Like so many of the initiatives coming from Premier Christy Clark's office these days, the proposal to privatize B.C.'s Liquor Distribution Branch (LDB) is a bad idea. Making matters that much worse, however, is that both the premier and her cabinet colleagues are trying to pretend that privatizing the LDB is not only a sound piece of public policy but it will also be a good news story for the provincial treasury.
On both counts the premier is not just misguided, she's contorting the facts in ways that would make the Cirque du Soleil stand up and take notice.
Let's start at the beginning. Sound public policy, at least as espoused by the BC Liberals, is supposed to be anchored to a "business case." In plain language, it means if the government wants to make a change in existing policy, the change should, at the very least, be justified by research that is internally generated by government. In this case, the research has been externally generated. The case for privatizing the LDB has been made by one of the proponents for the sale.
Think about that for a moment. Premier Clark is basing a billion-dollar decision on input from an entity that hopes to profit handsomely from the billion-dollar decision. What are the chances that the "input" from that entity is going to be balanced, objective, sound and all the other things citizens would reasonably expect when public policy is being developed? The sad fact is that if the case isn't being made within government, with facts and research that are gathered independent of any proponents of the change, then the privatization scheme doesn't deserve to be on the public agenda.
Skeptics have correctly pointed out that following this kind of path to public policy decision-making means that government becomes captured by lobbyists, a prospect that not only smacks of corruption but also always leads to bad outcomes for the public as a whole. How many BC Rail-like experiences must we endure to finally realize that lobbyists run amock are bad news for good, sound public policy?
Public ownership of the LDB has been an important revenue generator for the provincial government. Over the last five years the LDB produced $4.3 billion in provincial revenue for B.C.'s treasury. In 2011, the LDB contributed close to $890 million in revenue. That's $890 million that helped pay for schools, hospitals, public infrastructure and public services. No one in B.C. is saying he or she wants $890 million less in any of those serv ices, but if this privatization scheme goes through, the hole left in the provincial treasury will have to be offset either by cuts in services or a shift in tax revenue.
None of those options is ever mentioned in any of the government's news releases on the sale of the LDB. Quite the opposite, the premier and her cabinet colleagues can't find enough adjectives to celebrate the brilliance of their plan to sell the LDB, even if the idea wasn't theirs in the first place.
More curious still is the fact that if the sale of the LDB goes through as proposed, the new private operator will be looking for a profit. After all, that's part of the "business case," and that means that consumers will ultimately shoulder the cost of this privatization, just as they have with so many other ill-conceived plans hatched by the BC Liberals. Don't believe me? Just look at what has happened at BC Hydro as the government forced that Crown corporation to sign private power contracts that are forcing ever-higher electricity rates onto households in B.C.
The forced sale of the LDB is a bad news story for our province. It is the invention of lobbyists who care little about sound public policy. That the premier and her cabinet are inept enough to go along with those plans only adds to the bad news. Ultimately, however, it will be voters who decide whether this government and its policies are taking B.C. in the right direction. Hopefully, voting day happens before any more damage is done to our province. •
