Not long ago, B.C’s Speaker of the legislature Darryl Plecas promised that he’d resign if the contents of a report into shenanigans at the clerk’s office didn’t make people want to vomit.
Fast forward to this week when the bombshell report certainly made for a nausea-inducing glimpse into a culture of entitlement run amok.
A truckload of booze and a wood splitter delivered to a private home, trips abroad on the flimsiest of pretenses, gifts and clothes bought on the public dime are among the damning details in the report.
Both Liberal and NDP politicians are now piling on with shock and outrage. But these activities have apparently been going on under their noses for numerous years.
Politicians on the committee charged with oversight of the clerk’s office appear to have been clueless. Speakers from the previous Liberal government have been mum, but the details revealed so far don’t paint them in a flattering light.
As reporters covering the legislature have pointed out, MLAs on both sides of the house discouraged anyone from digging too deeply into the issue of legislature expenses and were certainly not in a rush to apply too much transparency to their activities.
It’s instructive that it took an outsider – a Speaker who was a pariah in both Liberal and NDP circles – to point to such rampant entitlement gone wrong.
The two men at the centre of this scandal have yet to defend themselves.
But a culture of “don’t ask, don’t tell” was clearly flourishing in the halls of power. Out in the real world, most people who read the report wouldn’t have a hard time pointing to what happened as indefensible and morally wrong.
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