CKNW Editorial
for November 8, 1999

Former Premier W.A.C. Bennett was once summarized by then NDP leader Bob Strachan thusly – "he puts a stone in your shoe and then when it gets so painful you can’t stand it he removes it and you’re so grateful you forget how it got there is the first place." It seems to me that this applies very aptly indeed to Glen Clark.

Form the outset, when he was in the Harcourt government as Minister of Finance, Clark was an "in-your-face" person who dominated every news story in which he was involved. It was he, you might vaguely remember, that proposed a super tax on homes which quickly went by the board when Premier Harcourt discovered that his house was involved. He entered the Premier’s office hot on the heels of a scandal at BC Hydro concerning shares for the boys, in which scandal he was up to his eyeballs. He proceeded from there to win an election based upon a phony budget.

Thereafter it was one thing after another. After skillfully using the Nanoose Bay lease to get the Federal government’s attention on the Salmon Treaty issue he then badly overplayed his hand so that the Federal government expropriated the property. He expanded Skytrain at a cost of over $1 billion to service NDP constituencies then embarked upon the disastrous fast ferry scam.

We all presumably remember the police invasion of the Clark home and the criminal investigation which forced him to resign.

But has the NDP leadership race removed the stone called Glen Clark from our shoe and are we now so grateful to see the back of him that we are prepared to forget how all this mess got started in the first place?

I think to a large degree we are. And there are two precedents I would present to you.

In May of 1986 Bill Bennett was extremely unpopular with the people as his "restraint program" was seen as too excessive and long lasting. One might argue – indeed I do – that this public perception was misplaced but that’s irrelevant, Bennett was lower that a snake’s belly in the polls. The Socreds, amidst great hullabaloo nominated Bill Vander Zalm, who was as unlike Bennett as chalk is to cheese, and he went on to recover Socred fortunes and win a handsome election victory. It was a case of "new pitcher, new strikes".

In 1991 the same thing could have happened – indeed most political pundits agree that it should have happened – but didn’t. Bill Vander Zalm having been forced from office created a leadership opening. Rita Johnston, a decent and competent person incidentally, won the leadership over Grace McCarthy. Hindsight tells us that the Socreds were foolish not to have had a caretaker premier – the NDP have learned that lesson – and allow a fair fight but they didn’t. There are very few who follow these things that don’t agree that had Mrs McCarthy won the leadership people would have overlooked Vander Zalm in sufficient numbers to give her and the Socreds enough seats to be a viable opposition. The NDP were almost certain to win – though nothing is certain in politics – but the Socreds would certainly have survived and undoubtedly have won the election in 1996. Mrs Johnston was slaughtered but that had little to do with her personally – it had everything to do with the fact that she was seen as the logical person to take vengeance upon for the manifold sins of Mr Vander Zalm.

When, next February, Ujjal Dosanjh becomes the next premier and assuming that this doesn’t involve a major bloodletting in the NDP with the wounds mortal, I can guarantee you that the polls between him and Gordon Campbell will be very close indeed. The chances of an election being called within a few weeks are excellent. Premier Dosanjh will call the House into session, have a sparkling Throne Speech designed to put the Liberals in the position of only being able to oppose it by looking heartless, then he will ask the Lieutenant Governor for an election writ.

By all common sense and history Dosanjh and company should be whipped within an inch of their lives.

But … the stone will have been removed for six months and it will be difficult to fight an election against Glen Clark. The economy will show some signs of improving. And when we all march to the polls, will we remember that stone that used to be in our shoes?

That, as we used to say in pre inflation days, is the $64 question.