His Majesty's Secret PAB Service

Ministers?
WeDon'tNeedNoStinkinMinisters!Ville

We have noted many times in the past how Gordon Campbell's personal 'Public Affairs Bureau' is, by far, the single largest media (and media-sniffing) apparatus in the entire province of British Columbia.

And while we always knew that these fine folks (folks who visit this site early and often every time His Majesty's name is mentioned amongst the pixels) were massaging the messages for public consumption, we never, even our wildest conspiratorial fever-dreams, figured the PAB was massaging the message for Cabinet Ministers.

Until now.

Paul Willcocks, based on some very fine digging by Rob Shaw and Lindsay Kines of the Victoria Times-Colonist has the story:

So, when Citizens' Services Minister Ben Stewart learned — seven months late — that a government employee already being investigated for fraud had been caught with confidential information on 1,400 British Columbians from ministry files, who tells him?

Not his deputy, or officials responsible for privacy or from the ministry involved.

A Public Affairs Bureau staffer brought the minister up to date. How long did the branch responsible for the government's messaging know?

That's still a secret.

Rob Shaw and Lindsay Kines from the Times Colonist have been reporting on the issue.
The newspaper argues in an editorial today that Stewart should resign.


So.

Two questions:

1) Why does the PAB even have this information, information of critical important to the private lives of a signifiant number of British Columbians?

2) What else does the PAB know that Cabinet Ministers of this Province don't?


Here's hoping Messr's Shaw and Kines are able to get answers these questions and the other three 'W's' as well.


_____
The VT-C editorial linked to above is a good one and a very fine example of the public service that an unfettered, hard-charging proMedia organ can provide. However, we think the real issue here is not Mr. Stewart but rather the concentration of power in the Premier's office that is exemplified by the secret tentacles of the PAB that slither out from under it's tightly controlled and closed (except, of course, to the chosen few who pay to open them) doors.

.