January 4, 2002

Politics and the Web

On News Year's Day it looked like BC's political parties wrote off communicating through the Internet for almost a month or more.

The BC Liberals have a script that gives the current date whenever one clicks on their site, but the latest news item the site carried is from December 11th. The BC Liberals are following the example of the Harris conservatives and posting what are essentially government news releases to their political party's website. The December 11th story writes off 2002 and points to possible economic recovery in 2003. Unfortunately, the main government website at www.gov.bc.ca isn't much better than the BC Liberal party website. The top level government website was still featuring a November story on the Premier's trade mission and an October story on security related to 9-11. Its scroll rate makes the Rex Morgan comic strip look fast moving!

On News Year's Day the BC NDP's website was last updated December 7th with a story that forced the government to admit, a week ahead of its planned announcement, to $139.4 million per year in cuts to health services including chiropractors and physiotherapists.

From their "breaking news" section, it looks like the BC Greens hadn't updated their website since November 26th. That's when they announced plans to get signatures for an initiative on proportionate representation.

The saddest site has to be the BC Unity Party's. It appears not to have been refreshed since the May election.

While BC's political parties appear to be ignoring the web, major news organizations are all treating it as a serious medium as they update their sites several times a day. We can watch to see whether that example will eventually be followed by those who need to get their names and issues in the news.