The minister responsible for government communications is defending a $24,000 communications contract to a Liberal insider.
Andrew Wilkinson, whose Citizen’s Services Ministry encompasses the government communications branch, said it’s appropriate to contract out services like this in certain cases.
“When there’s a surge in demand for communications services within government, bits get contracted out,” he said Thursday. “This one was contracted out entirely in keeping with the government procurement rules.”
Judy Kirk, a former Liberal caucus communications director, was awarded the up-to-$24,000 contract to provide one-on-one media training to cabinet ministers after the May provincial election.
The government said the work couldn’t be done by any of the almost 200 employees within its $26-million Government Communications and Public Engagement branch.
“There may be people who would be ready to do that, but they’ve all been really busy recently, so this small piece of work was contracted out because it had to be done urgently,” Wilkinson said.
The Opposition NDP has called the contract ridiculous and said the service should be provided by existing staff.
It’s unlikely this kind of expense would be cancelled as part of a core review into unnecessary services, Wilkinson said.
Thursday’s provincial budget set a goal of $30 million in government cutbacks, as well as $100 million in savings to be found in a core review by 2016.
“It’s important for new ministers, particularly, to be trained in how to deal with the media and how to communicate with the public,” Wilkinson said.
“So I can’t see that would ever be the kind of item that government would want to cut, because new ministers like me need to get accustomed to the media,” he said.
