Gordon Campbell has given the civil service's highest honour - an innovation and excellence award - to the office that stick-handled a controversial government initiative which was blasted by Canadian and American engineering, fire and earthquake experts.
The premier handed out that award last month to the building and safety policy branch for developing building code changes to allow the construction of five and six-storey wood-frame buildings.
In a news release, the government stated those changes achieved "high standards for safety and construction quality with the same degree of expert risk analysis and technical rigour as the national building code."
But what the release didn't mention is the numerous concerns that have been raised surrounding the raising of such buildings.
For example, in an exclusive interview last year, the chair of the province's fire services liaison group Stephen Gamble told Public Eye, "We have some real big concerns" about five and six storey wood-frames - a view shared by the National Fire Protection Association's Canadian regional manager Sean Tracey.
And those concerns were even more pointed south of the border.
"I've worked for a lot of building departments in four states in the past 20 years. And nobody even wants to talk about six wood" because of its "inherent dangers," said then Des Moines, Washington plans examiner Greg Fox.
"Myself, I'd be a little nervous about it - probably more than a little. I think we are getting toward the edges of what we can do (with wood)," said Jon Siu, the principle engineer for Seattle - a city the Campbell administration erroneously claimed to have already allowed six-storey wood-frames.
Five months after the province's building code changes were brought into force, the government touted the results of a seismic test that it has said shows such structures can perform safely in a major earthquake.
But fire and other concerns remain, qualifying the government for another kind of award - one for arrogance and audacity.
The sincerest form of flattery
The New Democrats' new Species at Risk Protection Act is so closely "modeled" on a similar law in Ontario that it mistakenly references a government committee that only exists in the eastern province.
The party's environment critic Rob Fleming introduced the private members' bill on May 31 - a month after Public Eye reported substantial portions of his Earth Day speech appeared to have been copied from the Earth Day Canada Website.
Speaking in the legislature, the Victoria-Swan Lake MLA said the bill was necessary because the province lacks "an explicit legislative framework that ensures B.C.'s unique and rich habitat is not lost forever from human impacts that can be better managed."
In a news release issued the same day, the New Democrats acknowledged their act was "modeled on similar legislation introduced in Ontario."
But a side-by-side comparison reveals many of the bill's passages haven't just been modeled on the Endangered Species Act - they've been lifted directly from it.
And that could explain why the New Democrats' proposed legislation would allow British Columbia's minister of agriculture and lands to halt activity that could threaten a species that has been classified as "extirpated, endangered or threatened" in a report from COSSARO - the Committee on the Status of Species at Risk inOntario.
In an interview New Democrat caucus communications director Sara Goldvine said the reference to COSSARO was "just a typoSo we have contacted the clerk's office about getting that mistake corrected."
Goldvine also said Fleming wasn't involved in the actual drafting of the Species at Risk Protection Act, with the opposition's research officers and co-op students penning such bills.
Sean Holman is editor of the online provincial political news journal Public Eye (publiceyeonline.com). He can be reached at [email protected].
