You probably know about the military-industrial complex that drives American politics.

What do you know about the lobbyist-industrialist complex that lubricates Ontario politics?

Normally, this nexus operates behind the scenes: High-priced help arranges for high-powered clients to influence highly placed politicians at Queen’s Park.

Now the nexus is in full view. Thanks to a series of media leaks and legal rulings, the public can gain a rare glimpse into the deal making that animates Ontario politics.

The storyline involves two of the province’s storied firms:

EllisDon is the blue-chip construction company that called in its chits with the governing Liberals and opposition Tories. The firm had made massive campaign donations over the years, mostly to the grateful Liberals, and some Tories concluded that helping EllisDon could increase their share of future contributions.

StrategyCorp is the well-connected lobbying and consulting firm hired by EllisDon to do its bidding. The assignment: fix a delicate political and legal problem pitting EllisDon against unionized construction workers.

EllisDon found itself boxed in by claims from some construction unions that the company had promised, back in 1958, never to hire non-union workers in Sarnia. The Ontario Labour Relations Board (OLRB) agreed, and under subsequent rules mandating province-wide enforcement, the firm would be bound by the long-forgotten deal across Ontario.

EllisDon protested that it would be placed at a competitive disadvantage if other companies could still hire non-union labour. So the OLRB gave it a two-year waiver — time enough to lobby the legislature for a permanent exemption.

StrategyCorp swung into action, deploying two senior partners from both sides of the partisan divide to oversee the mission: John Duffy, a longtime Liberal insider, and Leslie Noble, an influential Tory tied to former premier Mike Harris. (Noble declined an on-the-record interview, and Duffy did not return calls or emails.)

How to persuade the minority legislature to craft a law tailored to EllisDon’s special situation? No amount of lobbying could make the Liberal government play ball. Labour Minister Yasir Naqvi wouldn’t bite. A lawyer with progressive leanings, he was in no mood to jeopardize his standing as a cabinet rookie by playing footsie with fast-talking lobbyists (Naqvi declined to discuss it on the record).

Instead, the Tories would be asked to carry the ball. Rookie backbencher Monte McNaughton, who represents a London-area riding where EllisDon is headquartered, agreed to propose a private member’s bill fixing the problem.

Non-government bills rarely gain traction in the legislature, but StrategyCorp had helped secure Liberal backing for the Tory MPP’s proposal — a conspicuous display of bipartisan co-operation. The two rival parties went even further by agreeing to prioritize the controversial EllisDon bill, speeding it through the legislature.

Premier Kathleen Wynne publicly defended the bill as a necessary corrective for EllisDon. It was an unusually passionate defence of a bill circumscribing union rights, coming from a premier widely viewed as a labour-friendly progressive.

What Wynne didn’t say was that EllisDon, its subsidiaries and executives, have been shockingly generous donors to her party: more than $125,000 to the Liberals in 2012 and more than $40,000 so far in 2013, thanks to Ontario’s scandalously weak campaign financing laws (corporate contributions are banned at the federal level).

And what the Tories didn’t say publicly was that EllisDon had given them a still-generous $32,000 last year and some $14,000 so far in 2013. Now, they were hoping for even bigger contributions if they went to bat for the company.

That quiet calculation became a public embarrassment when the Toronto Star published a leaked email from Tory labour critic Randy Hillier. The maverick MPP admonished his fellow Tories against what struck him as a crass political calculation — counting on a windfall from an EllisDon fundraiser for Tory Leader Tim Hudak after helpfully advancing the legislation.

The party was “walking on thin ice,” Hillier cautioned in the email. “In caucus, it was stated quite explicitly that following a successful EllisDon fundraiser for Tim, our party would continue to benefit financially with the advancement of this legislation.”

A skeptical Hillier noted that EllisDon had given the Liberals more than $250,000 from 2004-2011, compared to $60,000 for the Tories. In any case, he warned MPPs, they might be violating rules against buying votes. EllisDon denied there was any such arrangement, as did Hudak, who later stripped Hillier of his labour responsibilities.

But the damage was done. NDP Leader Andrea Horwath had a field day lumping the labour-friendly Liberals with the union-busting Tories, both of them getting big money from EllisDon. The optics were awful.

More important, the issue was starting to drive a classic wedge between the Liberal party and its bedrock supporters in the labour movement. Pat Dillon, business manager of the Building and Construction Trades Council, appealed directly to Wynne and other MPPs to reject any bill, written at the behest of one employer, to let it escape its legal obligations.

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Dillon is no ordinary labour leader. He is also the force behind the Working Families coalition, which rallies some of Ontario’s biggest unions at election time to bankroll aggressive anti-Tory ad campaigns that have greatly benefited the Liberals over the years. Dillon’s protests created further discomfort within the Liberal caucus, where progressive MPPs sought reassurances that they wouldn’t have to support the Tory bill.

Wedges were opening up on all sides: between Wynne and her union backers, her corporate donors, and her caucus supporters.

Against that backdrop of rising tensions, another twist came from Ontario’s Divisional Court last month. Siding with EllisDon, it ruled that the OLRB hadn’t gone far enough in exempting the company from an outdated and unenforceable union hiring provision. Instead of a two-year waiver, EllisDon merited a permanent exemption, the court said.

In effect, the Divisional Court had rendered StrategyCorp’s elaborate strategy redundant. The special pleading on behalf of EllisDon looked even more like overkill.

Seizing the opportunity, Wynne ducked. In light of the latest court ruling, she publicly dropped her support for the EllisDon bill — provided, she noted, there were no further court appeals from the unions.

Then last week, after the unions did launch an appeal, the premier zigzagged yet again. Regardless of the ongoing court appeal, she would no longer support the special EllisDon bill in the legislature.

It was a maladroit exit from a misconceived strategy. Torn between fealty to a fundraiser and loyalty to labour, Wynne bounced back and forth between them — pleasing no one and undermining her credibility with everyone.

If all this behind-the-scenes manoeuvring, negotiating and triangulating seems awfully mysterious, you’re not alone. Even the province’s most distinguished judges underestimate the power of the lobbyist-industrialist nexus — as evidenced by a fascinating postscript in last month’s Divisional Court decision:

A major reason for overruling the OLRB was that the judges thought EllisDon could not possibly persuade MPPs to craft a special law on its behalf. After all, the last time labour laws were streamlined in the construction industry to placate employers was when the Mike Harris Tories were in power.

“The political climate that existed in 1999-2000 was unique,” the judges wrote this summer, dabbling in the realm of political science. “Those days are gone. There is a different government; a different environment; and no allies for EllisDon to pursue its special remedy (my emphasis).”

Oblivious to the byplay at Queen’s Park, the judges added: “There is no realistic prospect that . . . EllisDon will be able to persuade a different government, under completely different circumstances, to fix its unique problem.”

How wrong the learned judges were. Unschooled in the dark arts of politics and the stagecraft of StrategyCorp, they underestimated EllisDon’s ability to seize the opportunity. And politicians’ capacity for opportunism.

Thanks to EllisDon’s well-financed lobbying, and its well-funded donating, it had already persuaded the legislature to “fix its unique problem.” Until, that is, the Divisional Court did it for them.

The court had its own reasons for accepting EllisDon’s arguments. The question is why the company didn’t stick to the law courts in arguing its case, rather than trying to influence lawmakers in the legislature with its special pleading, well-heeled lobbyists and well-financed campaign donations.

The bigger question: How much longer will Ontario allow corporations (and unions) to make such outsized contributions that pervert the political process and/or distort our perception of it? Anyone who made or accepted such enormous contributions in Ottawa would be breaking federal law. Why must Ontario remain a free-for-all open to the highest bidder?