Pros and cons to appointing Liberals to boards of universities

SATURDAY MORNING EDITORIAL — Should the boards of governors of B.C.’s universities be filled with Liberal party faithful?

B.C. Conservative leader Dan Brooks, whose provincial office is in Kamloops, thinks not.

Friday, he released a partial list of Liberals who sit on post-secondary boards, and said Premier Christy Clark should “immediately end her government’s practice of appointing Liberal friends and insiders.”

He listed several recent appointments to the boards of universities, colleges and institutes, including defeated Liberal candidates and ex-Liberal MLAs. This is no surprise — the Liberals have been appointing party supporters to various boards for year, and the NDP did it before that.

For example, when the NDP was in power, the board of our own university in Kamloops was dominated by New Democrats. When the Liberals defeated the NDP, out went the NDP appointments and in came Liberals. Todd Stone, now transportation minister, was one of those Liberal appointments.

Is there a problem with that? Yes and no. On the one hand, it’s a cousin of pork barreling. By favouring party supporters for such appointments, governments limit their own choices and don’t get as broad a cross-section of community representation on boards and committees as they otherwise would.

However, being able to rely on supportive boards at the local level makes things easier for the government to promote its own programs and philosophies. In a worst-case scenario, non-aligned local boards could be at odds with the government and stall progress on key initiatives.

But is there a better way? Possibly, if guidelines were put in place ensuring that at least a certain number of seats on boards and committees of educational institutions and even other government-supported groups were reserved for non-partisan appointments.

Or, if the makeup of the boards of some major institutions like universities was determined by local election.

But neither of those two scenarios is likely to come about in this lifetime.