June 3 , 2002

Political Misuse of Government Website

The Campbell government is behaving as if the public purse was an extension of the BC Liberal Party. On May 30th the BC Liberal Party raised over $500,000 with just one $250 a plate dinner at Canada Place. You would think they could afford to put political propaganda up on the BC Liberal website rather than using the government's web server.

The top page of the government website contains 12 page document titled "A Platform for Prosperity". It is subtitled "12 Months of Action - New Era Promises Made and Kept". The introduction claims "The government has acted aggressively to revitalize the economy, restore sound fiscal management, and put patients, students and people first."

Whether one believes those claims or not, it is clear that the document is a political piece that is out of place on the government website. Gordon Campbell does not appear to understand the difference between the BC Liberal Party, the government caucus, the legislature and the government. There are very important differences and when they get confused real and apparent conflicts of interest arise. In this case, the public is paying for the publication of a BC Liberal political message. It brings back memories of the Liberals in opposition spending almost $1 million in public funds to mail a political message. That effort was condemned by the Auditor General in his July 1997 special report on the abuse by the BC Liberals of caucus mailing privileges.

The file name for the document on the government website is new_era_review_5.pdf. Its size is 63 kilobytes. That is important because it gives an indication of the amount of political material the public pays for with each hit to the site. It will take a freedom of information request to determine the estimated cost for the total number of hits on that document. The BC Liberal Party should repay that cost to the provincial treasury. They didn't learn anything from the misappropriation of funds they made while in opposition.

The issue of abuse of public funds should not prevent an examination of distortions in the Liberal document. It claims the government "has acted aggressively to revitalize the economy." Many would say the government has acted foolishly. According to Statistics Canada, BC has fewer jobs now than in did when Campbell was sworn in on June 5, 2001.

The second post of restoring sound fiscal management overlooks the fact that the last two fiscal years competed by the NDP produced balanced budgets. The Campbell government is forecasting the largest deficits in BC's history following its reckless tax cuts. The claim that tax cuts will pay for themselves flies in the face of $6.015 million in personal income tax revenue in fiscal 2000-01 compared to an estimate for no more than $5.499 million for fiscal 2004-05. How much longer will it take for the tax cuts to pay for themselves? What kind of sound fiscal management promises one thing and delivers the opposite?

Most British Columbians do not believe that the Campbell government has "put patients, students and people first". Thousands of patients are having their surgeries delayed by up to six months because the government broke a contract with the doctors only to negotiate substantially the same thing in order to restore peace. K-12 students can look forward to larger class sizes and more than 50 schools being closed. College and university students are facing tuition fee increases of 30% or more. The only people that have been put first are those in the six figure set like the former president of the BC Liberal Party who now works as a deputy minister to the Premier. People on welfare, people who need legal aid, those who need human rights protection, people who depended on labour standards legislation, and hundreds of thousands of others who make less than $100,000 per year have discovered that they do not count in Campbell's New Era. Those are the folks who never in their lives spent $250 a plate for a dinner.

If the Premier Campbell wants to spread propaganda, let him use the proceeds from his $250 a plate dinner. Public money should provide public services rather than being directed for the publication of political propaganda.