July 21, 2003

Hiding the Premier's Progress Board

On Friday, a day frequently used by government to release bad or embarrassing news, the BC Progress Board issued its "Interim Benchmarking Report 2003". Of 9 economic indicators, it ranked BC strong on 3, middling on 4 and weak on 2. On 4 of the indicators, including one of the strong rankings, the Board noted that there had been deterioration since the 2002 Benchmarking Report.

You might think that the Campbell government would be proud of the BC Progress Board. On July 18, 2001, two years to the day of the release of the 2003 Interim Report, the Premier issued a news release in which he was quoted saying that "The B.C. Progress Board will provide a new level of accountability for our government by establishing specific economic goals for the tax, regulatory and fiscal reforms we undertake." That news release is not available on the government website, despite an archive of releases that go back to the beginning of the Campbell government. Fortunately, it is still available on the website for the BC Progress Board.

On the government website there is no link to the Progress Board, and no mention of the Progress Board. Perhaps that is because, despite its pro-business bias, the Progress Board produces hard nosed reports that stick to the facts. Rather than mentioning the work of the Board on the government website, browsers will find a pathetic piece labeled "positive economic indicators" where political propaganda is published at public expense.

The BC Progress Board consists of 15 directors, including only 3 women, who represent the business elite; David Emerson is the chair and Jim Pattison is one of the directors. The benchmarks that are regularly monitored by the Board are primarily economic, with heavy focus on growth in per capita real GDP, tax rates and productivity. Of the 26 measurements picked by the BC Progress Board, 16 are identified by it as measures of economic performance. By comparison, the Oregon Progress Board measures 90 indicators of which 17 focus on the economy.

Notwithstanding the narrow economic focus of the BC Progress Board, its work is competent within its limited scope, which includes the values most dear to the Campbell government. The offices of the Board are on the 7th floor of the Vancouver Trade and Convention Centre immediately adjacent to the Premier's Vancouver office. With that chummy relationship it should distress the Board to see the government focusing on political spin while the Board sticks to facts and concludes that BC has a long way to go. The Board doesn't say so, but other observers would note that radical and reckless tax cuts on day one of the Campbell government have so far failed to produce any positive results for the economy. To the extent that the tax cuts caused the dramatic service cuts, they may be counterproductive. While the Board objectively noted that BC's position has deteriorated on 4 of 9 indicators, and stayed the same on 2 more, you'll never see it comment on the success or failure of the reckless tax cuts, but simply reporting bad news is enough to keep any mention of its work off the government site.