide outfitters an increased share of big game.
"The e-mails show he obviously has some fingers in the pie and his behaviour is questionable," Ms. Conroy said.
On Thursday, The Globe and Mail reported that Mr. Bennett is still owed $70,000 for an unpaid shareholder loan he made 14 years ago to Height of the Rockies Adventure Co. Ltd., a commercial hunting business that has lodge in southeast B.C. Mr. Bennett once held shares in the company but sold them on entering politics so that he would be free to engage in hunting issues. He said his brother and two best friends retained shares in the company, and he has frequently visited the lodge. He said the business recently sold at a loss and he expects to get repaid only about $30,000 of the loan.
Mr. Bennett said from the moment he entered politics he has been careful to avoid being caught in a conflict.
"I have asked the Conflict of Interest Commissioner whether I had any obligation to recuse myself from discussions at committee meetings about hunting and fishing and guide outfitting and resident hunting and this sort of thing, and he said 'no.' So I've done everything that I think a politician should do," he said.
"I think the public has a right to feel comfortable that the people who are making public-policy decisions don't have some sort of vested interest. If I have a bias it is toward the resident hunter."
But leading conservationists feel otherwise.
"These relationships raise issues as to whether he can in any way objectively help to create [wildlife] policy," said Chris Genovali of Raincoast Conservation Foundation. "I think the most important issue in my mind is not necessarily his business-interest relationship … but the influence he exerts within the provincial government on shaping policies and the bias that he brings to it and the kind of mindset that I think is all too prevalent in the trophy-hunting lobby." He said Mr. Bennett "needs to be taken off that [wildlife] portfolio … because he cannot objectively participate in shaping those policies."
Ian McAllister of Pacific Wild agreed. "He's been relentless in who he talks to and what he promotes, and wildlife in this province does not get a fair shake when he's involved in it," he said. "Whenever there is a progressive wildlife-related conservation initiative being put forward with this government, at the end of the day it always gets blocked … and it almost always goes back to Bill Bennett."
Jesse Zeman of the BC Wildlife Federation said his organization won't comment on Mr. Bennett's involvement with a guide outfitting company, but the government has clearly made policy changes that favour guide outfitters.
"I'm not going to speak on the individual level, but in terms of the direction that [government is] heading with the [guiding] industry it's not consistent with the best interest of … the resident hunter, and it doesn't appear to be consistent with the best interest of the general public," Mr. Zeman said.