From the Vancouver Sun:
Bill
Bennett is still trying to put his past behind him
Unpaid
$65,000 loan continues to link Kootenay East MLA to guide-outfitting
operation BY
LARRY PYNN, VANCOUVER SUN
Shortly before Bill
Bennett first ran for the B.C. Liberals in 2001, he sought to sever ties with a
guide-outfitting company operating within a provincial wilderness park in the
Rocky Mountains.Problem is, when
Bennett sold his shares, the company didn’t have the money to pay him
out.Today, that “loan
receivable” remains on his official disclosure statement in Victoria, a link to
a curious business past that the ever-controversial Kootenay East MLA can’t
completely shake.“I’ve been waiting for
this call for 12 years,” he told The Vancouver Sun.“I knew some day
somebody would say, ‘This guy has a conflict, he’s got an interest in a
guide-outfitting territory.’ So I sold my shares before I got into politics.
It’s all documented and clean as a whistle.”Bennett, who is also
minister of community, sport and cultural development, said he never planned to
invest in trophy hunting when he moved to Cranbrook in 1994, two years after
earning his law degree, at age 42, from Queen’s University in Kingston,
Ont..........
Maarten Hart, a veterinarian who ran the local gun club in Fernie, accused Bennett in a 2007 email of favouring big-game outfitters over resident hunters and said the Liberal government “bows to the almighty dollar and faces east three time each day (not to Mecca, but to Wall Street.)”
Bennett furiously fired off an email from his hotel room, calling Hart “dumb” for not knowing who his friends are, and labelling him an “American spy.” He said: “Let me be very direct with you, as you were with me. It is my understanding that you are an American, so I don’t give a shit what your opinion is on Canada.”
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