November 25, 2002

Staged Cabinet - Nov 2001 vs. Nov 2002

At a cost of more than $30,000 per show, BC taxpayers should expect to get some value for their money from Premier Campbell's staged cabinet meetings. On Friday, November 22nd, two items were noticeably absent from the agenda.

Regular observers immediately noticed that Finance Minister Gary Collins did not take advantage of the meeting to provide a heads up on his Second Quarter Financial Report, due by November 30th. Last year during a staged cabinet meeting on November 21, 2001, Collins gave an overview of what he would be saying with the release of his report the next day. Could it be that the projection of annual growth in government revenue of 5.1% over the next two years is in trouble? Could it be that the Minister of Finance is hoping that the release of Roy Romanow's report on health care on Thursday will help the Finance Report go unnoticed?

Those who squeeze every penny out of each $30,000 production will also remember the "meeting" on November 7, 2001, when Minister of Human Resources, Murry Coell, made a presentation on upcoming cuts to welfare. During that meeting, the Minister of State for Mental Health, Dr. G. Cheema, said "With a person with depression or schizophrenia who has not been able to work for a number of years, if we push them, they will end up going to the hospital and then costing us more. I hope we can take the definition at this time, when you are reorganizing the whole thing. I think it would be a best start and that it will help them, because some of them may never, ever be able to function independently. I just wanted to make sure that I expressed their concern." Coell responded "Yeah. I'll make sure that I work with you on those definitions as we get closer to implementation."

This year on November 21, just a day before the staged cabinet meeting, Coell's Ministry issued a "fact sheet" on changes to its "persons with disabilities review". After aggressively going after 19,000 people on disability benefits with a lengthy form that is alleged to have caused breakdowns - just like Cheema predicted - Coell announced in his fact sheet that the Ministry was finally going to exempt 5,000 people with mental illness from the review. They did that just hours before the Coalition of People with Disabilities was to make public more information on suicides. Government didn't issue a news release, or answer questions in question period on November 21st. It didn't apologize for what it did to people, and it didn't put the policy on its staged cabinet agenda to review what happened in the year between Cheema's warning and his government's admission of failure. No one should thank Cheema for the change. That credit goes to Margaret Birrell of the BC Coalition of People with Disabilities. 14,000 people are still being "reviewed" and may have their benefits cut by one third if they don't have their paperwork processed by March 15, 2003. The Coalition is trying to help those people.

What happened at last Friday's staged meeting is almost as interesting as what didn't. Those who watched would have seen Nick Geer carefully explain to the Campbell cabinet why their promise to torch ICBC is bad public policy. BC needs far more people like Mr. Geer. With impressive professionalism, he laid out the facts, reiterated that his job is to look after the interests of the people who pay the premiums and put Solicitor General Rich Coleman in his place over the operation of drinking driving CounterAttack.

In typical New Era New Speak fashion, a presentation on the Royal Museum produced a news release titled "Museum to Improve with Independent Status". The truth is that the governance structure for the Museum is being changed in order to cope with $2.5 million in government funding cuts.

The only other item on the agenda received little or no media attention in the days following the meeting. Attorney General Geoff Plant explained that BC would change its position at the treaty tables so as to negotiate to obtain "certainty" rather than to obtain the extinguishment of aboriginal rights. His presentation demonstrated why Plant is regarded as the most talented member of the Campbell cabinet.