Tonight in an economic address to the province, NDP Leader Carole James said it's time to divert public funds from propaganda to health care.

"Right now, the government spends between $30 and $50 million on ads telling you what a good job they are doing…that’s wrong," James said. "That money should be used to reduce health wait lists, and improve care for seniors. I’m calling on the premier to put a stop work order on these kinds of ads."

The B.C. public-affairs bureau, which buys many of those advertisements, has refused, with very, very rare exceptions, to place ads in the Georgia Straight for several years.

It meant that Straight readers did not get to see ads about such things as the Conversation on Health or government ads promoting healthy living.

Canwest Mediaworks papers, on the other hand, enjoyed an economic windfall as a result of Campbell government advertising.

A recent example: the Campbell government's full-page ads for its climate-change policies. They appear in papers owned by Black Press and Canwest Mediaworks.

But the Campbell government won't place them in the Straight even though it has come out with editorials in favour of a carbon tax and consistently runs articles raising awareness about climate change.

For many years, the public-affairs bureau was part of Premier Gordon Campbell's office; in recent times, it has been part of the finance ministry under Colin Hansen.

Earlier this year, the Straight filed a freedom-of-information request to determine how many tax dollars had been put in papers owned by Canwest, Black Press, and other publishers since Campbell became premier in 2001.

We were told that it would cost approximately $5,900 to get this information; even then, the government couldn't guarantee that the cost wouldn't be higher by the time all the work was done.

Canwest--owner of the Vancouver Sun, the Province, the Victoria Times-Colonist, and many other papers--contributed $50,000 to the B.C. Liberals in the period before the 2005 election.

Of course, the favourable coverage and flattering photo images dispensed to the premier and his colleagues in the Canwest papers is worth a lot more than $50,000 to the governing party. 

Black Press has been a much smaller donor to the B.C. Liberals. The Straight has not made any campaign contributions to the B.C. Liberals.

I've always wondered if the public affairs bureau nixed advertising in the Straight because we once ran an illustration showing the premier wearing a sex toy.

Or maybe it was because the premier was compared to Richard Nixon on the front page of the paper. Or perhaps it's those punitive policies directed at single mothers, which the Straight highlights from time to time.

For whatever reason, the Straight is in the B.C. Liberal government doghouse--and that means virtually no ads from a public affairs bureau that works on behalf of a $35-billion organization owned by the public whom the Campbell spin doctors profess to serve.