SEARCHING QUESTIONS — Hiring an executive can take a while, but when politicians are involved, it can drag on forever.
It’s been almost two years since Elizabeth Denham resigned as B.C.’s information and privacy commissioner, and MLAs are still plodding through the process of hiring her replacement.
Another search committee of MLAs was created last week, after one established in 2016 was unable to agree on a successor, despite holding 18 meetings. The recommendation to the house must be unanimous, and the first one couldn’t reach unanimity.
Drew McArthur has been acting as commissioner since Denham’s departure for a similar post in Britain.
The new group of MLAs is apparently going to rely on the first pool of candidates, because the legislature website says the application period is now closed: “The committee appreciates the interest of all applicants, however, only those invited for an interview will be contacted.”
Another search committee will recruit a replacement for retiring chief electoral officer Keith Archer.
ROAST THE TOAST — Suspicious B.C. Liberals want to know how the protest hashtag #toastthecoast turned into an official government advertising slogan.
Opposition MLAs noted that B.C.’s response to the Alberta wine boycott — an advertising blitz urging British Columbians to drink up the trade shortfall — “borrowed the slogan from their anti-development friends.”
The tag is getting middling attention on Twitter, although #pinotnotpipelines is funnier.
The slogan was first used in an earlier fight against the Kinder Morgan pipeline. Liberal MLA Shirley Bond said the retooling suggests a different agenda that has nothing to do with good policy and more to do with keeping the Green Party onside with the NDP.
Agriculture Minister Lana Popham said B.C. drinkers are responding well. “They have been taking wine off the shelves at an alarming rate…”
STROTHER TRIBUTE — Liberal MLA Peter Milobar recalled one of the great 1960s movie lines in the legislature. Rapping the NDP government for not making a courtesy call to Alberta to alert them to the threat of B.C. restrictions on bitumen, which started the wine war currently underway, Milobar reached back to Cool Hand Luke.
Strother Martin played a malevolent prison warden who summed up his problem with renegade hero Paul Newman’s attitude: “What we’ve got here is a failure to communicate.”
