CKNW Editorial
for January 4, 2000

The coming year, as with all years, is hard to predict but let me have a go at it.

The next Premier will be Gordon Wilson who will win on the second ballot. The first ballot will see Ujjal Dosanjh ahead but Wilson will be surprisingly close with Joy McPhail third and Corky Evans last. Ms McPhail will throw her support to Wilson and will find herself Minister of Environment and Deputy Premier.

The election will be in November after Premier Wilson freezes all capital expenditures on Skytrain and announces new money for Healthcare and a limited private participation. This will bring screams of anguish from the left but Wilson knows they have nowhere else to go.

The polls going into the election will show the Liberals at 41% and the NDP at 34, Reform at 10 and the balance undecided.

Gordon Wilson will win the great debate hands down and the public won’t give a damn giving the Liberals 58 seats, the NDP 17 shutting out the Reform Party. For all that the popular vote will be close with 45% to the Liberals, 39% to the NDP and the balance spread amongst the fringes.

Bill Vander Zalm will retire once again.

Jean Chretien will, just before Christmas, announce his resignation and not make known whom he supports. Paul Martin will be seen as the man to beat but Brian Tobin will show surprising strength.

The United Alternative Party will become a reality but it will be seen that it was all really just an exercise in name change for the Reform Party. Preston Manning will spend a lot of his energies marginalizing the right wing so as to enhance the party’s chances in Ontario and Atlantic Canada.

Joe Clark will lose what little is left of his relevance and the Tories will barely show us as blips on the polls west of the Lakehead and not much better elsewhere.

The Parti Quebecois and the Bloc Quebecois will announce that they’re giving Canada one more chance by making an offer of minimum demands. These demands will include all the usual ones … distinct society, a veto, 25% of the House of Commons for all time and a declaration that the constitution acknowledges that Quebec is one of "two founding nations". The demands will be supported by Jean Charest and the demand will include appropriate amendments to the Constitution. It will be his inability and unwillingness to face this that will hasten Mr Chretien’s retirement. By 2002 Quebec will have been turned down and thus will have achieved the necessary humiliation to talk seriously of yet another referendum.

The Canadian Football League, on the brink of collapse, will make a further deal with the NFL whereby Canadian teams will be farm teams, though not so named of course, of the NFL.

The NHL will receive a bailout package but it won’t prove enough and by the 2001-2 season only Montreal and Toronto will be in the NHL and they will be hanging on by their fingernails.

The Grizzlies will still be with us but only for two more seasons.

The takeover of WIC by Shaw Cable will be a reality and somehow Ron Bremner, formerly head of CKNW, then BCTV, will be back in the fold in a major position.

There will be three more boats of Chinese refugee claimants next summer and although they will represent less than 10% of the total refugee claimants processed, led by John Reynolds the rightwingers will come up from the bottom of the swamp long enough to set their collective hair on fire.

Tiger Woods will win two majors this year including his second Masters. David Duval will win lots of money but not a major.

Thoroughbred racing will fold at Exhibition Park succumbing finally to terrible decisions made by the last two governments and an inability and unwillingness of owners to come to grips with reality. Though, to be fair, the owners have very little clout under this government but it was they who drove Jack Diamond out because they had stars in their eyes for Santa Anita North, a one mile world class racetrack but wanted a developer to do it for them. And by the way, has anyone glanced at Santa Anita’s attendance lately?

Finally, both Ted McWhinney and David Anderson will announce their pending retirement thus paving the way for a shutout of Liberals at the next election … and about time too.