Compared to the promise not to sell BC Rail, not to expand gambling or to adequately fund the Ministry of Children and Family Development, the broken promise to hold monthly open cabinet meetings is relatively trivial. Nevertheless, it is yet another broken promise and another reason why polling companies find that the public cannot trust the Campbell government. In 2004 there were only six staged cabinet meetings. Contrary to the promise to hold monthly open meetings, the expensive public relations stunts became nothing more than briefings where the media weren't allowed to ask questions.

The top level government website tucks the link to staged cabinet meetings after another failed experiment, the heartlands; the link is also buried in a list of laughable items on the Premier's site. Those items include "Official Correspondence", last updated October 22, 2002, and Premier's biography which misses the item that Campbell was the only sitting Premier to spend time in a US jail.

Click on "open cabinet meetings" and then on agenda from January 1, 2004, through December 31, 2004, to see how many of the six meetings were "for information only". The most recent meeting, held December 10, 2004, had all of its three items just for information, although one was an acknowledgement that Fair Pharmacare has resulted in many seniors not filling their essential prescriptions. On September 29th there were four items on the agenda, three for information. The supposed decision item was on literacy, as if it hadn't previously been decided. Likewise the June 30th meeting had 3 of 4 items for information, with the decision item on nursing being obviously predetermined. The May 31st had all four items for information only. The April 2nd meeting had only three items, two for information and the pretense of the Pine Beetle Report being for decision. The first meeting of 2004 was held on February 27th with only two items on the agenda, one for information and one, the Twawwassen Agreement in Principle, supposedly for decision. The full transcripts of the meetings are available on the government website. The transcripts of the supposed "for decision" items do not include any serious discussion and serve to prove that they are rubber stamps after any real discussions occurred behind closed doors.

The promise of open cabinet meetings was a bad joke from day one, like many of Campbell's wild ideas. The firm that handled much of the Campbell election campaign made big bucks with the production of the staged meetings. Wasting over $25,000 per meeting is small potatoes compared to the millions the government has wasted on its massive TV advertising campaign; that's another broken promise.