British Columbia abolishes Merit Commissioner

British Columbia’s government is abolishing its independent Merit Commissioner—an office designed to audit public service hiring—while insisting nothing important is changing because “merit” is now part of the bureaucracy’s culture.

According to Global News, the provincial budget eliminates the Office of the Merit Commissioner and transfers its duties to the Public Service Agency (PSA), the same apparatus being monitored. The commissioner’s job has been to audit appointments and review staffing decisions when unsuccessful applicants request scrutiny—essentially, an internal anti-patronage circuit breaker.

The BC General Employees’ Union, which represents tens of thousands of public-sector workers, says it learned of the change only after the budget was released. Union president Paul Finch summed up the new model in one sentence: “They’re overseeing themselves.” Removing independent audit capacity matters most when hiring is constrained. As Finch notes, B.C. is in a partial hiring freeze, which increases competition for scarce positions and therefore increases the payoff from political favoritism.

The opposition is also attacking the move as part of a broader transparency retreat. Global News points to last year’s controversial hiring of former Ontario attorney general Michael Bryant on a six‑month, $150,000 contract to advise on Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. After Global News reported the contract, Bryant was fired. For critics, that episode is precisely why governments should not be trusted to self-police patronage.

Finance Minister Brenda Bailey defended the cut by arguing that the commissioner was “overseeing the Public Service Agency on questions of merit” and that “merit has become such a part of our PSA culture.” Budget documents peg the office’s cost at roughly C$1.7 million annually, which the province frames as an efficiency gain.

Eliminate an independent constraint, rebrand the resulting conflict of interest as “streamlining,” and invite the public to trust the system because the system says it deserves trust. In principal–agent terms, the agent (the bureaucracy and the political executive) is being relieved of an external monitor at exactly the moment incentives to bend rules are rising.

The point is not that every public hire is corrupt; it’s that government employment is a concentrated pool of rents—secure jobs, defined-benefit pensions, and political influence—so the demand for patronage never disappears. When oversight is internalized, FOI requests, whistleblowing, and media exposure become the only remaining checks, and those are slow, adversarial, and easy to obstruct.

B.C. is not “ending merit.” It is ending the ability to prove whether merit was followed—an elegant reform if your goal is to make patronage indistinguishable from normal administration.