4- Sunday, February 17, 1985 - North Shore News

Make ‘em work

ay increase for British Columbia’s MLAs?
Gawd. | mean, shouldn't they be throwing
their speechwriters’

themselves
points?

on

Supposing the economy
had turned around. That
would be different. Like any
other board of directors, they
could take a bow and help
themselves to a raise and the
shareholders wouldn't blink
an eyelash.

But B.C. Inc. isn’t exactly
charging along full-tilt
boogie, is it? It seems to me
the paycheques of MLAs
should be tied to something
tangible like the Gross Pro-
vincial Product. Who
knows? That might provide
the free enterprise-style in-
centives that are so obviously
lacking at the moment.

At the moment, all an
MLA has to do is play to his
constituent audience back
home, kowtow to the Party
Whip, hopefully ingratiate
himself with the leader, keep
his nose relatively clean, not
iell too many outright fies,
and he has essentially covered
all the political bases.

There is nothing, really, to
inspire him to make bloody
sure the economy gets roll-
ing, partisanship aside. When
you think about what kinds
of goals an MLA can
realistically set for himself’, it

ball-

quickly becomes evident that
saving the province isn't one
of them.

Getting re-elected, voting
according to what the
backroom party boys dictate,
maybe leaving a few pithy
comments in Hansard or
one’s name on the bottom of
some tidbit of legislation that
might endure for a decade or
two, that’s about it for vour
average MLA.

The reason there seems to
be almost universal aversion
tO a wage increase for the
boys and girls in Victoria is
the obvious, stark contrast
between the idea of our
MLAs becoming the third
highest-paid provincial
legislators in the country,
after Quebec and Ontario,
while we happen to have the
third-highest unemployment
rate, after Newfoundland
and Nova Scotia.

So there’s another
thought: if you don’t want to
tie politicians’ salaries to the
GPP (or, for that matter, na-
vionally, to the GNP) then
why not tie them to
something equally real, like
the unemployment rate? As
the rate went down, polici-

cians’ wages would rise, and
vice versa. Wouldn't that get
them moving?

What we're asking for is
performance as opposed to
mere performances.

Also, | don't see why
politicians’ wages should be
the same. Some politicians
are obviously better than
others, Why not a merit
system? Tt could be based on
any number of criteria, rang-
ing from the econemic state
of affairs in the MILA‘s
riding to hours spent on com-
mittee work, speeches made
in the House, good deeds per-
formed by constituents.

There should also, just for
the record, be a punch clock
in the doorway of the I egisla-
tive Assembly.

Cabinet ministers also
clearly deserve to be paid ac-
cording to their talents rather
than their titles. fy wouldn't
be hard to set up a produc-
tivity scale to measure their
effectiveness. Ht would vary

from ministry to minisiry, of

course. [n education, it
would boil down to students
graduated and what they
knew. In forestry, it would
come down to the state of our
forests and forest industry
alike.

See page 12

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