For a year and a half, the B.C. Liberals fought all efforts to get them to release one of the few surviving copies of a $780,000 pamphlet touting the virtues of the harmonized sales tax.
"Cabinet secrecy," they claimed, rejecting an application filed under provincial access to information legislation.
Never mind that they'd printed 1.6 million copies of the 12-page full-colour pamphlet with intentions of mailing it to every household in B.C., before second thoughts relegated the lot - a half dozen truckloads worth - to the shredder.
Could material prepared at public expense for public distribution really fit the legal definition of "information that would reveal advice or recommendations developed by or for a public body or minister?"
The Liberals unabashedly said so, citing one of many escape clauses in a loophole-ridden access to information law. Fortunately, Jonathan Fowlie, The Vancouver Sun reporter who made the original application, doesn't give
up easily.
He pursued the application through serial rebuffs until finally last week, on the eve of an appeal hearing with the office of the information commissioner, the Liberals handed over several draft versions of the pamphlet, reputedly all that survived the shredder.
They continued to insist that they were within their rights to withhold the material on grounds of cabinet secrecy.
But a review of the contents suggests it was not so much cabinet secrecy as its dignity that was being protected by all the stonewalling.
For as then finance minister Colin Hansen said in explaining the midsummer 2010 decision to scrap the pamphlets: "There was a sense that sending out the mailer could in fact exacerbate some of the concerns that are out there."
I'd say so. Even by the belated, self-defeating, tin-eared standards of most
Liberal outpourings in defence of the HST, the pamphlet was a standout
exercise in incompetence.
The after-the-fact rationalizations for a tax that was never explained to the public in advance of its unveiling.
The desperate attempt to surf the good feelings arising out of the 2010 Winter Olympics. Red mittens, anyone?
The pathetic giveaway of three $750 Apple iPads, keyed to a know-your-B.C. quiz. What B.C. tourist attraction has an "adopt-a-rattlesnake program?" No, not the legislature, though the Liberals may need one if the polls continue their slide.
Still, sorting through the various drafts, one did glean insights into the government mindset.
An early draft included an explanation, under the heading of How the HST Lowers Prices, of the $2 billion in savings flowing to business with the shift to value-added taxation. "That's good for business," said the exit line.
In subsequent drafts, the explanation was unchanged, but the tag line was revised to the more publicly palatable "That's good for consumers."
Another apparently late addition - absent from drafts produced in May, present in those delivered in early July - was a dodgy justification of how the tax was sprung on the electorate just weeks after a campaign in which it was barely mentioned.
Question: "Why did government bring in the HST so quickly?"
Answer: "After the 2009 election, government was informed that provincial revenues were deteriorating. Government looked for a way to meet budget targets without cutting core services.
"Through discussions with the federal government, the province learned that $1.6 billion in transition funding ... was avail-able for the first time."
Q: "How could this happen so quickly if the government wasn't planning it?"
A: "Ontario had decided to move to an HST earlier in 2009 and had negotiated for months with the federal government. In June 2009, it was clear that B.C. could piggyback on that agreement and that the same agreement would be available if B.C. acted by mid-July. Otherwise we would have to wait
two years."
The tale grew in the telling, and never more so than within the bounds of those two paragraphs.
As a further measure of how far the Liberals had slipped the bonds of reality, take the pamphleteers' attempt to rustle up support for the HST by riffing on the overreaching slogan that B.C. was "the best place on Earth."
The resulting top 10 list saw the government drafting team juggling both the wording and the ranking, an effort as feeble as it was bizarre.
"We're impressive" (May draft) got rewritten as "we're cool" in June. "Our kids are smart" became "Our kids excel." "We move people," a reference to transportation infrastructure, not young British Columbians looking for work in Alberta, was downgraded from the top of the pack to near the bottom.
Taking its place at the top of the top 10 was "We give hope to the world." To comedians at least. For along with the aforementioned laugh lines, there on the top 10 reasons why B.C. was the best place on Earth, you had No. 3: "We like big stuff."
Come again? "B.C. is home to some of the world's biggest attractions, such as the world's largest hockey stick, gold pan, cross-country skis, fly-fishing rod and the tallest totem pole."
Not to say big spending, big tax grabs, and big boondoggles, of which this ill-conceived pamphlet was only one of many on the Liberal HST road to ruin.
