BC NDP under fire for possible partisan posts on government’s Facebook page

The BC NDP called it “government propaganda” while in opposition, but now it appears they’re producing their own.

The government of B.C.’s Facebook page contains a number of posts similar to those the NDP criticized the BC Liberals for.

And some are more obviously partisan than others.

“It certainly sounds like another case of say one thing and do another,” said BC Liberal finance critic Shirley Bond.

She said she was surprised to see the posts, one featuring an NDP campaign volunteer who “suffered under the many cuts to education and teachers strikes.”

“We saw that with the political fundraising bill, and now we’re seeing information –  that certainly we would have been heavily criticized for and have been in the past – appearing on the Government of British Columbia’s Facebook site.”

She said some of the posts stop short of having NDP volunteers talk about the demise of the public education system.

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But even though Bond thought the post about education was clearly partisan, she said most of the other posts are doing what the BC Liberals tried to do, get information out.

“What’s interesting is they certainly were very, very harsh in their criticism of us, even when it was about sharing of information, and now we see very similar posts,” said Bond.

For its part, the government said no money has been spent promoting the Facebook posts, and they were intended to highlight the major funding and policy changes in the 2017 Budget Update.

Earlier this year two Vancouver lawyers sued the BC Liberals for using taxpayers’ money to enhance the party’s image.

The lawyers claimed the Liberals were spending as much as $15-million of taxpayer money to enhance their image.

Referring to the ads airing during hockey games at the time, John Horgan said he couldn’t “stomach watching every time the puck is not being dropped having to hear about how great the Liberals are.”