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Vaughn Palmer: NDP says merit commissioner not needed. Yet report found hiring abuses are increasing

Finance minister ducks a simple question: Did she even read the latest report on problems by the commissioner

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VICTORIA — Finance Minister Brenda Bailey says the independent merit commissioner’s office should be abolished because it is not finding any abuses in government hiring.

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“They’re not finding areas to correct,” said Bailey, justifying Tuesday’s introduction of legislation to eliminate hiring oversight. “I don’t see any reason for the merit commissioner’s office to continue when they are finding zero difficulty.”

Vaughn Palmer: NDP says merit commissioner not needed. Yet report found hiring abuses are increasing Back to video

Bailey’s attack on the office drew a strong defence from the current merit commissioner, David McCoy.

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“For more than 20 years, the Office of the Merit Commissioner has served British Columbians by providing independent oversight to ensure that hiring within the B.C. public service is based on merit — on competence and qualifications,” McCoy wrote in a public response to Bailey on Thursday.

“The office has audited thousands of appointments, reviewed hiring fairness issues brought forward by employees — in some cases, leading to the reversal of flawed hiring outcomes — identified and proposed solutions to systemic issues, and provided dozens of reports and specific guidance to hiring managers that have driven improvements across the public service. “

McCoy also supplied proof that Bailey didn’t know what she was talking about when she said the office wasn’t finding anything to correct.

“The results of most recent audit underscore why our work matters,” he wrote. “It found the highest rate of flawed hiring processes and outcomes in nearly a decade.”

From the executive summary of the commission’s audit of 2024-25 financial year: “The number of appointments resulting from a hiring process with serious errors remains high. The number of people appointed who were either not qualified or whose qualifications could not be verified by the audit has increased.”

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The commission reviewed 276 appointments, chosen at random from more than 8,000 over the year.

It found that the merit principle was not applied in 10 per cent of the cases, with a resulting negative impact on the hiring process.

There were errors in the hiring process in a further 23 per cent of cases, but the commission was unable to identify any negative impacts on the outcome.

So there were problems with about a third of the hirings in the sample. If those findings were extrapolated to the full year’s worth of cases, then as many as 3,000 of the more than 8,000 hirings would have been flawed in some way.

Compare those findings to the finance minister’s claim in interviews and in the legislature that the audit found “zero” abuses.

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When I asked Bailey if she’d even read the audit, she ducked the question.

But if she did read it, I can’t believe she would have risked her credibility with such a grossly misleading summary of the contents.

I assume she merely repeated what she was told about the audit. The misreading of the audit may have originated elsewhere as part of a rationale for getting rid of the merit commissioner.

In that regard, I would note that the first announcement on the elimination of the merit commissioner came in a statement Tuesday from Shannon Salter, deputy minister to Premier David Eby.

On the same day, the budget documentation from the Ministry of Finance still indicated that the office of the merit commissioner would be fully funded with $1.75 million for the financial year starting April 1.

On Friday, I spoke to a “deeply saddened” McCoy about what would be lost with the elimination of his office.

He said the commission vets hirings, promotions and firings across some 69 divisions and agencies of government. It provides an independent refuge and court of last resort for public servants who believe they have got a raw deal.

McCoy worries the NDP government shutdown of the commission might preclude the release of a comprehensive report on terminations, due this spring.

McCoy expanded on those concerns in his reply to Bailey.

“Having independent and objective oversight in place encourages compliance, addresses problems before they arise, and encourages a culture of integrity,” he wrote.

“The cost of losing independent oversight may ultimately far exceed the savings from eliminating a small oversight body.”

McCoy noted that just this week, a report from the legislature’s all-party finance committee recommended another three years of funding for the commission.

The committee praised the commission’s “dedicated commitment to upholding merit-based practices in public services hiring.”

The NDP government’s proposed legislation “would remove the merit commissioner’s core functions of random audits of hiring processes and dismissal process reviews and, with them, the requirement for government to report on these matters for public transparency,” wrote McCoy.

“The trust that comes through independent and transparent oversight of provincial hiring and dismissal processes matters more than ever. We believe British Columbians deserve a clear explanation of how the merit principle will be upheld without independent oversight.”

If the New Democrats have their way, the merit principle won’t be upheld, publicly and independently, the way it is now with the commissioner. It might be applied internally in government, if at all.

David Eby prefers it that way, judging from the hit job on the commission that the Finance Ministry and his government initiated this week.

vpalmer@postmedia.com

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