After pitching in on three campaigns, lawyer hates what he sees on TV. A Tyee interview.
Paul Doroshenko’s first political volunteer job was sawing stakes and putting out signs for Gordon Campbell in 2001. From there the lawyer moved to the phones, ringing up people to urge them to vote BC Liberal. A grateful party appointed their keener to be a scrutineer at polling stations on Election Day.
In all Doroshenko worked on three election campaigns with BC Liberals. He was so dedicated, as he recently tweeted, he’d pound campaign signs in the ground “Often in the pouring rain. In my suit on the way to court.”
Not anymore. In March, Doroshenko and fellow lawyer David Fai filed a notice of claim in B.C. Supreme Court against the BC Liberal Party and provincial government for breach of trust for its use of tax money for advertisements.
The pair allege about $15 million was used improperly on advertisements supposedly on behalf of the B.C. government but actually intended to make the party look good.
The Tyee spoke to Doroshenko about his 180 of the heart.
The Tyee: You were a BC Liberal supporter in the past but now you’re challenging the government fairly aggressively. What’s changed for you?
Doroshenko: “Lots of things. I guess the main thing is pay-to-play. That started when I was a Campbell supporter. We were at a Christmas party one year and shortly before or after Gordon spoke someone else spoke and announced they had created Club 300. They announced it as a great new thing: ‘You’ll get invited to all these extra things if you donate $300 a year.’ And I didn’t like it. I thought, ‘This is offensive. You shouldn’t have to pay for access.’ Now we look and we see paying for access. People are paying thousands of dollars [to the BC Liberal Party] to go to dinner, you know, and then they’re getting contracts. To me that’s really repulsive.
“This year, watching the advertising [paid for with tax dollars], it was so blatantly partisan. So much was designed just to enhance the BC Liberals and there was so much of it. Fifteen million dollars over a four-month period, basically, was being spent on these ads. Their justification was fentanyl. There was almost nothing about fentanyl. I saw a couple posters in bathrooms at restaurants about what to do if you see somebody who has overdosed but the rest was TV ads run on the hockey game telling people the budget is balanced. It just boiled my blood. It boiled my blood. I thought between this and cash for access, and Christy Clark taking $50,000 a year. It’s cynical and it smacks of such bad cronyism. I just can’t support it.”
Read the full interview with Paul Doroshenko on The Tyee:
https://thetyee.ca/News/2017/05/05/Paul-Doroshenko-Suing-BC-Liberals/