Alberta director for the Canadian Taxpayers Federation (CTF) Kris Sims was unceremoniously removed from the Victoria Conference Centre by an NDP Premier David Eby staffer Thursday. Sims is the previous BC director of CTF, a grassroots advocacy organization that was founded in 1990 and has worked as a journalist for 25 years. Sims had accompanied CTF colleague Carson Binda to the Government of BC’s budget lockup, which is when officials release details of the budget to media, including surplus, debts and other data. She went with her colleague to help him with the story afterwards, not to attend the budget lockup. "I'm just here helping," Sims told the Western Standard," explaining when doing this kind of work, "you need a second set of hands."While Binda was in the room where the lockup was taking place, Sims asked a Department of Finance staffer where she could settle in to get some other work done as she waited. She was escorted to a nearby couch, where she set up her laptop, without using the building’s Wi-Fi and began working on an unrelated op-ed. However, 90 minutes later a second staffer approached her and told her to leave.“I don't think it's right for governments to act like little thuggish hall monitors,” Sims told the Western Standard. “I don't care if they're Conservative, or left wing, or whatever. I think that's wrong.".“Typically, what happens in an embargo situation is where you all go into a room and you all agree to not speak about it until they say go, fair enough,” Sims explained. “So I've done that a billion times, different provinces, including federal.”“So I came with Carson (Binda)," she continued. "And Carson was in the lockup room. I stayed outside.”A staffer asked who she was with and Sims said she wasn’t going to the lockup. “I just need a place to work,” Sims told her, explaining she was looking for a place to “just mind her own business” and work on her laptop for the four hours she expected her colleague to be in the other room. “So that's fine,” Sims said. “A very nice finance ministry staffer led me to this little quiet corner in a lobby, like outside of the room and I'm sitting on a couch and I was working on my laptop for about 90 minutes.”“And again, I have no budget documents, nothing. I'm not even using the Wi-Fi. I’m not there covering the budget. Carson is. I’m there to hold the camera,” Sims said, laughing..After Sims works quietly on her laptop for an hour and a half, “all of a sudden this Eby government staffer comes up” to her and tells her she “can’t be in here.” “You’re not accredited,” the staffer said, “and this is lockup.” “No,” Sims responded, pointing at the closed door, “That’s lockup.” “Number one, that’s lockup,” Sims told the second staffer. “Number two, I don’t have any documents. Number three, I would never break an embargo.” “Like, I would rather go to jail than to break somebody's embargo,” Sims emphasized while explaining the situation to the Western Standard. However, the staffer insisted the whole building is “all in lockup” and waved her hands to indicate as such. Sims asked for another couch further from the room in that case, she “just needs a place to work.”“And honestly,” as if I care, Sims laughed as she detailed the afternoon’s events to the Western Standard. "Carson's got it covered, I’m literally here as a potted plant.”The staffer then gave Sims the ultimatum to either hand over her phone or go outside. “I said okay listen, fine, but this is really unacceptable behavior,” Sims told the Western Standard. “And then I left.” “The reason why I flagged this because it’s this kind of thuggish hall monitor approach to governance that is growing across Canada and it’s a problem," she explained. "The problem here is that if you allow this sort of little tin pot thuggish behavior to continue, they will then step on newer journalists, smaller advocacy organizations, they will feel dampened and locked out of things, and that’s not right."."The public forum is the public forum, galleries are galleries. That goes for question period, the House of Commons, we need access to our government and we need to help hold them accountable," said Sims. “All while respecting the two-way street of things, like embargoes. Just common decency.”“And I wanted to point out, this did not happen under the Horgan (previous BC NDP premier John Horgan) government, none of my colleagues were treated like this before," added Sims. She explained she has been in many embargos before and it “wasn’t a big deal” to have a colleague wait outside in the lobby.“What I really want to stress here is that other provinces don't behave this way," Sims noted. "I'm not picking on a party. I've covered budgets in Ontario, Nova Scotia, the federal government. And there's this kind of respectful, mature two-way street of understanding.”“The very idea of seeking budget data out early is absurd. Like, it’s stupid. Nobody would do that, at all," Sims emphasized with the Western Standard. Governments “don't get to act like this.”“You can be civil and we can have respect for each other, while respecting each other's rules of embargo. But if we let government step on us, they're going to step on us in bigger ways too."
