It would appear that there is still lots of room at the trough.

Always good to network. Never fails.

John Yap is a terrific guy and works very hard. This is a very good appointment.

Is this more government expansion at a time when we are supposed to be cutting back?

And how much will this cost us, Ms. Clark. Yet another six figure salary plus expenses? Money that could definitely be better spent elsewhere.
Since 2001 the salarys of the MLAs have almost doubled =-( Yet the rest of the Government workers are supposed to accept “net-zero” mandates.

I must have said something wrong, sorry

daisybee wrote: “And how much will this cost us, Ms. Clark. Yet another six figure salary plus expenses”

John Yap is already an MLA. The current Executive Council is made up of 17 ministers, including the premier, plus the Lieutenant-Governor. Now there are 18. I believe I am correct in saying that there have been over 20 in the past.

Frankly, I would not be surprised if the current cabinet has been in overwork mode. Certainly our two MLAs are in that situation with the portfolios they have.

It would be interesting to see whether this change means additional costs to government or whether there is a redistribution among functional groups which may actually bring about greater effectiveness and possibly even efficiencies.

“Overwork mode”, Gus? They’ve got more Cabinet Ministers to look after the affairs of State in this Province than Obama has to run the whole United States’ government!

WAC Bennett, our longest serving and most successful Premier, oversaw a BC that was burgeoning with REAL economic growth with himself and many of his Cabinet Ministers handling more than one portfolio. And that was in an era where the average MLA had to have another job aside from his political one to make ends meet.

And I seriously doubt Bennett paid two full salaries to himself or any of his Cabinet Ministers who took on more than one Ministry.

This bimbo and her former boss have grossly over bloated Cabinets. In a time when they’re preaching the need for restraint and holding the line on taxpayer costs? The internal savings should start at the top. We do not need all these Ministries. Lets get back to basics.

I think Bennett’s government went down to defeat in 1972. In that year, the BC Cabinet was 17 with 18 ministires.

In 1971 it was 16 with 18 ministries …

Read “The institutionalized cabinet: governing the Western Provinces” if you have not already, and you may learn about why cabinets grew over time.

Time to do a bit of research.

As I am prone to do, I took a closer look at the numbers for WAC ….

The first is the year, then the number of ministers, then the number of ministries.

I have included the year previous to the reign and the year after as well.

19511115
1952715
19531115
19541014
19551015
19561115
19571216
19581216
19591216
19601217
19611217
19621217
19631117
19641017
19651319
19661317
19671516
19681517
19691618
19701618
19711618
19721718
19731418

Then I took the growth from the year following his first year in office and the year just prior to leaving office just so that I would skip changes in governmeent.

So, from 1953 to 1971, Bennett grew his ministers by ries by 45% and his ministries by 20%.

I have not done the study, but perhaps Bennett grew the cabinet and ministries more than any other Premier since his time in office.

What do you think? Is that a fair statement?

As far as Obama goes, Socredible, you know that the governance system in the USA is totally different and you ought to be ashamed of yourself for comparing apples to oranges ….

On the backs of the teachers!

More vote buying.

How many were in Cabinet in Gordon Campbell’s first term in office? A lot more than 14 Ministers for 18 Ministries. How many more were ‘Parliamentary Secretaries’? I do not recall there being any such latter positions in WAC Bennett’s time. Perhaps there were, but I doubt it.

And yes, the US is governed under a different set-up than we have. But I think it would take quite a stretch of the imagination to believe that just because a Secretary of some Department of the the US government is not also a Member of the legislative branch of their government, as is the case here, that their area of responsibility isn’t a lot greater than that of a BC Cabinet Minister.

They do get called before Congress to be questioned far more aggressively (by BOTH members of the ‘opposition’ and their own Party) than is currently the case up here. Where seldom is heard any thorough questioning in any Question Period by MLAs of the governing Party. This certainly WASN’T the case in most years of WAC Bennett’s time in office. Some of the old Socred backbench MLAs asked harder questions than the Opposition did, whether it embarrassed their own government or not.

Let me see, comparing the executive branch of the US with a population that is what, 80 times the population of BC?, is how meaningful?

They have 15 departments with a total workfoce almost the size of the population of BC. Get real.

Just admit it, you went out on a limb without checkiing whether the limb was solid … now you fell off, are red in the face, and still trying to defend yourself.

Not at all. You say they have 15 Departments to run the whole US Federal Government. How many Ministries did Gordon Campbell have to run a Province with 1/80th the population, if that’s what it works out to? Do we really need a Ministry of Amateur Sport? Or a Parliamentary
Secretary to the Minister of Transport? Or a Ministry of Multiculturalism?

Socredible …. you do not get it do you? Even the Canadian Federal Government cannot be compared to Provincial Governments in my mind. They have totally different roles. Apples to oranges …..

You want to compare? … compare the feds of both parties …. 39 ministers (including Harper) in Canada to cover 49 ministries, which includes the PMO.

That is totally not the way to do a Core Services Review which, in essence, we are posting about.

A comparative analysis of one country’s governance versus another’s need to be done on a functional basis. Then one needs to look at the scope of each function.

The whole fucntional organization is different.

There is one secretary of defense in the USA. There is one Minister of Defense in Canada. That is where the similarity stops. The scope of defense in the USA is totally different from the scope of defense in Canada to pick on one that should be rather obvious.

Homeland Security in the USA is the second largest Department. Try to find it in Canada. Does not exist as a ministry.

Apples and Oranges …..

Okay, Gus. I do see what you’re getting at. But my point is, do we really need a full scale Ministry for all the various things we currently have one for in BC?

There’s not only the additional salary it costs the taxpayers in making some backbench MLA a Minister of this or that, (like Amateur Sport or Multiculturalism, for instance, to name just two that are completely superfluous IMHO), there’s the additional expense of making some other one his or her Parliamentary Secretary.

And then we have to have a full scale Deputy Minister, and another complete chain of command beneath him. Do we really need all this? At a time when the government is supposedly trying to control costs?