The feeling surging through most British Columbians' blood should seem familiar. It's a lot like road rage, albeit inspired by those who insure cars, not those who drive them.
ICBC's CEO Jon Schubert stepped down last week after it was revealed that 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. Regular employees have seen wages frozen since 2009.
Execs were pampered with signing bonuses and perks, even getting cash for moving expenses. These perks do not seem to have been extended to the front-line 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.
We should not be surprised. For years we have been told that 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.
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?
