View From Victoria: How do the BC NDP feel about the latest polls?

0:00America leads the world in medicine development. It matters. We get new medicines first, nearly three years faster. Five million Americans go to work because we make medicines here at home, and not relying on other countries keeps us safe. But China is racing to overtake us. Will we let them? Or will we choose to stay ahead? When America leads, America cures. Let's tell Washington to keep us in the lead. Learn how at americancures.com. Pay for it by pharma. Time for us to check in with vom Palmer from the Vancouver sun. Good morning, Von. And good morning, Sydney. Okay, so what is the scuttle but about that poll that we talked about yesterday that shows the NDP behind the BC conservatives? Well, the thing that I thought was kind of interesting was that you didn't get the usual denials. It's only a snapshot. Wait for the other polling companies. We're not worried, all that stuff. The reaction. It was pretty sobering with finance minister who has now been said to have delivered the most unpopular budget in BC history since Bill Bennett's restraint

1:08budget in the 1980s and Gordon Campbell's HST budget, both of which cost their leaders their jobs, by the way. So Brandon Bailey got asked about it. She didn't argue. She didn't say, oh no, I don't really think it's that unpopular. But she she said, look, is the tough budget for tough times? She says it's balanced and she doesn't mean fiscally. She means she's balanced. Tax increases with spending reductions. But she basically accepted it and said we're into a challenging time. So that's her reaction. So then we get the premier. Now, interesting. Premier staff circulates with the media before question period and the premier will be available to talk to us. Not about the poll, however, he's going to talk about the fact that he is meeting later, Tuesday afternoon, with the American ambassador to Canada. Oh, and the American

2:09ambassador, Hoekstra, asked for the meeting and the premier said, I'll answer questions about it. And he does. He talks about it. He starts off. Look, he starts off by expressing regret and alarm about the shots fired at the American consulate in Toronto that Tuesday morning. Obviously, you start off there. He says he's going to talk to the ambassador about trade. Yes, Canada, US, Mexico, trade agreement to negotiations resuming. He's going to talk about software. Premier says he expects the ambassador will ask him about things like BC's decision to banish US alcohol from BC government liquor stores. And on a lighter note, these are the premier's words. He said, we'll probably raise the issue of daylight savings, as you know, the premier has been campaigning for West Coast US states and BC to reconcile their different approaches to time and all go to permanent daylight savings. So it takes a law in the US,

3:16or the legal change in the US with Congress. So the premier said he would bring all that up. And he ran out of time, see me before he could really address the opinion poll. So that's at the stage for later Tuesday. And we had media available with both the premier and the ambassador had something to say about how the meeting went. They came out smiling, not on each other's roads. Given the way things have been going, I think that's a big deal. That is interesting. Well, especially since this particular ambassador is very much pugilistic when it comes to Canadian politicians. Yeah, not without some provocation, as he would be the first to say, but he got asked about his comment that Canadians are mean and nasty. And he said pretty much, I don't really think it'd be worth me going there again. So who knows maybe he's been briefed. But they say he asked for the meeting. So look, the ambassador said a couple of things

4:20that were pretty interesting. One was, you know, on trade issues, he said, no, no, he said, that's complicated enough. The president and the prime minister should do the talking on that. And I think he's right on that. And anyway, we're going back to the table. Look at all the trouble we've caused by freelancing on this issue, the Doug Ford Super Bowl ads and stuff like that. And so we're not going there again. And he got asked about the daylight savings time thing, which, you know, the premium thing says a big deal. I thought his answer and that was pretty realistic. He said, you're going to try to get all the US states and all the Canadian provinces on the same page on this issue. He said, I think that's going to be a challenge. And I do too. I think and I'm not sure it's as big an issue as David Evie thinks of his. I think it's more one of those look at the shining, look at the shiny object. Let me distract you with it when the opinion poll,

5:22the opinion poll is pretty sobering. We're hearing now, Sammy, for the first time that there are rumblings from within the very disciplined NDP cabinet and caucus that they're kind of worried. Really? The way this thing has had to die. We're a long way away from, you know, if we don't hang together, we'll all hang separately. But I do think it got through to them that this budget is more unpopular than they expected. Although the finance minister predicted that she would be the most unpopular person in British Columbia, there may be some argument over whether it's her or David Evie, but I think I think it connected with them. As I said, we didn't get the usual spin, Sammy, about, oh, yeah, this polling, this is an outlier poll and don't worry about it. I think the government's internal polling is saying pretty much the same thing. This is what frustrates me about political parties want because it's not like the signs weren't there that if they didn't address

6:23some of these issues directly, they were going to pay a price and they chose not to listen to those voices. Yes, no, that's true. The, you're right. The warning signs have been there. Well, remember what David Evie said about the last election? He kept his majority by one seat and he kept that seat by 22 votes. And afterward, he came out and called it a near death experience. Has he changed his ways, his style of governing, centralized, not delegating? He knows best. He's the smartest guy in the room. His own ministers get surprised by his initiative some time to time. All of that is still there. I don't know if, you know, he's been at it for a while now. I don't know if people really undergo a change of life in politics after they've been at it as long as David Evie. But yeah, he, the warning signs you're right have been there for a while. People have been

7:24unhappy with the government's performance on some issues, waiting times for healthcare, affordability, public safety. That's been there for a while. You've now got a budget that not only does it not really advance solutions to any of those problems, but it raises taxes, cuts spending in a bunch of areas, and totally fails to deal with a deficit that the government itself called unsustainable. So it's pretty hard to point to anything in there that is going to get much favorable response and it didn't. You had, it's been attacked from every direction. The government says that's not fair, but it's their budget. They created it. And some, somebody said yesterday when Brenda Bailey came out to finance minister and she hasn't really throw herself into defending this budget with a lot of enthusiasm. Somebody said to me, maybe she doesn't really think it's her budget. Maybe she thinks it's David Evie's. Powerful doesn't just happen. You have to make it happen.

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9:30Something else that was really interesting in that recent provincial budget bond was getting rid of the Merit Commissioner. Yeah, man, the new Democrats don't waste any time with it. When they want to, yes. So we got the Merit Commissioner, independent watchdog, oversight of hiring and firing and promotions in the public sector and the new Democrats quietly announced in the budget that they're getting rid of it. They say it'll save 2.2 million dollars and they say the oversight charge can be to job, can be run just fine by an in-house government agency, the public service agency. So yesterday, we get a news release from the government. So the existing commissioner, guy named David McCoy, it's a three-year appointment. It ran out yesterday and he's gone. They put out a press release saying he's not only gone,

10:31clean out your offices, don't let the door hit you on the way out, but they've appointed a replacement. An interim Merit Commissioner, a former public servant in British Columbia, retired deputy minister, Tracy Campbell, and it's her job to wind down the office and get rid of it, stamp it out. But what about all the files? What about all the information? Like I would imagine there's a lot of info there. Yeah, and a couple of things in the legislation that I didn't notice the first time I looked at it, and I did look at it, the legislation says that all the files of the Merit Commissioner will be turned over to the Ministry of Finance. So they go from the office of an independent commissioner who presumably has confidential files from people who've complained about promotions and hirings and firings in the public service. And all that's going

11:35to be turned over to the Ministry of Finance. And I asked the Ministry about that. And they said, well, you know, the public service agency is kind of independent and they'll actually get the files and, you know, they'll still have to respect privacy and all that. And I'm going, well, I don't know if I were in that office, I might have run the shredders for the last few days. Yeah. Case. But anyway, that's the way it's going. The other thing, and they really want to stamp out this office. I mean, they've been under a lot of fire for this and they've been defending it because, as they say, they claim they're going to save two million bucks from it, although the departing commissioner disputes that because he says he's got the office space as a 10-year release. They have to pay that out or severance. He doesn't think they're going to save two million dollars. But anyway, we'll see on that when we get the public accounts. But the legislation, I love the wording. It says that when the legislation has been passed, the office will be dissolved. Oh. I'm kind of imagining somewhere in government they're preparing a giant vat of acid.

12:41And they're going to lower the entire merit commissioner office into this and dissolve it. And, you know, probably do the old thing of you. You burn the surface of the land, you stamp it out and you sew it with plants just so that nobody ever remembers that the merit commissioner's office even existed. Well, the way when you put it that way, it just seems like they're commitment to wiping this thing off the face of the earth is pretty complete. And I just, I don't understand why. Well, I guess they, you know, they wanted to show, look, I think that I think what happened, and the minister says she readily says she asked for suggestions on how you could save one. And she said she got 1800 suggestions and she looked at every one of them. Now we can point to a whole lot of things they didn't change. I'm guessing that somebody in the government, maybe in the premier's office, is headed in for the merit commissioner for a long time. Because the merit commissioner second guesses the government on appointments.

13:45And even though the government claims well, the merit commissioner wasn't really finding anything serious, David McCoy, before he left office pointed out that in his last report, he found the highest number of abuses of process in 10 years. Now, abusive process means that they promoted someone or hired someone without meeting the standards of simply doing it on the basis of merit. So he says 10% of the cases he looked at with that. And about another 25% had other problems with them. So he was finding lots of things to raise eyebrows about. I'm thinking that in a government where, you know, trying to get party people into public service jobs and promote people that they want to promote, rather than people that just make it on merit, they just wanted to get rid of this office. They don't like watch dogs. Look, you know, and Global reported it last night. Look what they're doing to access to information.

14:46They're weakening that law, right? And this is sort of government say you're in opposition by God. You're in favor of openness and transparency. And you're going to show the whole world, if you ever get into power, that you're going to do it better than the others. And then you get there for a while and you go, oh my god, all this paperwork. It's so annoying. I guess they've created a new reason to turn down access to information. The head of the agency that gets the request city can now turn it down on the grounds that it would be a nuisance to do the work to pull together the information and hand it out. The head of the agency is allowed to turn it down if it would unduly burden the government in the performance of its duties. Well, you can imagine how a politically minded public servant would see that. Someone who got through the screening process not on the basis of merit,

15:48which the commissioner would have blown the whistle on, but just because of connection. So now that person is going to be looking at an access to information requests to me that might embarrass the government and go, oh, you know, I think we don't need to hand all this stuff out because it would really slow down the business of this office. And unduly occupy our staff. That's the world we're looking at. Hello there. Thursday's on global. I'm Madeline Matlock. She's the lawyer with a legendary name. Don't underestimate this Matlock. This one is a shark. You know it, baby. The one you can trust, even if she has to bend the rules. Things aren't always as black and white as they seem. Took crack a case. This is how I get things done. Any winning actress Kathy Bates is Matlock. All new Thursday's at 90's turn on global. Stream on Stack TV.