Government is tone deaf
It’s about time to stop saying B.C. has a new government. John Horgan’s Green-backed NDP government is almost a year old and already showing signs of becoming tone deaf and out of touch, as longer-term governments do.
If the Horgan government was attuned to public perceptions, staffers in the premier’s office surely wouldn’t have been deleting emails, as the Vancouver Sun’s Rob Shaw reported this week they had done.
“The mass deletion, which mirrors the records management controversies of the previous Liberal government, involved at least five officials in Horgan’s office,” Shaw wrote. “In each case, all of their sent emails were requested under the Freedom of Information Act for a period of several months and came back with no records found.”
Had NDP staffers already forgotten about the triple-delete email scandal in former premier Christy Clark’s government? Staffers were caught regularly deleting emails that were public documents.
The scandal contributed to the perception of the BC Liberal government being arrogant and in power for too long.
It wasn’t why the government fell, but it contributed. And it wasn’t that long ago. Being the political animals they are, NDP staffers surely were aware of the Liberal scandal and should have been smart enough not to do the same thing.
The excuse they’re new to government doesn’t wash. Staffers of U.S. President Donald Trump have used the same excuse — forgive him because he’s still learning how government works.
That’s not what Trump — and the NDP — told us on the campaign trail. They said they were ready to lead.
And it may have been an honest, human mistake when Citizens Services Minister Jinny Sims used her personal email instead of a government account for business.
Sims has apologized, but you would think since the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign spent so much time on Hillary Clinton’s use of personal emails, it would have been a cautionary note for any politician — unless Sims missed that campaign.
The NDP also may be going down the wrong road with the upcoming referendum on electoral reform.
It is to be hoped Attorney General David Eby, who will decide the question, has more sense than the NDP and Green caucuses, which recommend the referendum question be vague with an independent body working out the details of a new electoral system later.
The last time an independent body chose an electoral system for B.C., a citizens commission guided by political scientists came up with the convoluted single-tranferable ballot system that voters rightly rejected.
Voters deserve to know this fall what they’ll be voting on. If it’s a series of questions, that’s fine, too, as long as they have some details. A vague question with the details to be worked out later is an insult to the public and should be defeated.
If the government opts for that approach, it really has lost touch.