Touchy, touchy (III)

Continued from here.

 

So, when it comes to using their totally non-partisan, professional civil-service communications staff for partisan sniping, which Ministers are the worst offenders?

 

Since the nominal change of Premiership in 2011, Susan Sullivan and Clyde Jackman have accounted for just over half of all the partisan snot-o-grams issued by provincial government departments:

 

And who have been the targets? The two opposition parties are almost evenly matched, though with a slight shift of late towards the NDP. Twenty-seven snot-o-grams have been directed at the Liberal caucus generally, or a Liberal MHA particularly; 24 have been aimed at the NDP or an individual NDP Member, and seven have been aimed at legislative "opposition" generally, without names or party identifiers. (Not included here are a very small handful of partisan snipes at federal political actors.)

Broken down further, there were thirteen totally non-partisan civil-servant missives directed at the Liberal caucus generally, and ten at MHA Jim Bennett. On the NDP side of the chart, twelve were directed at the NDP, often with sneering, government-professional impartial references to the "third party", with St. John's North MHA Dale Kirby taking most of the individually-named fire.