The minister of children and family development has made an outspoken social conservative responsible for overseeing the body that regulates one of the province's most socially liberal professions - social workers.
Mary Polak quietly named Heather Stilwell to the board of directors of the B.C. College of Social Workers on December 14.
Stilwell, who was reportedly Polak's mentor when the two were Surrey school trustees, has an impressive list of social conservative credentials including being the former leader of the federal Christian Heritage Party and the provincial Family Coalition Party.
She was also president of a number of anti-abortion groups. And, as a school trustee, she supported limiting sex education and opposed condom machines and books featuring same-sex parents.
Those views may have played well with voters in Surrey.
But, in an interview with Public Eye, the founding director of the University of Victoria's school of social work Brian Wharf described them as being "absolutely opposed to those the (British Columbia Association of Social Workers) stands for."
"I mean it's fine to have diverging views if they can be discussed openly and make a contribution," said Wharf, the former dean of the university's faculty of human and social development.
"But I'm puzzled how someone with such opposing views could make a contribution to the work of the college" - where one-third of the directors are named by the minister, with the remainder elected by registered social workers.
That puzzlement is shared by New Democrat MLA Nicholas Simons, who is also a former social worker.
"It just seems counterintuitive to appoint someone with such strong, clearly-stated views to a position where open-mindedness should be in the job description," he stated.
But the government doesn't seem willing to solve that puzzle. As of publication time, it has yet to respond to a request for comment.
Another inconvenient truth
A former Fraser Institute staffer who said the documentary An Inconvenient Truth overstated the problem of global warming will now be governing the Crown corporation responsible for buying the province's greenhouse gas offsets.
But Heather Holden, who was appointed to the Pacific Carbon Trust's board of directors last week stressed in an interview with Public Eye she believes the issue of "environmental degradation" is an "enormous concern."
While working as the institute's risk, regulation and environmental centre director between December 2006 and 2007, Holden told the Vancouver Al Gore's award-winning film politicizes climate change and "overstates the severity of the problem, which certainly does exist."
And, in an op-ed published during her tenure at the think tank, she also took aim at the David Suzuki Foundation and a report prepared by University of Victoria eco-research chair David Boyd for painting Canada as an environmental laggard.
Asked whether she personally believes some environmentalists, such as the former American vice-president, are alarmists, Holden said, "sometimes people overstate the facts when your goals is to raise awareness and get people excited and changing their habits."
While she was at the Fraser Institute, the think tank also sponsored talks by climate change skeptics Kenneth Green and Ross McKitrick.
Holden, who is now a director with The Nature Trust of British Columbia and a ScotiaMcLeod investment advisor, said she has "no idea what the Fraser Institute's position on climate change (presently) is" when asked if she shares the think tank's environmental views.
But she said the issue of "environmental degradation" - which includes global warming - is an "enormous concern of mine," adding she has a specific interest in "looking at the various market-related options we have to solve the problem" of climate change.
Sean Holman is editor of the online provincial political news journal Public Eye (publiceyeonline.com). He can be reached at [email protected].
