CKNW Editorial
for July 15, 1999

Three things Revenue Minister Dhaliwal said yesterday I found were interesting.

First he said that he had no doubt that if British Columbia wished to return to the table we could have the $135 million offered for the 25 year lease on Nanoose … though he was careful to point out that it is not his file.

He then said two very interesting things about the convention center. First, he said, there was no federal program out of which the money could be claimed. Second he said that the federal government, if approached under the right circumstances, would try to help with the convention center ..,  but he again, in fairness, stressed it was not his file.

These three statements, read together, tell us that the federal government, for which read David Anderson, is so peed off at Glen Clark that British Columbia is going to suffer and suffer badly. Now I carry no brief for David Anderson trying to play schoolmaster or big daddy to the province but it must be said that one can hardly expect him not to react humanly to Glen Clark’s nonsense.

In 1997, when Premier Clark could not get the federal government’s attention on the salmon file I applauded Mr Clark for linking to that issue the lease at Nanoose Bay. The feds and Mr Anderson screamed like hell but it did get their attention and there has been considerable progress since then. But in politics as in life, you must know how often you can go to the well. And with the Nanoose Bay lease the answer is once only. To use this a second time to try to extract some promise that the US would not send nuclear armed ships to Nanoose was plain silly. I know that the feds then played some games of their own by leading Andrew Petter to believe that they would indeed give such an assurance but that doesn’t change the fact that the nuclear weapons issue should not have been tagged onto the lease arrangements in the first place. As a result British Columbia has been humiliated in a way the feds would not dare permit with Quebec or indeed Ontario, we’ve lost the $135 million, and we’re bound for court. Only Glen Clark’s stubborn pride prevents us from being able to take the money and run. That money, incidentally, is but $35 million short of what Clark wanted from Ottawa for their Convention center contribution.

On the Convention issue we now see that Glen Clark didn’t have his ducks in a row when he started making announcements. A province simply cannot make an announcement involving Federal funds unless those funds have been allocated. If there was no fund for those moneys to come out of in the first place, the province would have to rely upon Ottawa making special arrangements. This Glen Clark ought to have known.

What this fiscally challenged Premier has done is suck private developers into a scheme which they thought had Ottawa dollars, with a backup from BC if they were not forthcoming, and now we not only have egg all over our faces but we’re getting sued.

This is the trouble with governments that not only know nothing about business, but worse, imagine that they do. Somehow NDP ministers and especially the premier they think that an honourable in front of their name confers wisdom. This is manifest in the convention screwup and in the Fastcat ferries.

In neither of these two cases did Mr Clark get all his ducks in a row before charging ahead – in fact, the ducks had all flown south.

The fastcat ferries ought to be a timeless reminder of the utter stupidity of this government. They are not making the crossing any faster, even if they did it’s a terrible waste of money. The only hope is that this will establish a shipping industry to export ferries is a pipe dream for which there is not a particle of evidence except in the fond dreams of the Premier. No business plan, no due diligence, no taking care of tiresome details before grand announcements and grand commitments.

I’m as fast off the mark at fed bashing as anyone. Ottawa treats BC like someone with a highly communicable disease and has no hesitation in playing politics with us. But we know that … we know it because it’s been going on since 1871. Glen Clark has brought this recent grief on himself and us. He has failed to do his homework and he has played political games doomed to fail. In the result we have no $135 million for Nanoose, the land will be expropriated in a horrible precedent setting way, we have thrown away for the present at least any chance for a convention center, and we’re stuck with hugely expensive ferries which are the wrong vessels for the wrong route, just as Ferries Minister Gordon Wilson used to say when he was on the other side of the House.

When you total up the screwups of this Premier they are enough to go around for ten provinces let alone ours. What on earth makes the NDP think that the BC voter will forget in a couple of years is beyond me.

Glen Clark is finished – the only question now remaining is whether or not his party is finished too. That depends upon what, if anything, they do with him.