Thursday, February 21, 2013

Li Ka-Shing Wanted Fantasy Gardens

Bill Vander Zalm reveals that Li Ka-shing wanted Fantasy Gardens

Former B.C. premier Bill Vander Zalm's recently published autobiography hasn't garnered much attention from the media.
Part of the reason is that Bill Vander Zalm For the People: Hindsight-Insight-Foresight is self-published, and there wasn't a high-powered publicity campaign accompanying its release last December.
But anyone interested in B.C. politics in the late 1980s will be intrigued by the former premier's memoirs. Here are a few revelations that Vander Zalm, who was premier from 1986 to 1991,  has included in the book:
* Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-shing met Vander Zalm at the premier's Richmond theme park, Fantasy Gardens, on a sunny Sunday afternoon. At the time, Li was a bidder for a big chunk of the former Expo site on the Vancouver waterfront. They did not discuss the sale of the Expo site, according to Vander Zalm, but Li asked if the premier would consider selling the Gardens. "I told him it was out of the question," Vander Zalm writes. "He dropped the whole conversation then and there. I always believed that in the overall scope of things such a move would have been pocket change for him, but would have been a disaster for both him and ourselves." (Li eventually was the winning bidder for the former Expo site in a competition dogged by controversy over whether Vander Zalm's friend, businessman Peter Toigo, was trying to gain an inside track--something Vander Zalm vehemently denies in the book. When Vander Zalm later sold Fantasy Gardens to a Taiwanese tycoon named Tan Yu, it led to his downfall as premier because Tan had been interested in obtaining a licence to operate a trust company in B.C.)
* According to Vander Zalm, he visited the home of Social Credit leadership contestant Grace McCarthy before entering the race in 1986. He claims in the book that he agreed to support McCarthy if she was ahead of him at the Socred convention in Whistler that year. And McCarthy agreed to support him if he was ahead. However, McCarthy freed her delegates at the convention rather than throw her support behind Vander Zalm, who was winning. "I was very, very disappointed that Grace didn't come to me as we had talked," Vander Zalm writes. "I considered myself honour bound to move to her if the results were reversed. I don't know why she did what she did. We never discussed this matter again, but things between Grace and I were not the same after the campaign." (Later, McCarthy and the former attorney general and leadership campaign runnerup, Brian Smith, refused to serve in Vander Zalm's cabinet.)
* Vander Zalm's wife Lillian did not trust the former deputy attorney general, Ted Hughes, to deliver an honest and fair decision in assessing whether or not the premier was in a conflict in his land dealings with Tan Yu. "Her belief came in part because, as so often, she had an intuitive feeling, and secondly, maybe most importantly, because Ted Hughes had served Brian Smith for so long. She was certain that their allegiance would have a bearing on the outcome." Hughes reported that the premier mixed public and private business. Vander Zalm added that Mel Smith, a former assistant deputy attorney general, told him that he must challenge Hughes's report. Vander Zalm told  Mel Smith, who is deceased, that he didn't have the stomach for it anymore. (Vander Zalm was charged with breach of trust and was acquitted.)

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