COLUMN: Government grades own work, flunks

The B.C. government has issued its annual report card on its own work for the 2007-08 budget year, and it might surprise you to know it gave itself low marks on efforts to tackle some of the province’s biggest problems.

There are no letter grades for cabinet ministers, just a review of ministry service plan goals and whether they were met, exceeded or “not achieved.”

Premier Gordon Campbell was unique in that his office achieved every single one of its performance goals. Of course it helps that these goals are things like “ensure Human Resource Plan initiatives are underway” and “support Cabinet and Government Caucus committees.”

Yes, and he gets to announce everybody’s good news too.

The tough jobs and marks go to the line ministers. Here’s a sampling.

• Aboriginal Relations: The ministry spent $69 million on negotiations, nearly 80 per cent of its budget, and finally signed two treaties. That and a series of smaller deals added up to a good report card for minister Mike de Jong. The bad news tended to show up in other ministries, as we’ll soon see.

• Attorney General: Some performance measures are based on public opinion surveys, such as the one asking B.C. residents if they have confidence in the justice system. Wally Oppal’s ministry set the modest target at 50 per cent for those who have “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence. Survey says, only 42 per cent do.

Things get worse for Oppal when objective measures are used. In 2006-07, the average time to deal with an adult or youth criminal case was 181 days, down eight days from the previous year.

The ministry set a 2008 target for another modest improvement, to 179 days. Instead the average ballooned to 215 days, and there were similarly dismal setbacks for small claims actions, child protection hearings and family court hearings.

Of course judges and lawyers operate independently, so Oppal can’t just tell them to get on with it as he once could from the bench.

• Children and Family Development: Aboriginal matters land heavily here, as minister Tom Christensen knows from his time in both jobs. Only eight per cent of B.C. kids are aboriginal, but they now account for 52 per cent of the 9,237 children in ministry care.

Among the hard results, the rate of recurrence of child abuse or neglect by family members remained above 20 per cent. On the plus side, 742 kids were safely placed with relatives or in their community instead of foster care, exceeding the target of 700.

• Community Services: A great job making sure 97.5 per cent of local governments “are accountable and make effective use of their legislative powers.” It helps that they have fewer legislative powers to use now. See Premier’s office above.

• Education: It seems the dog ate minister Shirley Bond’s homework. Due to all the restructuring and recalculating, most results weren’t available for this year’s report card.

• Environment: Remember old-fashioned air pollution? Well, efforts eliminate particulate matter from the air by 2010 are “not on track.” And we’ve still got beehive burners in use, for heaven’s sake.

• Forests and Range: As expected there is heavy emphasis on market factors beyond Rich Coleman’s control in his final year on the job.

One performance measure not achieved was “aggressive emergency” pine beetle control, where mill shutdowns slowed the rate of harvesting affected timber, and unusual winds spread beetles faster than expected in the Mackenzie and Skeena-Stikine forest districts. Burning infested forests is the last resort to stem the spread.

Next week I’ll take a look at some of the highlights and lowlights of the other ministries, including the awesome money-eating machine of Health, and the bulldozer of Transportation where Kevin Falcon looks set to become the new flying Phil Gaglardi.

tfletcher@blackpress.ca