Adam Pankratz: Eby takes aim at Jim Pattison, one of B.C.’s few captains of industry

Jim Pattison, founder of Jim Pattison Group Inc., centre, speaks to employees at a Save-On-Foods supermarket in 2018. Photo by Ben Nelms/Bloomberg

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Being a wildly successful, humble philanthropist isn’t as easy as it used to be. While society used to laud those who created jobs and wealth, today such activities are viewed with suspicion and even liable to land you in the cross-hairs of jealous politicians with an axe to grind.

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And so it was that, on Friday, B.C. NDP Leader David Eby stood in front of a Save-On-Foods supermarket in Kelowna to take cheap, gratuitous shots at the province’s homegrown billionaire, Jim Pattison. While taking such under-the-table shots is par for the course for Eby, it’s hard to think of someone less deserving of such treatment than Pattison.

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An observant person driving around the Lower Mainland will notice the names of B.C.’s great philanthropists on public buildings. That same person would also notice that one name is seen more often and in larger print than any other: Jim Pattison.

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He’s respected throughout the province not only for his incredible business success but because of how he has poured money into charitable gifts, notably in health care. For the new St. Paul’s Hospital in Vancouver, Pattison donated $75 million. That’s a Canadian record for a private citizen.

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St. Paul’s is not, however, the only beneficiary of Pattison’s philanthropy. In 1999, the Vancouver General Hospital received $20 million. Lions Gate Hospital got $5 million in 2008. Surrey Memorial Hospital received $5 million in 2011. Burnaby Hospital recently got $5 million. And in 2022, New Westminster’s Royal Columbian Hospital received $30 million to fund its redevelopment.

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That’s literally tens of millions of dollars given away to help British Columbians and their health-care needs. The scale of his charity ought to prevent venal politicians from slagging Pattison for the “crime” of being a billionaire, but those are not his only contributions to B.C. He also creates huge numbers of jobs.

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The Jim Pattison Group employs 57,000 people worldwide and has $20 billion in annual revenues. Around 45,000 of those employees are in British Columbia, which makes Pattison Group the province’s largest private employer. In an election campaign in which Eby has encouraged all and sundry to “Buy B.C.” and “Build B.C.,” it’s hard to think of anyone who has done more of that than Pattison.

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Moreover, from 2001 to 2022, the president and CEO of the Jim Pattison Group was former NDP premier Glen Clark. Indeed, most B.C. politicians have managed to recognize that, whether or not they agreed with everything Pattison did, he is certainly a net good for the province, as both a creator of jobs and wealth, and as a generous philanthropist.

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In today’s pathetically polarized world, however, characters like Eby can’t see past their own ideological noses to recognize someone who has made the province better.

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The fact that Eby chose the Pattison-owned Save-On-Foods rather than, say, Walmart, as the back drop for his cap on food prices announcement is as insulting as it is revelatory of a party that hates anything that might smell of private enterprise doing well.