Critics slam cost of Clark’s Paris pics
It was a pricey Paris photo-op for Premier Christy Clark at the United Nations climate-change conference — and B.C. taxpayers were the ones coughing up the euros.
Clark attended the UN summit last November with a 17-member entourage, which included government photographer Kyle Surovy.
Clark spent three days in Paris and taxpayers footed the bill for Surovy to follow her around and take pictures and videos.
The total cost to taxpayers for the premier’s Parisian photo shoot: $5,413.22, which included the photographer’s airfare, hotel, meals and three days’ salary. The amounts are contained in newly released budget documents.
It’s not a bill that will break the government’s bank, of course.
But this is a province where money is so tight, the government says it can’t even afford to keep sick elderly couples together in provincial nursing homes. The heartbreaking separation of Surrey’s Wolfram and Anita Gottschalk made headlines around the world last week.
So is spending more than five grand on photos of the premier in Paris a justifiable expense? As they say in the City of Lights: “C’est ridicule.”
“This crosses the line,” said NDP critic Shane Simpson. “Explain this to people working hard to pay their bills every month. This government has an unrealistic view of the world.”
But the government defended the expense, saying Surovy is one of two “visual communications officers” who generate valuable content for the government’s Twitter, Facebook, Flickr and YouTube accounts.
The two photographers travel all around British Columbia, Canada and the world taking pictures and videos of the premier, her cabinet ministers and other government officials.
Surovy accompanied Clark to Korea, Japan and the Philippines last May and to Beijing, Hong Kong and other points in China last November, a few weeks before the Paris trip.
Surovy has racked up $163,150 in travel expenses since Clark became premier five years ago. Photographer Justin Schneider had $106,838 in travel expenses. Throw in their annual salaries (currently $65,000 and $72,000 respectively) and the total cost to taxpayers over that period has been $923,374.
“Nearly a million dollars to create photo opportunities,” grumbles the NDP’s Simpson. “Why do they have to spend that kind of money when everybody has a camera on their smartphones? Anyone around the premier would happily take her picture for free.”
Good point. But in a world where politicians obsess over their social-media impact, highpriced photography and video services are taking a bigger bite out of taxpayers’ wallets.
Just last week, federal Environment Minister Catherine McKenna came under fire for spending $6,600 for a photographer to take her picture at the same Paris climate-change conference that Clark attended.
Too bad she didn’t team up with Clark to share the same cameraman — they could have saved taxpayers a lot of dollars.
Instead, McKenna grudgingly suggested the expense was inappropriate.
“Pictures are an important part of how we transmit our message, but we need to do it in a way that is mindful of taxpayers,” McKenna said. “I think there are ways we can reduce costs.”
McKenna said she has ordered her ministry to review photography expenses. And Prime Minister Justin Trudeau — a man who loves the camera lens himself — also grovelled a bit.
“That’s certainly one that we are looking at as perhaps not the best use of public funds,” Trudeau said.
At least that’s something, said Aaron Wudrick of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.
“To give Prime Minister Trudeau some credit, he acknowledged there’s a problem and that’s a good thing,” Wudrick said.
But there’s been no similar commitment to review photography and video expenses in B.C., where the Christy Clark government defended its social-media communications blitz.
“Video and photos support and highlight government announcements and priorities,” the government said in a statement, adding the government has generated more than one million YouTube views and 4.4 million Flickr views.
But the spending decisions of all levels of government are coming under increasing scrutiny.
In another jaw-dropper out of Ottawa, Health Minister Jane Philpott is being roasted for spending $3,700 on “luxury sedan” trips supplied by one of her own election-campaign workers and $520 to access Air Canada’s executive airport lounges.
Philpott paid the money back, but that’s not the end of it. Federal ethics watchdog Mary Dawson has launched an investigation.
Wudrick said politicians should start posting scans of all their personal-spending receipts online. Then they would think twice about spending money on luxury sedan rides or Paris photographers.
“It’s a very simple process that’s working well in Alberta and the city of Toronto,” he said. “Receipts would just be scanned and posted online proactively. Then every politician and their staff would know in advance: ‘This is going to be seen. Can I justify it?’” The NDP’s Simpson has a different idea. “The premier just released a TV commercial about the need to control government spending,” he said.
“Maybe the B.C. Liberal Party should pay for this stuff.”
It’s a suggestion the Liberals will ignore, I suspect, as the government continues to spend hundreds of thousands of taxpayers’ dollars on feel-good social-media content in the run-up to the next election in May.
Watch for the New Democrats to remind voters of this Liberal government spending priority.
With voters woozy from repeated whacks to their wallets from B.C. Hydro and ICBC rate hikes, they might not be all that impressed with the government’s YouTube view-count.