Terence Corcoran: The unethical left attacks Jim Pattison

An image posted on Instagram by BC Green Party Leader Emily Lowan advertises a protest scheduled for Vancouver on Friday Jan. 30 calling for a boycott of Canadian investor Jim Pattison’s companies after news that his real estate division was about to sell a Virginia property to Washington’s ICE. Photo by Instagram

Article content

When it comes to institutional ethics, few muddle the concept more than political activists and academics. The depth of the muddle is on full display in media coverage of the latest leftist attack on corporate Canada. Over the past week, news stories have pounced on a development highlighted in a recent Globe and Mail headline: “Vancouver mogul Jim Pattison’s company under fire for proposed sale of U.S. property to ICE.”

Article content

Article content

For readers who are living far from the madding crowd, ICE is the U.S. government’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement unit deployed by the Trump administration in various American cities, including Minneapolis where ICE forces have recently killed two demonstrators. The morality of these individual killings, and the ethical and political issues surrounding ICE’s activities and purpose, can rightly be condemned.

Article content

Article content

Article content

But it’s a long and bumpy road from the deployment of ICE to what has now turned into an attack on a few Canadian corporations that have had business dealings with the U.S. government organization. Two small companies have faced activists: Hootsuite, a Vancouver-based tech company, is under fire for doing business with ICE, along with Ontario armoured vehicle maker Rocher for selling trucks to ICE.

Article content

But nobody has been more prominently under scrutiny than Vancouver billionaire Jim Pattison.

Article content

Ranked 11th last year among Canada’s richest individuals, with a net worth estimated at $11.9 billion, Pattison is a sitting target. Privately owned, The Jim Pattison Group operates 20 national and international divisions, including food, forest products, advertising, media, and automobile retailing. As a multifaceted creator of wealth and growth, Pattison is an unmatched Canadian entrepreneur — which, of course, makes him vulnerable to an ideological takedown.

Article content

Article content

When it was recently revealed that one of Pattison’s real estate divisions had signed a deal to sell a giant warehouse it owns in Virginia to ICE, the political dust hit the fan. The numbers are fuzzy, but the company reportedly paid C$10 million for the property and spent a few million more upgrading it, making it attractive enough for ICE to be willing to pay the building’s estimated C$69-million pricetag.

Article content

Article content

Whatever the dollar numbers, they are small potatoes for the Pattison group, but on the left the deal is a field of rotting potatoes, a multifaceted breach of egalitarian anti-capitalist social-responsibility wealth-redistributionist sustainable-development and overall ethical breakdown. If Pattison were a no-name, small-time real estate dealer there would be not much to go after.

Article content

The story might not even have been news had it not been for political activists playing off a “greedy” billionaire.

Article content

One of the first to make news was Emily Lowan, head of the BC Green Party. Last Sunday, Lowan posted a video: “Yesterday I called for a boycott on B.C. billionaire Jim Pattison to cut his ties with ICE.”