Frequently Asked Questions

1) Where can I get the list of donors to the BC Liberal Party?

You can download the filing reports for any political party from the Elections BC website. Those reports list anyone who has contributed over $250.

Click on http://142.36.252.26/bcimg/ or click on http://electoralfinance.elections.bc.ca/bcimg/. Enter Liberal and then click on British Columbia Liberal Party. A menu of their past filings will appear. Click on the most recent one. It takes a few minutes while the program compiles and downloads it. Compiling a list of the top donors is a little tougher as it would really require searching through thousands of names and compiling it for more than just one year. The pdf file that is downloadable from the Elections BC website contains graphical images of the documents that were filed. The names of donors are in alphabetical order but because of the format you cannot simply cut and past it to a spreadsheet.

2) Where can I get information comparing BC and other provinces?

The Statistics Canada website provides regular economic series by province. Click here for some key indicators. BC Stats also provides some free data.

3) Where can I get data on income distribution?

See http://www.statcan.ca/cgi-bin/downpub/listpub.cgi?catno=75F0002MIE
for Income Research Papers

Some interesting Statistics Canada data are at
http://www.statcan.ca/english/Pgdb/famili.htm#inc.

Canada Customs and Revenue data are at
http://www.cra-arc.gc.ca/agency/stats/menu-e.html.

4) How much are MLAs and the Premier paid?

In April '97-01 an MLA's salary was $69,900. In April 2001 the base salary was increased 3.05% to $72,100. This base salary does NOT include additional salaries allocated to various positions described below. The 5% cut announced Jan. 29, 2002 only applied to the $72,100 base, reducing it to $68,500 until March 31, 2005. There were less than two dozen MLAs who received only the base salary. As of May 2005, MLAs' base pay was $75,400 when the pay freeze ended.

In addition to salary, MLAs receive a benefit package including dental, extended health, life insurance and employer paid (taxpayer paid) MSP premiums - those are the premiums they increased by 50% for everyone else.

Premier Campbell's total salary before the so-called 5% cut was $117,100. With the 5% cut to his base salary British Columbians are now paying him an annual salary of $113,500. In effect this amounts to a 3.1% cut in pay for Premier Campbell.

Government also makes a big deal out of the 20% penalty cabinet ministers will suffer if they don't cut services enough. The 20% only applies to the ministerial bonuses, not to the base, so it really is 7% of total pay.

On top of the base pay, the following extras are paid by position:
Premier $45000
Ministers with Portfolios $39000
Ministers without Portfolios $25000
Parliamentary Secretary $ 6000
Speaker of the House $39000
Deputy Speaker $19500
Government Whip $ 9000
Deputy Whip $ 6000
Caucus Chair $ 9000
Deputy Chair-Committee of the Whole $ 9000
Committee Chairs $ 6000
Deputy Chairs $ 3000


In addition to salary each MLA receives the
Members Indemnities and Allowances

Capital City Allowance - $48/day; $150 overnight
60 trips to Victoria per year - no $ limit
Mileage - 42 cents per kilometer
Plus provisions for operating a constituency office.