January 30, 2002

Learn to Check Original Sources
So you can separate truth from fiction

Even major media outlets are now acknowledging that Premier Campbell broke elections promises, changed his mind or perhaps even lied. Most people have a very difficult time determining who to believe. That is why it is important to be able to check original source documents like the audited public accounts, collective agreements, and arbitration reports.

An excellent letter to the editor by former Finance Minister Paul Ramsey was recently published. A copy of it appears on the NDP website. Note that Ramsey backs every statement up with a reference on where the original source can be found that documents what he says.

For those that don't have the time or inclination to check some of Ramsey's facts, an extract from the 2000/01 Public Accounts is reproduced here. Those accounts were released under the name of Finance Minister Gary Collins and verified by the auditor general. The following extract is from page 10 of the Provincial Financial Reporting Overview. The original also contains a column showing the 2000-01 estimates compared to the final audited results. The estimates had forecast a deficit but the actual year finished with a $1.498 billion surplus. That followed a $40 million surplus for fiscal year 1999-2000.

Just as financial reports are important in the political debate so too are labour contracts at a time when government is breaking those contracts.

Contracts for any of the health unions can be found on the Health Employers Association of BC website. Article 43 of the Health Services Support Facilities Subsector 1998-2001 Collective Agreement provides severance of 1 week for every 2 years of service to a maximum of 20 weeks for those employees who qualify.

In addition to severance provisions in collective agreements, since 1993 some employees covered by a collective agreement in the health sector could also qualify for benefits under the Healthcare Labour Adjustment Agency. That agency's website provides a program manual that describes how some employees might qualify for up to six months of additional severance if they waive their rights to recall and retraining programs. The Campbell government's contract breaking legislation terminates these programs.

Some people may have heard representatives of the Campbell government claim that HEU members could get "575 days of severance" or you might have heard government claim that a person got months of severance with just one day of full time work. It is impossible to find any basis for those claims by searching through the collective agreement and the program manual for the Labour Adjustment Agency. What you can find buried in the government background is reference to how some of these cases arose from arbitration awards. In other words, an arbitrator might have ruled that a casual employee with years of experience was really a temporary or full time employee. It is not honest for government to take lost arbitration awards and generalize those cases as if the particulars applied to everyone. Some people can go to the source documents and check the facts.

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January 29, 2002

Redefining the Truth
Double Standards

The following is from the verbatim transcript of the January 16, 2002, staged cabinet meeting.

Hon. G. Campbell: "The next item on the agenda is the Solicitor General on the implementation of our policy of no expansion to gambling. I should just say, for the public, that we've had…. Our position with regard to the new era was that we would not expand gambling, that we would live up to the legal commitments the province had made in the past, but that we were not going to have a further expansion of gambling in the province."

"There are difficulties in looking at what the legal obligations are and are not for the provincial government when there are things that are sort of partway through processes, etc. We have had discussions about those legal obligations as a cabinet, but we also have, in our New Era document, a commitment that we will make decisions on gaming in open cabinet meetings. That's what Rich will be talking about today."

"The legal requirements that we have to face as a cabinet have been met in previous cabinet meetings. We had a discussion about this last night at a cabinet meeting. The policy discussion that we're going to have now is about how we define no expansion to gambling for the future."

Doesn't it make you feel good to see how strongly Premier Campbell feels about the sanctity of contracts - especially when they consist of ill defined obligations subject to interpretation due to partially completed processes? Perhaps clearly written legal obligations in collective agreements would receive more respect from the Premier if they had a clause about getting three cherries in a row.