It was the dominant issue in the legislature for the entire week, for two different reasons.
The Opposition devoted the entire half-hour question period to the quick-wins ethnic-outreach scandal from Monday through Wednesday.
Then New Democrat Leader Adrian Dix got two hours of debate time on Thursday morning and peppered deputy premier Rich Coleman (Premier Christy Clark has yet to be sworn in) with another three dozen focused questions.
Then there was another half-hour question period in the afternoon on the affair, then a dozen or more questions during debate.
That’s more than six hours of concentrated interrogation on a single topic. What did it produce?
Mostly, six hours of stonewalling by a government that believes the whole mess is over and done with. B.C. Liberals point to all the appropriate steps that were taken when the story about a secret plan to use government ethnic-outreach operations for their own partisan ends first broke in February.
There was a grovelling apology and an investigation by four senior deputies. Some people lost their jobs, and there were recommendations to make sure it can’t happen again.
But mostly Liberals are relying on the fact that a fairly definitive verdict was rendered on May 15. The case was fully aired by the time voters went to the polls, and the results show the scandal had no bearing on their decision. The Liberals were re-elected with ease, on the strength of a lot of other things in play.
The Opposition’s entire effort this week was an attempt to make people care about quick wins again. The second go-round is based on the emergence of some email fragments — redacted for various freedom-of-information reasons — that raise questions about the official report.
One of the findings was that the whole sketchy scheme was just a “draft plan” that never got executed.
But the email suggests it went further than was reported. It alludes to offering a job or contract to someone involved in the outreach effort who was apparently getting restless.
That occupied most of the week. The Opposition intensified the questions Thursday when another email surfaced, in a novel fashion. Global News interviewed the former staffer and the NDP noticed an email on the screen in the televised clip. They did a screen grab and later somehow procured the note.
It was from former cabinet minister John Yap, who was fretting about the staffer’s failure to produce election “lists” as promised.
Whether that shows the scheme was being executed or just proves that lists of ethnic target groups weren’t produced isn’t clear.
The takeaway from a week’s worth of grilling is how heavily invested the NDP is in resurrecting the quick-wins scandal. It’s partly because the quick summer session is a humdrum affair devoted only to re-passing a budget. The emails are the only interesting thing around, so they are determined — and obligated — to chase them. That’s what Oppositions do.
But the other motivation is that rejuvenating the issue would go a long way toward countering the impression they blew the election.
Dix thinks he can conclusively prove “they cheated,” which could take some of the heat off him for the devastating loss in May.
The tricky part is to make that case without dragging the deputies into it.
The convention is that politicians attack each other, but rarely go after the bureaucracy.
The logical conclusion to the NDP line of thought, however, is that the deputy ministers didn’t get the full story in their report.
Dix isn’t ready to go after them. He said the report is incomplete because the Liberals restricted the scope of their investigation.
He’s raising suspicions because that’s what Oppositions do. But also because he’s fighting for his political life.
