Energy Minister Josie Osborne may or may not survive the controversy over allegations about a kickback scheme in the independently-managed CleanBC grant program.
The claim is that after being rebuffed multiple times, it was suggested that if Edison retained the firm to help with applications, it would have a better chance at winning them. Then it could pony up the success fee. Then it becomes a deadly effective topic for critics trying to appeal to voters’ concerns about paying the highest gas prices in North America, and their doubts about the climate change fight.
The number of full-time equivalent employees in core government functions and service delivery agencies was 31,321 when the NDP took over in 2017. Now it’s listed at 45,159. But they still felt the need to contract out the grants program, to a firm that has billed about $70 million to the government in the last several years.
The paper said the pandemic was a “pivot point” where outsourcing work on those sorts of programs emerged as a good option for governments. The specific move in the legislature was almost comical, because they had to formally undo the previous rejection. So Osborne moved that the refusal motion be deemed “null and void.” Then she popped up and moved for an investigation, so the government could support it this time.The opposition had another word for it. “Unbelievable.”