A B.C. government spin doctor masquerades as a medical doctor in a new online video about preventing child abuse.

Three people in the video launched Monday are government Public Affairs Bureau staff dressed up and playing roles — including a fake female doctor/ nurse — along with a real-life Victoria police officer.

The public service video appears to show a music teacher, a commercial truck driver and a doctor/nurse professing to be "responsible" for reporting child abuse in their respective professions, and encourages the public to do so as well.

At one point, the fake doctor/nurse, wearing a white lab coat and a stethoscope around her neck, describes how child abuse can include a failure to meet someone's medical needs.

The video includes Victoria police spokesman Sgt. Grant Hamilton, who speaks about the responsibility to report emotional and verbal child abuse. Hamilton's comments, recorded separately, are mixed in between the actors.

The bureau said it does not see anything wrong with the video, which is posted on its official YouTube site. "We couldn't get real people," said Christine Ash, bureau spokeswoman. "A lot of people don't want to do that kind of thing."

But the Opposition NDP said it is hard to believe that the government could not have found real experts for such an important subject.

"If the government was really serious about this they should have gone to real experts, real teachers, real doctors in the community in order to highlight this," said Maurine Karagianis, NDP children's critic.

"I don't think you have to go and fake this. If it's a serious topic you take it seriously, you prepare in advance and make sure it's something not thrown together at the last minute."

Simon Fraser University marketing professor John Peloza said doctors would support the video, so there was no attempt to lend it false credibility.

"[It is] probably just an expedient way to get the message done, and as a taxpayer I support that 100 per cent," he said.

Mark Wexler, a professor of business ethics at Simon Fraser, also considered it a minor deception, since it had no effect on the video's message. But he said the government was "sloppy" for failing to include a disclaimer to clarify that some of the people in the video were actors. "Professionals should basically, at the end, have just covered it by suggesting what they've done," he said.

The video production "did make efforts to get a real nurse and trucker for this" but had a tight deadline, bureau spokeswoman Corinna Filion said in a statement.

"So, instead, the efforts put into this video were focused on the message — prevent child abuse, and it is all of our responsibilities to do so. That was our priority."

The video did not cost taxpayers any money and there are no plans to buy television time, the bureau said.

The government's Public Affairs Bureau, responsible for all its communications and media management, employs more than 200 people and has an annual budget of more than $26 million.

rfshaw@timescolonist.com

— with files from Lindsay Kines

Watch the video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vaKeu0KwChk