Vaughn Palmer
Vancouver Sun: 2008 February 9
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The auditor- general was out this week with a critical report on Premier Gordon Campbell’s four- year- old vow to make B. C. “ the most literate” place on the continent.
“ Plans have been slow in coming together,” auditor- general John Doyle said.
“ No one really knows what is already being spent on literacy or how much funding will be needed to reach government’s goal.”
Consequently, he found that results to date have been disappointing.
About 40 per cent of working age British Columbians still lack sufficient literacy skills, or about the same number as when the premier first made the vow in 2004.
The auditor- general’s 50- page assessment offered six recommendations for getting on with the goal, from better planning and monitoring, to implementation.
The findings were especially e m b a r r a s s i n g t o C a m p b e l l , because the continent- leading literacy rate is one of his so- called “ five great goals,” centrepiece of his second term in office.
As a footnote to Doyle’s report, one should also note that the Liberals have already been trying to fudge this particular great goal.
Originally they vowed to make B. C. “ the most literate location in North American by 2010.” Then last year they switched the target date to 2015.
One can only hope that Doyle will eventually get around to auditing the other “ great” goals: Lead the way in healthy living; build the best system of support for the needy; lead the world (!) in sustainable environmental management, and create more jobs per capita than the rest of the country.
For now, be content with another recent report from his office, the one exposing lack of progress in the government’s effort to “ target the unacceptable rate of death and serious injury in the forest industry.”
The premier himself launched the campaign five years ago, vowing to “ cut death and serious injury rates in half” by 2006, “ with further reductions in later years.” Later the goal was revised to “ zero deaths and serious injuries.”
Either way, the Liberals haven’t come close, Doyle reported in a 90- page report released Jan. 23.
"The government’s efforts are just being implemented and have not yet been proven to be effective,” the audit stated.
"There has been no detectable impact on rates of death and serious injury.”
Doyle and his staff found that “ existing occupational health and safety regulations have not been vigorously enforced for all forest industry workers.”
The auditor- general is not the only independent voice to be challenging the Liberals on the failure to match actions with words.
Provincial tree planters this week noted a disturbing decline in government- backed efforts to restore the ravaged provincial forests.
There’s been a 25- per- cent drop in orders for seedlings for the year ahead, according to the Western Silvicultural Contractors’ Association.
This at a time when Campbell has spoken repeatedly of the need for B. C. “ to become as well known for planting trees as we are for cutting trees.”
Tree- planting is of the cherished themes of his “ climate action plan,” a way to combine restoration of the pine beetle- killed forests with the opportunity to pile up credits in a carbon- trading system.
"We should be global leaders in the husbanding the value of our forests in fighting climate change,” he told a forest industry audience recently.
"We can restock our land base, protect and restore our watersheds, clean the air and create massive carbon sinks with aggressive new strategies.”
After discussing climate change with the other Canadian premiers late last month, the B. C. premier said: “ We have to include our trees as a major carbon sink. We have to ensure that we get full credit for what we’re doing in terms of offsets.”
Better make that full credit for what they’re “ talking” about doing, since there’s no sign the Liberals are actually moving on this front.
Seedlings have to be ordered from provincial nurseries more than a year in advance of the planting season.
So, as my colleague Gordon Hamilton noted in an article in The Vancouver Sun this week, “ even if the province had a beetlereforestation strategy in place, there would be no seedlings available at least until 2010.”
Literacy. Forest safety. Tree planting. In each case the promises were grand, while the execution to date has been greatly disappointing.
Nor are these isolated instances. Indeed, each serves to illustrate a characteristic weakness of the Gordon Campbell style of governing.
First, his tendency to confuse words with actions, press releases with programs.
Second, by the time anyone notices one of his promises has not been kept, he’s usually moved on to other enthusiasms.
