The feeling surging through most British Columbians' blood today should seem familiar. It's a lot like road rage, albeit inspired by those who insure cars, not those who drive them.
Last week, ICBC announced CEO Jon Schubert was stepping down in November after it was revealed senior executives and managers at the Crown corporation have been raking in vast sums of money even as other government workers were told to tighten their belts.
The number of those earning more than $200,000 a year at ICBC spiked by 315 per cent in the past five years, while regular employees have seen wages frozen since 2009. Exec perks do not seem to have been extended to the frontline workers - which includes those who administer road tests to teenagers, a job suitable only for daredevils and those who want to have prematurely white hair.
For years we have been told we have to attract "the best" to public service. What that seems to mean in practice is forking over fistfuls of public cash to high-ranking civil servants.
Schubert himself exemplifies the way in which you cannot lose once you ascend high enough. He's quitting, but only to work, at full pay, as a "consultant" for the corporation for almost a year. The man responsible for shovelling money away gets a reward, rather than a punishment for his transgressions. In the private sphere, we have recently seen Wall Street and Bay Street gripped with a culture of excess and easy money that almost destroyed the world's economy.
Why do we want public corporations to emulate the style of private ones in this way? Get rid of Schubert now, and purge those who think like him from every Crown corporation in B.C.
