Hard to Trust Politicians After HST Revelation

(Aired on September 2, 2010)

It's hard to believe now that the B.C. government, or at least the Minister of Finance, didn't have some advance knowledge of the HST before last year's provincial election. It's no wonder politicians are so low on the list of people most trusted by the public. So much damage control, so much double talk it's so hard to know who, if anyone, you can believe.

New information out shows that bureaucrats in the finance ministry were preparing briefing notes for Finance Minister Colin Hansen well before last year's election campaign. This contrasts directly with government statements that the government didn't start discussing the issue until much later.

While the information shows Hansen may not have pushed the tax heavily until after the election, it's hard to imagine that he had absolutely no knowledge of what people under his control were doing. Hansen says he didn't ask for the research to be done, and staff were doing it on their own. Hansen says they were just doing their job researching tax policy and weren't taking any direction from the Liberals. If that's true, then Hansen wasn't doing his job. If the Minister doesn't know what his bureaucrats are doing, he isn't doing his job keeping track of what's happening in his department. And I find that really hard to stomach. If that's the case, Hansen should be turfed for incompetence.

Either way, the government comes out the loser, and we lose even more faith in our politicians. I've been around this game a long time, and I often try to think back to when we really started to lose faith in our elected officials. Was it Watergate that started it all? Or were there times before that when government scandals rocked our senses? Whenever it started, it seems to have ballooned to alarming proportions. And now it doesn't matter what government says, we have our doubts about their sincerity, their honesty and integrity. And that's a very sad state of affairs.