October 4, 2005

No Costs Provided for Government Ads

On October 4th readers of most BC newspapers probably noticed a full page ad placed by the government about extending the teacher's current contract until June 30, 2006; that's two years with no improvements to learning conditions and no pay adjustments for teachers. During question period on October 4th, the NDP Opposition asked 20 times for the budget on the government advertising campaign for its contract imposing legislation. Finance Minister Carole Taylor refused to provide timely accountability for the expensive campaign, saying that the cost of the ad campaign would be released at the end of June following the release of the public accounts, as she did for other government ad campaigns last year.

In announcing that she will continue to release the cost of government advertising in June, Taylor confirmed that the Campbell government will again abuse the taxpayer prior to the May 12, 2009 election. Watch for millions of your tax dollars to again be spent on partisan ads just as happened in 2004 and just as is happening now with respect to the teachers' "contract". Anyone who watches TV probably remembers the saturation advertising prior to the last election on the theme of "best place on earth to live". When the government ads finally stopped, and the BC Liberal party ads began, it was hard to tell one from the other. They managed to co-ordinate the message and graphics such that it also appeared to be a continuation of the government advertising. When Taylor finally released the cost of the government ads, a month after the election, it turned out that the budget was overspent by $7 million. That's almost, but not quite as much as corporations donated to the BC Liberals for the 2005 election, and the advertising budget overrun is more than three times as much as individuals donated to the BC Liberals. People who wouldn't dig into their own pockets witnessed government using their tax dollars for partisan ads.

Education critic John Horgan pointed out that the deadline for submitting a full paged ad to the local papers was Friday, September 30th, the same day cabinet was supposedly receiving the report of the fact finder in the dispute. It would appear that the government acted in bad faith and had planned its teacher bashing ads prior to hearing the details of the report. That is particularly troubling since the report offered a suggestion that might have seen the teachers stand down their job action; it proposed that teaching conditions such as class size be addressed at a separate table apart from the collective bargaining process. The Campbell government wasn't interested in reaching a deal when it could impose its will through legislation.

The government announced that during the period before June 30, 2006 it is appointing an Industrial Inquiry Commission under the labour code to develop a new bargaining process that will be in place for the next round of negotiations. Careful observers will note that is exactly what the government did prior to this round of bargaining. It would appear that it has rejected the Wright report which called for final-offer-arbitration as a dispute settlement mechanism. Campbell's got a problem with limited options. He could make the teachers happy by eliminating province wide bargaining and returning to bargaining school board by school board, or he could adopt some form of binding arbitration. It appears that the preferred approach is to impose contracts through legislation but that pattern will eventually be seen as a refusal by government to recognize fundamental rights. It is unlikely the courts would tolerate the permanent withdrawal of the right to strike unless it is replaced with an alternative other than perpetual intervention with legislation.