Bad publicity

Will McMartin points out that the Gordon Campbell regime is happily using B.C.'s budget to help the Liberal party rather than the province - and defying the spirit of the party's accountability legislation in the process:

(A)fter last May's general election saw the BC Liberals' legislative majority cut to a much-tighter 46 seats to the NDP's 33, Taylor has decided that the government's advertising expenditures should be jacked up to a whopping $28.1 million. That's more than 100 percent higher than last year's allocation...

Readers will recall that the BC Liberal government went dramatically over-budget in 2004-05, as Victoria's pre-election advertising expenditures totaled $18,994,161. That figure was well in excess of the budgeted $12.1 million.

By sheer coincidence, four of the government's most costly advertising initiatives were under "The Best Place on Earth" (TBPOE) initiative and produced by the same agency that, during the election campaign, unveiled similarly-themed general election ads for the BC Liberal party...

The corollary to this partisan misuse of taxpayer funds was that despite drastically exceeding the government's advertising budget, neither Premier Gordon Campbell nor any of his cabinet ministers suffered the embarrassment or financial cost of losing part of their salary as required under the much-touted Balanced Budget and Ministerial Accountability Act.

That's because the Public Affairs Bureau (PAB), the government agency responsible for all government communications, quietly sent some of the invoices for costly ad campaigns to various line ministries.

Not that Campbell and company have ever shown much propensity for taking responsibility for their own actions. But this appears to be a particularly egregious example of the B.C. Libs' standard for ethical behaviour being bare adherence to the letter of the law, rather than anything based on upholding the principles which helped win them power initially. And the only solace for British Columbians looking for better government is that with the N.D.P. strongly on the upswing, no amount put into partisan Liberal publicity seems likely to win them another term.