Poor Ben Stewart. Up until the last days of the legislative session, most people didn't even know he was in cabinet.

Now he's a symbol of bungling.

Stewart, Westside-Kelowna MLA, is minister of citizens' services. He's responsible, among other things, for the protection of the personal information citizens share -- often involuntarily -- with government.

And right now, it appears he isn't doing a good job.

This all starts back in April, which is the root of the government's problem. The RCMP commercial crime squad got a search warrant for a government employee's home. They were working with ICBC's special investigation unit, which handles cases of fraudulent driver's licences and identity cards.

In the home, they found government files on 1,400 British Columbians that the employee had taken home from work. Names, addresses, birth dates, social insurance numbers, health numbers and information on income. As Privacy Commissioner David Loukidelis noted, the kind of information that makes it easy for criminals to get fake credit cards or commit identity frauds.

The RCMP notified the government right away (before, it's worth noting, the election).

Up to this point, the only concern was whether safeguards were adequate. A minister can't be held accountable if an employee steps out of bounds.

But from then on, the government acted incompetently.

It wasn't until this month -- seven months after being notified that people's privacy had been breached and that they were vulnerable to fraud -- that the government sent letters notifying the people that they should be on guard. (That was bungled too; some letters were misaddressed and sent to the wrong people, adding a second privacy breach.)

It was also not until this month that the employee was fired.

And the government never did voluntarily reveal the breach. Reporters from the Times Colonist learned of the letters and broke the story.

Even then, Stewart was less than open and, in fact, misleading. He said he had learned of the breach about two weeks earlier, omitting the fact the government had known since May.

And he said the RCMP discovered the files as part of an "unrelated investigation."

But an investigation into fraud hardly seems unrelated to a trove of confidential information.

Stewart also failed to reveal that a second employee had been fired in connection with the breach. Times Colonist reporters uncovered that fact as well. Stewart would not say what job the person had, but she apparently worked in the Public Service Agency -- the lead human resources service for 30,000 government employees.

Stewart continued to flounder. He couldn't, or wouldn't, provide basic information about the events to reporters or in response to MLAs' questions.

And while he said he had ordered a complete investigation weeks ago, on Thursday he said there were still no terms of reference for the review. That is simply not competent.

It was an apt way for the Liberals to finish a difficult legislative session.

It raises three questions.

Why did the government wait seven months to notify 1,400 people their privacy had been compromised and they were at risk of credit fraud and identity theft? (The RCMP checked about 10 per cent of the files and concluded no fraud had yet taken place; but the information could have been sold or passed on long before then.)

Why was Stewart kept in the dark for seven months?

And why do ministers put up with this? Stewart is no dolt. He founded and grew Quails' Gate Winery and has an impressive resumé, but he's been left looking like a bungler.

One clue lies in how Stewart was advised, belatedly, of the breach. It wasn't his deputy, or security officials. It was the Public Affairs Bureau staff, the government's PR arm, which finally told the minister. No one is saying how long the PAB staffers had the information.

It's part of a pattern. Take the wildly inaccurate pre-election budget deficit and the broken promise on the HST.

Look back on a session where cabinet ministers refused to answer basic questions about everything from health care to Olympic tickets.

When spin triumphs over openness and substance, bad things ultimately happen.

Perhaps Stewart, and other ministers, will decide it's time to change course.