Premier Christy Clark apologizes

[Harbinger]

I am not. The stakes are too high.

[Wetcoaster]

The stakes are too high to let the scandal plagued liberals stay in power. They have cost this province a lot of money.

[fourminute]

lol. Words of the liberals.

[Wetcoaster]

lol. Words of the liberals.

[CanuckClown]

In my case - not a Liberal just anti-NDP. I have seen too much BC NDP wrought devastation and I do not wish to see it again.

As political columnist Craig McInnes said in the article quoted above- in comparison to past BC governments:

So, given this rich history, does Clark’s government deserve to be called scandal-plagued?

Hardly.

People have short memories or are too young to know their BC political history. I shall continue to try to remedy that deficit.

[fourminute]

green party's even better than her

[Wetcoaster]

The Liberals record has been awful and has spanned over a decade.

[CanuckClown]

But nothing compared to the damage inflicted by the BC NDP.

In politics you do not have to be great just better than the other guy and in that comparison the BC Liberals win hands down.

[Langdon Algur]

Scandal plagued???

Given past governments, the Liberals are not even close.

[Wetcoaster]

HST recall; BC Rail; Ethnic vote; Fake engery criss; Drunk driving; numerous resignations. I agree the Liberials aren't even close to past gov'ts, they are far more scandal plagued.

[inane]

I think you guys have beaten this off-topic horse to death. Congrats on such marvelous spin.

[Langdon Algur]

Only if you are unaware of past history.

[Gross-Misconduct]

As Dosanjh says all political parties do it and Dosanjh personally did it to win the NDP leadership by targeting the ethnic vote and delivering bulk memberships.

[Harbinger]

Only if you are unaware of past history.

[Harbinger]

Now Kevin Falcon is saying that Christy Clark bold face lied to the people of Prince George about the wood innovations building that is supposed to be erected there.

[inane]

Ethnic vote report finds serious misuse of B.C. government resources

http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Ethnic+vote+report+finds+serious+misuse+government+resources/8099455/story.html

An investigation into a proposed ethnic outreach plan has found serious misconduct by B.C. public officials, the misuse of government funds and the deliberate use of private email to hide what was going on.

A team headed by John Dyble, deputy minister to the premier, and three other deputy ministers were called in after the New Democrats released a leaked memo showing that civil servants appeared to be mixing public and party work and using government resources for Liberal party purposes.

The Dyble report released Thursday confirmed all of those allegations. It found two officials, Kim Haakstad, former deputy chief of staff to Premier Christy Clark, and Brian Bonney, a former communications director, engaged in serious misconduct and that several others, including Pamela Martin, the premier's director of outreach, engaged in misconduct to a lesser extent.

The investigation found that Bonney spent about half his time on political business and used three private email accounts to cover his tracks.

Multicultural Minister John Yap told the investigation that private email accounts were used so records couldn't be obtained by Freedom of Information.

Dyble was appointed by Premier Christy Clark after the NDP revealed a leaked memo that outlined a plan to use government resources in an ethnic outreach plan to benefit the Liberal party. The memo included a reference to "quick wins" that could be achieved by the Liberals by apologizing for historic wrongs, including the Chinese Head Tax.

After the release of the memo, Haakstad and Yap both resigned.

Haakstad, who distributed the memo, has not talked publicly about her role. Yap, like Clark, said he had neither seen the memo nor had any knowledge of its contents.

It appeared that scheme was never fully implemented.

Clark at first played down the memo at a meeting with the Sun editorial board on the day after it was released. But she later took it more seriously, appointing Dyble and issuing a statement calling it wrong and apologizing for it. She said later she should have taken it more seriously when she first heard about it.

The memo, dated 2012, outlined a multicultural outreach plan under which officials in the premier's office, the multiculturalism ministry and the Liberal caucus would collaborate to use taxpayer-funded resources to help the Liberal party attract voters in ethnic communities.

The Liberals subsequently pointed to a leaked draft management letter from Auditor-General John Doyle criticizing the way the NDP used Caucus funds to hire Gabriel Yiu, an NDP candidate, to provide outreach services to multicultural communities. The NDP scheme involved shifting funds intending for riding services into a central fund that was used to hire Yiu, among other things. It was approved by the comptroller of the legislature when it was set up and was stopped after the auditor general flagged it as inappropriate

[canucks since 77]

I was watching the B.C legislature today. Liberal game plan = blame the NDP. The lib deflecting sounded almost exactly like our resident NDP basher. Coincidence?

[inane]

Blamelines in ethnic outreach debacle run straight to premier

VICTORIA - The plan to use public money to help the B.C. Liberal party raise support in ethnic communities was launched from Premier Christy Clark’s own office, backed up by members of her inner circle.

So says the report of a two-week-long investigation into the proposed multicultural strategic outreach plan, conducted by four senior deputy ministers and released Thursday in the provincial capital.

Ground zero for the strategy was a meeting convened by Clark’s deputy chief of staff Kim Haakstad on Dec. 1 of 2011, and attended by public servants, political staff and a representative of the B.C. Liberal party.

The intention was “to capture current activities of the attendees related to multiculturalism,” and to “bring better coordination” among government, the caucus of Liberal MLAs and the party itself.

From the outset, the proceedings were compromised by a mixing of public interest and private partisan political interests, say the four deputies.

“At this meeting, confidential information was shared with invited members of government caucus and with a party staff person. The brainstorming that occurred at that meeting found its way into a partisan document that was then freely shared between government employees and caucus and party members. Both of these activities were clearly inappropriate.”

Now stop to consider the originators of this dubious strategy. Haakstad is a longtime supporter, friend and confidant of the premier’s, as fully attuned as anyone to Clark’s heavily partisan way of doing business.

Others in attendance included Pamela Martin, the former broadcaster who backed Clark for the leadership, then was rewarded with the post of her director of outreach; and Lorne Mayencourt, another Clark leadership supporter then serving time in a Clark-created sinecure.

But the key player in the meeting would appear to have been Brian Bonney, a government communications director and a former business leader who’d backed Clark for the party leadership.

“I decided Christy Clark was the person I had to support,” he told reporter Brent Richter of Burnaby Now in early 2011, “and I don’t do anything small so I went out and did it in a big way.”

Installed in a public service communications posting later that year, Bonney was well positioned to serve as Haakstad’s point man on the party-boosting ethnic outreach plan, and he proceeded to do just that.

The deputies reckon he spent up to half of his time on party work, even as he collected $124,000 in public funds in two communications postings in the public service.

They caught him forwarding more than 1,000 messages to his personal email accounts, pulling together lists of contacts from the ethnic community, bypassing ministerial chains of command, and running a secretive recruiting operation for consultants who would then serve as liaisons to the designated ethnic communities, all the while telling the would-be recruits never to let on that they even knew him.

The backchannel was critical because, as Liberal MLA (and briefly minister for multiculturalism) John Yap confessed to the investigators, it allowed the team to avoid public scrutiny under the provincial access to information law.

One of Bonney’s associates in the recruiting drive commented via email about the critical importance of keeping the operation under wraps: “It is absolutely critical that we do not leave any evidence of us helping them through this application.”

That brought another telling response from Yap: “I appreciate your efforts. Great job. Let’s now hope for the best.”

So, to summarize, one Liberal staffer calls for a coverup and the minister fires back with an attaboy.

The four deputies, led by head of public service John Dyble, appear to have dug up as much information as they could in relatively short order, while leaving open further avenues of inquiry by the independent watchdogs on access to information and provincial finances.

Full credit to them as well for laying this shabby affair on the premier’s doorstep, much as Christy Clark would have preferred to see the blamelines run in any direction but her own.

Trying to put the best face on the findings in the legislature Thursday, the premier claimed “the reason that members of the Opposition and any member of the public has a report from which to quote is because ... I asked the head of the civil service to review it.”

Pure guff.

The reason for the report is because somebody leaked a draft of the strategy to the New Democrats. Nor was Clark all that quick in her drive to get to the bottom of it.

Two days after the Opposition blew the whistle, she was still insisting that any mixing of public money and partisan interests “didn’t happen in this case” and the whole thing was a product of “somebody way down the chain.”

Both claims have now been refuted by her own officials.

Haakstad resigned two weeks ago. Bonney left earlier and the party has now agreed to repay half of his salary. Another staffer implicated in the report resigned Thursday. Other discipline should follow.

But the culture of crass, partisan evasion remains very much on display in the Clark administration, starting with the person at the very top of the chain.

http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Vaughn+Palmer+Blamelines+ethnic+outreach+debacle+straight+premier/8101211/story.html#ixzz2NciI6w30

[Gross-Misconduct]

Trying to put the best face on the findings in the legislature Thursday, the premier claimed “the reason that members of the Opposition and any member of the public has a report from which to quote is because ... I asked the head of the civil service to review it.”

[ThaBestPlaceOnEarth]

BC would be in a much better spot if it was a Farnworth-Falcon campaign, that is my opinion. Neither of the two main candidates is qualified to be Premier, unless you are taking the view that being up to your neck in scandal is a necessary qualification for that position (and lord knows it might as well be). It's embarrassing and it makes the whole province look stupid and corrupt (and again, lord knows it might very well be).