But in leadership, predictability is a strong suit. Erratic, flip-flopping leaders breach the trust of taxpayers and should cause all of us concern regardless of political stripe.

British Columbians saw this first-hand when Gordon Campbell brought in the Harmonized Sales Tax. Campbell and the BC Liberals had ruled out an HST during the 2009 election. We know how that turned out.

Manitobans are watching the same movie right now. Before the last election, NDP Premier Greg Selinger said, flat-out, that he wouldn't raise the Provincial Sales Tax.

"Ridiculous idea that we're going to raise the sales tax," Selinger spat. "It's total nonsense. Everybody knows that."

Two years later, he announced an increase from seven to eight per cent; a flip-flop rightfully causing a firestorm of controversy in Manitoba.

Voters want to know where their potential leaders stand before they have to walk into a polling station and put a tick next to a party's name. While it's impossible for anyone to fully anticipate and articulate every possible challenge and scenario ahead of a four-year term in office, taxpayers want a predictable pattern set out.

How would a premier deal with plunging resource revenues? What would happen if a crime wave or a natural disaster struck? What would the premier do if unemployment jumped or a Crown Corporation malfunctioned? Taxpayers need to see a predictable pattern of leadership to know.

NDP leader Adrian Dix knows the cornerstone issue for many voters in this campaign is trust. "We will say what we're going to do, and we will say how we will pay for it," he said in the televised leaders' debate April 29.

That's what makes two recent Dix announcements so concerning; he is shifting long-held positions seemingly on a whim.

During the spring budget debate, Dix and his NDP team criticized government asset sales: "It's important that we not do something as foolhardy as sell the long-term interests of the province out for the short-term interests of the governing party," he said.

That comment would have led most taxpayers to predict that Dix opposed asset sales. No wonder his announcement last week that he would like to sell off BC Place Stadium came as such a shock. Daryl Walker of the B.C. Government Employees Union was stunned by Dix's plan. "I guess the fact that they're simply looking at it, and that there will be an opportunity to have input into it gives us a little more solace, but certainly we're concerned about the rights of our members," Walker said.

Dix is right to change his tune on this one: if BC Place was sold, taxpayers would be far better off; we don't pay taxes in order to be in the stadium business (or liquor or car insurance or a few other things for that matter). Still, it's a quick jump away from his longstanding philosophy.

The second flip-flop was just as unpredictable. After months of saying he wouldn't make any decisions on the Kinder Morgan pipeline until they filed an application, he essentially ruled it out on Earth Day.

"I think as a matter of principle, you should actually see what the application is before you address it," he said on April 11. On April 22, he all but killed it.

Political leaders should be able to change their mind as circumstances change, but nothing had changed about asset sales or Kinder Morgan. Is this lack of predictability a harbinger that British Columbians are about to elect another Greg Selinger?

With a double-digit lead in the polls, Dix has a clear path to the premier's office. While that seems an easy prediction, his actions of the past few weeks have not.

But buried in that school board audit was a Doyle nugget that should send chills down taxpayers' spines. The auditor general looked into three school districts - the massive Surrey School District, which is responsible for nearly 70,000 students, Mission School District, with more than 6,000 children, andCariboo-Chilcotin School District, with 5,200 students.

Doyle discovered that none of the three school boards were properly evaluating their performances - or the work of their superintendents, the district's top staffer.

"Consistent with good practices, boards should evaluate their own performance and that of the superintendent," Doyle wrote. "None of the boards we reviewed has been evaluating its own performance in fulfilling its governance responsibilities, or conducting annual evaluations of superintendent performance."

One can extrapolate that most school boards across the province work the same way, without annual performance reviews for their chief executive and avoiding any independent look at their own job performance.

This is not in the best interests of the employee, students, taxpayers or the board itself. Performance reviews are an important opportunity for trustees and the superintendent to chart progress, set goals, identify challenges and clarify expectations. It is a vital and standard human resources tool.

Despite not receiving regular reviews, many superintendents somehow manage to keep getting raises. Surrey's Michael McKay made $218,284 last year, up nearly 6 per cent from $206,038 in 2011.

Mission superintendent of schools Frank Dunham was on a leave of absence from his $175,000 a year job for several months before being fired in January. He is now suing the district. A local newspaper noted that he received a "lucrative" severance package, but no details have been released thus far.

Cariboo-Chilcotin superintendent Diane Wright made $147,536 last year, up 6 per cent from $139,030 the year before. Richmond's Monica Pamer went from $162,204 in 2011 to $183,542 last year. That's a 13 per cent jump.

To put those salaries into context, B.C. education minister Don McRae earned $144,221 in 2011-12. President Barack Obama's education secretary, Arne Duncan, took home $179,700. Neither portfolio received a raise.

School trustees and superintendents may bristle at the suggestion that top education staffers don't deserve pay increases. But how can they defend that position when they fail to evaluate their top employees every year? How do they know the job is being done right? What are the measures being used to set pay rates?

Raises seem to be in vogue. The province's deputy education minister, James Gorman earned $248,962 last year, up nearly 9 per cent from $228,942 the year before. It is Gorman's ministry which is ultimately responsible for guiding school districts to improve their evaluation processes, as suggested by the auditor general: "We recommend that the Ministry of Education work with the Board Resourcing and Development Office to customize and communicate expectations for school board governance practices, including financial and risk management, competency assessment, and board and superintendent evaluation."

Parents and taxpayers should demand these evaluations happen regularly and include a public feedback component. Wise school boards would get ahead of this recommendation and put a process into place sooner rather than later.

Most citizens will go their entire lives without filing a Freedom of Information (FOI) request. But every single one of them benefits from the information dug out of government through FOI requests by journalists, researchers, advocacy groups and others.

It's not just the information itself that is valuable -- taxpayers benefit from the accountability that comes with politicians and bureaucrats knowing that their work, reports and communications could end up as part of the public record. This accountability raises the level of due diligence in policy making.

As those of us who work in advocacy know, vigilance is paramount when dealing with government. No victory, nor any defeat, is ever final when it comes to a democracy. A strong, effective Freedom of Information Act -- where citizens have a legal mechanism to obtain information from their government -- is a key part of maintaining that vigilance.

But the provincial government does not seem to see it that way.

In early April, investigative reporter Bob Mackin will learn if PavCo, the Crown Corporation charged with stewarding taxpayers' $1.4 billion investment in B.C. Place Stadium and the Vancouver Convention Centre, can stop answering his FOI requests.

Mackin has worked the PavCo beat for years, breaking several important stories. Since 2007, he has filed a couple hundred FOI requests with PavCo, asking for information which should be available to the public.

Why shouldn't taxpayers know what the B.C. Lions or Vancouver Whitecaps pay to play in our $563 million stadium? Why shouldn't we be aware of the legal issues surrounding the stadium's roof? Or why the Telus naming deal died?

But instead of looking in the mirror and pondering ways to make more information available without forcing people to use FOI, PavCo went the banana republic route, trying to silence Mackin.

They have filed an application to ignore Mackin's requests, using a section of the FOI Act to claim his requests "unreasonably interfere with the operations of the public body because of the repetitious or systematic nature of the requests, or are frivolous or vexatious."

Sadly, PavCo is simply following the lead of the B.C. premier's office, which was criticized recently by Information and Privacy Commissioner Elizabeth Denham for evading information requests by creating an "oral culture." Indeed, only 55 per cent of the requests filed with Premier Christy Clark's office by B.C. taxpayers, media, advocacy organizations and other interest individuals came back with any information.

Imagine a CEO's office in a $44 billion corporation trying to operate without writing anything of substance down -- it's sloppy and potentially dangerous.

This is the same government that has gotten in trouble a couple of times for using personal email addresses to circumvent FOI rules.

If the province's top politician and her handpicked team of advisors don't respect FOI law, why would PavCo, chaired by Clark's handpicked B.C. Liberal candidate in the Surrey-Fleetwood riding?

Bob Mackin isn't wasting taxpayer money by filing FOI requests, PavCo is -- by not proactively releasing important, fundamental information, and by taking up the Information and Privacy Office's time with this ludicrous, heavy-handed attempt to shut Mackin down.

The Information and Privacy Commissioner should send a strong message, to both this government and the next one, by rejecting PavCo's application against Mackin and recommending the Crown Corporation open up more of its inner workings to the public. After all, this information belongs to the people -- not to politicians and their staff.

Supporters of such a flawed taxation policy should look to Denmark's experience for a textbook example of why it doesn't work.

In October 2011, Denmark was the one of the first countries in the world to bring in a fat tax, and the first to abolish it 13 months later. No wonder: it was a fiscal disaster, driving hundreds of thousands of Danes across the German border for cheaper groceries and costing hundreds of jobs, according to Jens Klarskov, CEO of Dansk Erhverv (the Danish Chamber of Commerce).

It got so bad during Denmark's fat tax era that German stores sent flyers to Danish homes, translated into Danish, bragging: "No fat tax here!"

The ads worked; more Danes began to shop in Germany.  The Danish Chamber released a poll showing that before the fat tax, one in three Danes shopped in Germany. During the fat tax era, that number grew to one out of every two.

When asked about why they shopped outside Denmark, one in three named the fat tax as the primary reason. Long known as the place where Danes shop for booze, cigarettes and sweets, Germany, thanks to the fat tax, large discounts and professional marketing, became a place where Danes also shopped for food. 

Sound familiar? Lower Mainlanders crossed the U.S. border 15.4 million times into Whatcom County last year in search of cheaper gas, cheaper flights, cheaper booze, cheaper clothing, cheaper consumer goods, cheaper milk and cheaper cheese. That's the highest cross-border shopping total since 1997.

With money stretched thin due to a high cost of living and heavy tax load, British Columbians are already pouring south to stretch their paycheques further.

As the Fraser Institute's Mark Milke recently pointed out, Canadian customs tariffs already add $3.6 billion in consumer costs to nearly everything we buy here. Throwing on another tax would just further grow that price gap.

Imagine a tax on fat or sugar or pop in B.C., and U.S. grocery stores ripping a page out of the German advertising playbook: "No fat tax here!"

For the two-thirds of British Columbians who live in the six regional districts along the U.S. border, such savings would be impossible to ignore. Add to that the thousands of people who live near the Alberta border and the economic fallout for B.C. could be catastrophic.

The argument for fat and sugar taxes revolves around higher prices limiting consumption and thus curbing obesity. Fortunately, many B.C. health experts don't buy into that myth.

"Research actually shows little correlation between individual behaviours and body weight: many who seldom consume such foods are overweight while many who do, are not," said Dr. Paul Martiquet, an adjunct professor at the UBC School of Medicine and the Medical Health Officer for Powell River, Sunshine Coast, Sea to Sky, Bella Bella and Bella Coola.

Indeed, Klarskov, who visited Canada on a recent speaking and media tour to share the Danish fat tax experience, noted that Denmark's health experts estimated only a five-and-a-half day increase to Danish life expectancy, once the fat tax was in place for ten full years. "This is [like] shooting rabbits with nuclear weapons," Klarskov quipped.

B.C. bureaucrats have noted, in documents obtained by the CTF through a Freedom of Information Act request, that a fat tax is "purely a revenue measure."

Klarskov and the Danish Chamber of Commerce estimate Denmark lost 1,300 jobs as a direct result of their fat tax social experiment. In B.C., it could be worse.

Fat and sugar tax supporters would do well to read up on the Danish experience before willfully causing harm to the B.C. economy for virtually no health return.

To improve her chances in the 2013 election, Clark needed to throw out unpopular and unworkable ideas brought in by her predecessor Gordon Campbell. In a symbolic way, she needed to string a huge banner over the B.C. Legislature that said, "Under New Management."

In the first 90 days of her term, she should have done three things to clearly differentiate her leadership from Campbell's: kill the Pacific Carbon Trust, completely open up MLA expenses and push for public-private pay equity.

The Pacific Carbon Trust has been nothing more than a corporate welfare scheme for years. More than 99.7 per cent of its annual budget comes from taxpayers, who turned over $14 million to some of B.C.'s biggest companies last year, all so we could display three words on government websites: "Carbon Neutral Government."

A huge chunk of that money came from schools, hospitals and universities: the Surrey School District paid more than $525,000 last year. The Vancouver Coastal Health Authority paid $1.32 million. Simon Fraser University paid $466,500.

Clark should have killed the Trust two years ago, but instead it was allowed to continue on, overcharging taxpayers for carbon credits and sending that money to big business. A recently announced review by Environment Minister Terry Lake doesn't go near far enough, but don't worry: B.C. Auditor General John Doyle has a report on the Trust ready to be released any day now. You can bet it won't be pretty.

During her leadership campaign, Clark touted her commitment to open government. Yet, MLAs on both sides of the aisle have refused to fully release details of their personal, travel and office expenses to the taxpayers paying the bill.

Worse yet, after a scathing audit by Doyle on legislature spending, MLAs — both Liberal and NDP — flip-flopped on Speaker Bill Barisoff's explicit promise to release expense receipts. While Albertans get to look at every receipt charged to taxpayers by MLAs and senior bureaucrats, British Columbians get lump sum expense reports, scattered across different websites and lacking any kind of context.

The B.C. government's success with the zero wage mandate, where they managed to hold the line for two years with their unions, should have been a first step in controlling labour costs. Taxpayers currently shell out $24 billion a year on provincial government staffers.

A recent Fraser Institute study shows that the average B.C. government worker is paid 13.6 per cent more than their private sector counterpart. This reinforces the experience of cities like Penticton, which discovered it was paying its lifeguards $23 per hour, while the private pools paid $14.50. 

A Compensation Equity Act, applicable to provincial, Crown, regional and municipal employees, would use a market-based model to reform pay packages for government workers and move new hires from ultra-expensive defined-benefit pension plans to more sustainable defined-contribution pension plans. 

Instead, the Clark government gave away the zero mandate gains by negotiating increases higher than the rate of inflation with unionized workers, and offering platitudes but no specifics on how those raises would be funded - suggesting a reduction in sick days, for example, but offering no plan on how that would happen. 

Killing the Pacific Carbon Trust, fully revealing MLA expenses and legislating a Compensation Equity Act would have saved B.C. taxpayers money and illustrated that the BC Liberals could learn from their mistakes. Instead, we got the same old, same old.

Should the polls hold, these lost opportunities will provide plenty of woulda-coulda-shoulda moments for the BC Liberal Party to chew on for the next four years.