It is easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them.
- Psychologist Alfred Adler
In a week when we learned B.C. welfare cases are up an astounding 47 per cent since last year, New Democratic Party MLAs said they are going to take the 29 per cent pay increase they strongly rejected in 2007.
After an election campaign where the NDP rightly attacked the B.C. Liberals for this province's shameful record of leading Canada in child poverty for five straight years, NDP MLAs will no longer be obligated to donate their wage hike to local charities.
And almost two years to the day when NDP leader Carole James raked B.C. Liberal MLAs over the coals in the Legislature for voting in an "obscene pay increase", she and her colleagues reversed their position and will accept the salary increase from $76,100 to $98,000 and rising.
This comes after the NDP caucus attempted in 2007 to imitate King Solomon's wisdom by proposing to cut the baby in half - saying they would accept a generous pension plan but reject the wage increase.
The alternative, I argued at the time, was to campaign against the entire package developed by a B.C. Liberal-appointed elitist compensation committee and make it a major political issue.
After all, before the proposal was hatched, every MLA made almost double B.C.'s average annual wage of $41,500 - and the $76,100 was more than what 90 per cent of British Columbians earned.
And MLAs were already getting an RRSP contribution of nearly $7,000 a year - over double the B.C. average of $3,000 - while just 31 per cent of Canadians even have an RRSP.
But NDP MLAs couldn't resist the pension plan then and apparently, the salary hike now.
So they will reap the disappointment of many charities who collectively received over $485,000 from NDP MLAs between April 1, 2007 and December 31, 2008.
Sandy Bryce, executive director of Victoria's Mary Manning Centre, which helps child sex-abuse victims, says the NDP decision is "very unfortunate".
"I have no idea why the decision was made and nobody has talked to me about that.
Any time there's any reduction in any kind of funding that we receive, it always has a direct impact on the level of services we can provide for children," she told the Province.
James and three other Victoria MLAs had made donations, she said.
This doesn't mean individual MLAs won't continue to give all or part of their salary hike to worthy charities.
But the high road on MLA pay is now lost and the NDP caucus needs to think a lot harder about how it deals with major public policies if it wants to win in 2013.
Read more from Bill Tieleman at www.thetyee.ca Hear Bill Mondays at 10 a.m. on CKNW AM 980's Bill Good Show. Email: weststar@telus.net Website: billtieleman.blogspot.com
