The 2004 BC Throne Speech was delivered in an atmosphere of controversy and scandal:

• Two of the three bidders have complained about the sale of BC Rail.
• Questions still haven't been answered about the raid on the legislature with the RCMP speaking about organized crime.
• Secrecy surrounds investigations and audits into the Ministry of Children and Family Development and the role of Doug Walls.
• The apprenticeship exam scandal has prompted calls for an inquiry into government's experiment with deregulating training and inspections.
• The write-off of over $2 million in fines and fees owed by fish farms has drawn the attention of the Auditor General.

It is getting to the point where it is necessary to have a program in order to keep the scandals straight. Government may find it difficult to regain control of the agenda with so many balls in the air. The Throne Speech, delivered exactly 1,000 days since the last election, sounded like a rehash of dozens of staged cabinet meetings and tired news releases. The two new items in the speech are unlikely to be sufficient to distract attention from the scandals that plague the Campbell government.

The first new item in the speech was an announcement that funding will be increased for advanced education after the next election! It is hard to believe, but the major announcement on advanced education was a promise to add 25,000 new student spaces to B.C.'s colleges, universities and institutes by 2010 and to increase the advanced education budget by $105 million by 2006-07 - the election date is May 17, 2005. The 2002-03 budget for advanced education was $1.899 billion; the service plan indicated it would be frozen in 2004-05. An increase of $105 million in 2006-07 would be an increase of 5.5% after three years of frozen budgets. That is less than the increase in the cost of living over the three years.

The second new item in the speech was an announcement that the government would backtrack on yet another failed experiment. The speech stated that government will "…reinstate funding to maintain forest recreation roads and recreation sites". They finally came to their senses and realized that closing the forest roads was harming tourism.

The speech, written in the Premier's Office, said "Our unemployment rate has dropped to its lowest level in years and is now below the national rate." Not so fast Mr. Premier; according to Statistics Canada the seasonally adjusted unemployment rate in January was 7.4% for Canada and 7.3% for BC. The unadjusted rate was 7.9% for Canada and 8.0% for BC. In May 2001, at the time of the last election, the seasonally adjusted rate was 7.0% for Canada and 6.8% for BC; the unadjusted rate was 7.1% for Canada and 6.7% for BC. Following the election BC's seasonally adjusted unemployment rate reached a high of 9.4% in May 2002. Maybe "lowest in years" means lower than it was a year and a half ago, but it is still not lower than it was in May 2001. No one should be pleased with over 160,000 people unemployed in BC in January 2004; in May 2001 there were 144,100 unemployed.

During the usual routine motions following the Throne Speech, Opposition House Leader Joy MacPhail moved a motion to establish an "Attorney General-Solicitor General Joint Committee" to look at how to fight organized crime. MacPhail said:

"I want to make it clear that the intent of this committee would not be to examine organized crime's links to this government. Indeed, that is the subject of a police investigation. Rather, the intent perhaps can best be understood as our way of helping the Solicitor General keep his unfulfilled promise to hold a public forum on organized crime, a forum he said would involve the judiciary, the Crown prosecutors, police and the public to examine fully how we can do a better job fighting organized crime. The Solicitor General will recall that he made that promise in March of last year at the Premier's annual congress."

"At the time, the opposition fully supported this initiative, but we have been disappointed in his failure to follow through. Therefore, we bring this motion forward, a motion that is in keeping with the new-era promise to give all MLAs and citizens a better voice in government through active legislative committees."

House Leader Gary Collins signaled to his troops that he would have nothing of MacPhail's motion so it went down to the usual overwhelming defeat.

MacPhail gave notice to the Speaker that she reserved her right to raise a matter of privilege on three separate issues. It looks like the days ahead will be interesting in BC's legislature, although not necessarily very pleasant for the Campbell government.