Carole Taylor justifies CEO Larry Blain’s big salary

Finance Minister Carole Taylor is defending the pay of Partnerships British Columbia president and CEO Larry Blain.

In the year ending last March 31, Blain earned $519,448, according to recently released financial statements. He was also paid another $45,325 in expenses.

“When Larry Blain signed his contract, it was, in part, to bring someone with tremendous financial experience in the private sector into the public sector and see if he couldn’t build a model,” Taylor told the Georgia Straight. “His was a very specialized contract that recognized he’d have to build it from the bottom up.” She added that Blain’s wages included “performance pay”.

However, Taylor did say that Blain’s bonus scheme—based, in part, on the number of P3s undertaken by Partnerships BC—will likely be reexamined now that Premier Gordon Campbell has ordered all large provincially funded capital projects to first go through Partnerships BC, which aims at promoting public-private partnerships (P3s).

On October 27, Campbell told the annual convention of the Union of B.C. Municipalities in Victoria that the province will require all provincially funded capital projects worth more than $20 million to first be vetted by Partnerships BC to see whether or not they work as P3s.

As reported in the Straight last March, Blain’s contract, signed on January 3, 2003, entitles him to a bonus of up to 80 percent of his base pay, which reached $329,600 effective April 1, 2005. Before joining Partnerships BC, Blain was managing director of RBC Capital Markets. He was a member of the B.C. Liberals’ 2001 transition team.

Six other Partnerships BC officials earned more than $150,000 last year. The company’s 2005–06 annual report shows that Partnerships BC earned $1.46 million last year, compared with $290,000 the previous year. However, very little, if any, of the corporation’s revenue came from the private sector.

The corporation reported receiving $1.8 million from the province. Almost all the rest of its revenue came from $5.29 million in “work fees”. All of the clients listed in the report as paying these fees are public agencies, including the B.C. ministries of Transportation, Health, Education, and Sustainable Resource Management. Other public agencies paying the fees included Royal Roads University, the University of Northern B.C., the Yukon Government, the Province of Quebec, the Resort Municipality of Whistler, and TransLink.