Editorial: BC spin doctors thank God it's Friday

There is no better time than a Friday afternoon to drop a controversial government announcement.

The spin doctors know the wretched hacks in the media are raring to get on with their weekends and want to spend some back-slapping time at the local bar.

The weekend edition is mostly ready and the front page has already been decided upon, with a small hole left to be filled by any other disaster that may come the way of the skeleton staff that works the weekend shift.

And so it happened again.

Last Friday, as the world was being mesmerised by the Olympic opening ceremonies, a press release landed on the faxes of the various newsrooms announcing whopping pay rises for about 100 top B.C. bureaucrats.

Very stealth.

TV stations were scrambling to get reactions but just nobody it seems, except for the BC Taxpayers Federation and the NDP, were around to pan the plan.

When all was said and done, the pay hikes got lost in the Olympic chatter.

So for those of you who missed it, here is what four million of your tax dollars will be doing for the next little while.

The pay rise, retroactive to Aug. 1 will be for deputy ministers, assistant deputy ministers and the Premier’s deputy minister.

There are about 20 deputy ministers and 80 assistant deputy ministers working for the B.C. government.

Laughing all the way to the bank is Gordon Campbell’s deputy minister, Jessica McDonald, who gets a massive $105,000 more, or about a 43 per cent jump in her salary of $243,936.

Annual salaries for deputy ministers will increase to $299,215 from $221,760. Assistant deputy ministers are now eligible to receive maximum annual salaries of $195,000, up from $160,000.

At first blush, these hikes look obscene.

But upon closer examination, it’s not that bad and is basically in line with what the private sector pays for its top executives.

These pay hikes, despite the silly comparisons to minimum wages, will attract the best and the brightest and ensure proper management of our revenues and assets.

We need top talent to manage a $30-billion provincial economy.

Despite the pay hikes, we are only ranked number three now with the new salary structure for top civil servants after Alberta and Ontario.

Before this, the province ranked 10th in Canada for salaries for assistant deputy ministers and sixth for deputy ministers.

The government did what it had to do to hire and retain good talent.

We have an aging workforce with more than half of the top B.C. executives staring at retirement.

If we plan to attract new people, we better show them the money.

NDP house leader Mike Farnworth said: "I don’t know what world the premier is living in, but certainly not the world that the rest of the province is."

In fact, its Farnworth who needs to figure out the real world.

You pay peanuts, you will only get monkeys to run the office, Mr. Farnworth.

As for the Friday afternoon stealth move, that is something the Campbell government did not have to do.

Memo to government spin doctors: This TGIF tactic is wearing thin.