One of the primary reasons British Columbia Premier Gordon Campbell won back-to-back pro-vincial elections was voters’ keen desire for some semblance of fiscal competency in Victoria.

To understand the roots of that desire, all you had to do was glance across downtown Vancouver’s harbour to its north shore, where three ships were not a-sailing. These were the mothballed “fast ferries” that were designed and built in the late 1990s by the B.C. New Democratic Party government of former premier Glen Clark.

The supposedly high-tech aluminum catamarans, which ended up costing $463 million instead of the original $210 million, had a very short lifespan with B.C. Ferries because their continual breakdowns rendered them inoperable. They were subsequently sold to the private sector for $19 million.

That boondoggle — and a constant barrage over the infamous “fast ferries fiasco” directed at the NDP — helped carry Campbell and his right-leaning provincial Liberals into a first term of power in 2001 and a second in 2005.

Now, the Campbell government has a fast ferries fiasco of its own — and it’s an even bigger bungle than Clark’s.

The Vancouver Convention & Exhibition Centre’s expansion, still under construction on the Vancouver waterfront next to the centre’s well-known five sails, is almost $400 million over its original cost of $495 million estimated when the project was announced in 2003.

Now, a highly critical report by acting B.C. auditor general Errol Price concludes that even the current estimate of $883 million for the expansion cannot be guaranteed.

Price’s review of the project was released on Oct. 25 and paints a damaging picture of the B.C. government’s poor management of the project: it was started with no solid business plan and the government failed to keep the public informed as costs escalated.

In fact, the project started off on the wrong foot. The Campbell government was unable to find a private-sector partner to share any risk in the project and Campbell’s government decided to push ahead on its own. But, Price’s report shows, the original estimate of $495 million was not really a budget. Rather, it was the total money that had been raised for the project — $202.5 million from each of the federal and B.C. governments and an additional $90 million from Tourism Vancouver.

Compounding the problem was Victoria’s decision to make the expanded convention centre a venue for the 2010 Winter Olympics, creating a challenging deadline. The rush led to circumstances such as the pouring of the building’s foundations before the upper floors were even designed.

The report is critical of the B.C. government appointing political friends to Vancouver Convention Centre Expansion Project Ltd.’s board of directors — none of whom “had appropriate expertise for a project of this specialized nature,” the Price report states.

The report also shows the Liberals knew soon after the project was announced that costs were escalating, but never shared that knowledge with the public. Construction costs in the province have been inflating by about 11% annually, resulting in the estimate of $883 million that was approved this July.

As early as last spring, the Campbell government was doing damage control in response to the emerging cost escalations. In April, it replaced VCCEP chairman Ken Dobell (the premier’s former deputy minister and special advisor) with David Podmore, a Vancouver developer, to put this project back on a fiscally responsible track.

But the damage has been done, and will no doubt still be there when Campbell returns to the polls in 2009. IE