Premier John Horgan and Green Party Leader Andrew Weaver speak to media during a press conference at Legislature in Victoria.CHAD HIPOLITO/The Canadian Press
British Columbia's NDP government has set aside more than $260,000 a year in public money to maintain a power-sharing agreement that is keeping it alive in the minority legislature.
The governing New Democrats have already faced criticism for hiring staff to manage the party's alliance with the third-place Greens, and the Opposition Liberals say the budget for those efforts, revealed in documents released through Freedom of Information legislation, is inappropriate.
The news comes as the NDP is also under fire for hiring dozens of political appointees with party ties; an issue that had been met in previous legislatures with outrage from then opposition members of the party.
The New Democrats took power over the summer after signing a deal with the Greens, who committed to support the government in confidence votes in exchange for a list of policy commitments.
To keep the deal together, the new government set up a confidence and supply-agreement secretariat within the Premier's office, appointing Donna Sanford – the sister of senior campaign official Glen Sanford – as executive director. The secretariat's role is to ensure the Greens are properly consulted on policies and legislation.
Ms. Sanford's salary is $100,000 a year and she's been given the green light to hire two staff members, according to documents obtained by The Globe and Mail. They include a policy analyst with a salary of $90,000 and an executive assistant with a salary of $53,000, although the government says those two positions have not yet been filled. The policy analyst position was initially slated to pay between $72,400 and $82,900 a year, but Ms. Sanford requested that be changed to $90,000, the documents show.
The secretariat also has an annual travel budget of $20,000.
"They need to be up front with British Columbians about the fact that it is costing taxpayer money, potentially up to a million dollars over four years, to manage a political relationship," Liberal finance critic Shirley Bond said in an interview.
"The public service is not in the business of supporting political relationships, that is not their job."
Ms. Bond said the Liberals plan to press their concerns when the legislature reviews the estimates from the recent provincial budget. The NDP government did not make a cabinet minister available for an interview, but Premier John Horgan's spokeswoman, Jen Holmwood, defended the secretariat's budget in an e-mailed statement. Ms. Holmwood said the secretariat was doing "excellent work" and is part of fulfilling the NDP's commitment to work across party lines.
"This small office is dedicated to co-ordinating consultations with the Green caucus that ensure progress on a range of priorities in the agreement," she said in the statement.
Adam Olsen, one of three Greens elected to the legislature in May, said he could see no problem with the secretariat or the money spent on it. He said the purpose of the agreement, and by extension the secretariat, is to create good public policy.
"Minority governments require levels of communication that other governments haven't engaged in, nor appear to be comfortable engaging in," Mr. Olsen said in an interview.
"The success of this government is about communication and us working together. Rather than tearing this down, we should be celebrating it."
The secretariat's budget is the latest issue prompting criticism from opposition benches in the past week. The New Democrats were also forced to defend a recent string of political appointments.
A number of positions have gone to former campaign staff, constituency workers and others connected to the BC New Democrats, as well as NDP staff from the federal party and other provinces. They also include newly appointed ministerial assistant Kassandra Dycke, who unsuccessfully ran as a New Democrat in the 2013 election.
The Liberals, who were once on the receiving end of criticism for such appointments, cried hypocrisy.
"That's the key issue here: You say one thing and you do another," Ms. Bond said. "There's a pattern of that emerging."
Mr. Horgan insisted the government has been hiring qualified candidates based on their merits.
"We went through a hiring process, that I was quite proud of, to populate our political positions," Mr. Horgan told reporters on Friday after a speech to the Union of BC Municipalities conference in Vancouver.
"But this notion that there was an airlift of failed candidates is just not true. We hired one individual who was a candidate not in the last election but in the election before that, and on top of that she's eminently qualified. We went thorough a rigorous process. We hired the best people."
While in opposition, the New Democrats repeatedly complained about Liberal patronage appointments.
"We know that while average British Columbians are still struggling to find work, the B.C. Liberals are making sure their partisan friends are finding soft landing spots," Shane Simpson, who was recently named Social Development Minister, told the legislature in 2014.
"While B.C. remains in last place in private-sector job creation, the premier [Christy Clark] has found more than $1-million a year to pay perks and patronage appointments – $1-million to hire 20 failed candidates and Liberal insiders. No jobs created for British Columbians, but good-paying jobs for their friends."