Kinder Morgan's controversial Trans Mountain pipeline is pitting First Nations and climate science against industry and the federal and B.C. governments. rabble's Alyse Kotyk is investigating how TMX will impact British Columbians in the lead-up to the May election. Read her preceding pieces here and here.

The B.C. Liberals are under scrutiny for accepting significant donations from lobbyists, including those connected to the controversial Trans Mountain pipeline expansion project, sparking an RCMP investigation.

According to Dogwood , a grassroots advocacy group, some of these sizeable donations have come from individuals connected to Kinder Morgan, only furthering their concern that the B.C. Liberals' support of the energy company’s Trans Mountain pipeline was given with a conflict of interest.

"We've got a system that opens us up to influence peddling that puts a cash price on decisions that need to be made by the provincial government," Kai Nagata, communications director for Dogwood told rabble over the phone.

"We have a situation like Kinder Morgan where the B.C. Liberals had one position, and $771,000 later, they managed to reverse their position."

According to Nagata, this financial influence can have significant ramifications in B.C.

"Putting a price tag on policy is dangerous for democracy and for the province if the projects being approved don’t receive the proper scrutiny as a result," he said.

Big Carbon's favourite political party

These alleged ties between political contributions and support for energy companies have continued to be an issue for activist groups leading up to the May 9 election. A report from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives' Corporate Mapping Project revealed that 48 fossil fuel companies and industry groups donated $5.2 million between 2008 and 2015. Of these donations, 92 per cent of the funds went to the B.C. Liberals.

"Clearly these corporations are profit-oriented," Bill Carroll, co-director of the Corporate Mapping Project, told rabble by phone. "So when they make political contributions, these are investments."

These investments, he said, are often in the hopes of seeing tangible results from the political party the corporations or lobbyists are donating to.

"It’s trying to put in power -- or keep in power -- a party that is generally sympathetic to its overall perspective," he said. “The B.C. Liberals are pro-business, so it's not surprising that they get 92 per cent of the total contributions from the carbon sector corporations."

On a wider scale, Carroll also pointed to concerns for what these donations mean for the environment.

"Of course there are concerns about democracy in all of this but there are also concerns about, what we call, 'the new denialism' in climate change politics. It's not an overt denialism," he said.

"The new denialism, is foot-dragging, basically. But you can see the traces of this foot-dragging in some of these relationships in political party contributions and in the role of Big Carbon funding a party that makes some gestures towards policy in the area of climate change, but doesn't seem to be very serious about it."