Yesterday was a huge day in the CN BC Rail pre-trial, with Justice Elizabeth Bennett throwing a new name into the allowable court proceedings, Patrick Kinsella, Gordo's top advisor.
Apparently, emails have been entered into evidence that have a BC Rail employee emailing the government and asking why they had Patrick Kinsella on their payroll. The response given was, "he is Liberal backroom". It seems he was getting paid 4k a month from BC Rail to do nothing, or at least nothing that BC Rail was aware of and this was during the time of the sale proceedings.
Here is a link to the Province article, and a snippet from it, however they buried details that have been reported elsewhere, like the email.
Patrick Kinsella, a friend of Premier Gordon Campbell and one of the most powerful stringpullers in the B.C. Liberal party, has made a killing on government contracts since guiding his pals to power in 2001.
Kinsella was co-chairman of the Liberal election campaign that year. He was a top Liberal strategist again in 2005 when Campbell was re-elected.
When he wasn't running Liberal election campaigns, Kinsella was busy running a lucrative business as a government-relations consultant. His speciality: helping corporate clients like Accenture and Alcan bag juicy contracts with the Campbell government.
Now it turns out even Crown corporations were hiring Kinsella — including nearly $300,000 in deals with B.C. Rail that touched off a firestorm at the legislature yesterday.
B.C. Rail paid the money to Kinsella's companies starting in 2002 — about the same time the Campbell government was planning to privatize the publicly owned railroad.
Here is another link to a blog about it all