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VICTORIA — It was the first day on the job for Speaker Darryl Plecas and he was getting an early glimpse of the culture of entitlement at the B.C. legislature.

Plecas was being shown around his office by a veteran staffer on Sept. 8, 2017 when his attention was drawn to a hefty wooden cabinet along one wall.

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“I opened the cabinet and saw that it was full of liquor,” wrote Plecas in a report made public this week.

“Looking at the bottles, I recognized one of them and remarked, ‘gee, that’s an expensive bottle of scotch.’ My new assistant said, ‘Mr. Speaker, you can have any kind you want if that is not good enough.’”

But scotch upgrading was not at all where Plecas was headed. Rather, he was opening his eyes, with a mixture of disbelief and disdain, to the uniquely privileged way things had long been done at the ledge.

“Later that evening,” he continued, “I looked in the cabinets outside my personal office in the main area and discovered there were two more cabinets also filled with liquor.”