CKNW Editorial
for for March 1, 2000

I’m not going to comment too much on the actual changes in cabinet for reasons that will become clear … I hope.

I think that putting Andrew Petter in as Attorney-General is a good move. He is a first class mind but of even more importance, he has a very good ethical grasp of what the job entails – something sadly lacking with his two immediate predecessor. It’s good to see Joy McPhail back and I suppose there is some sort of pleasure in seeing Moe Sihota once more get what is coming to him. It will be interesting too to see if Children and Families under Gretchen Brewin, an experienced governor at least at the City Hall level, finally gets the leadership it needs. Cathy McGregor is a strange choice for Municipal Affairs minister though geographically it was imperative that the Premier include her in. The demotion of Jenny Kwan to Minister in charge of left wing government handouts is a demotion which nevertheless keeps her in cabinet for cosmetic purposes but keeps her out of harms way.

Overall, though, the people in this cabinet as a whole are much more important than who holds what portfolio. One of the reasons I say that is a statute passed in 1980 called the Financial Administration Act which, in essence, takes the financial decisions in spending ministries away from the minister and into the hands of Treasury Board. I won’t go into all my views – I was against it though, because of the absurd system we have voted for it – but suffice it to say it left, for example, the Minister of Health doing nothing more than trying to keep individual components within the healthcare system from killing each other and announcing, as bad or good news depending upon the circumstances, the decisions made by Treasury Board. I found to my dismay that I couldn’t even make a $200,000 decision as Health minister and had to defer to Treasury Board. It was the point that triggered my leaving government a few months later. In short, ministers of "spending" ministries are mere fronts for the Minister of Finance and could, for the most part, be fence posts with hair as people.

What one must look at here is who is running this government. While that’s not entirely clear it will be those on Treasury Board with perhaps one or two added. And the important thing about this is that it does not include Glen Clark. Glen Clark ran things – there was very little evidence of collegiality except that forced by the need for the birds to flock together at all times under our system.

What this means is that those who supported Glen Clark will now be running the show without him. And they will pull out all the stops to show that they are all friendly, holding lots and lots of meetings with themselves and that despicable word the stakeholders. They will not likely get into any major difficulties because nothing very exciting will be done.

The budget is a collective exercise and will again reflect nine years of mismanagement. It will be delivered by Paul Ramsey but will be a product of that Treasury Board and Finance Department officials agree upon. And it will be another disaster.

Now let me ease off my cynicism a bit – ministers with strong personalities can make an impact through their ministries. But this is election year. And ministers are only going to do three things – make us forget Glen Clark and that they were involved with him, avoid catastrophes, and make as many good news announcements as the Premier thinks passible.

There is no way Ujjal Dosanjh can really put a new face on his government because there are so few new faces to use. It’s mostly the same old gang. And while Mr Bowbrick and Mr Stephenson may not have been in past governments they scarcely stood up and denounced it either.

The immediate concerns of the government are really two fold – how to play down one more disastrous budget and how to get rid of the not so fast ferries. Other than that, it’s simply a matter of not rocking the boat as it tries to navigate amongst all the political landmines between here and election day and hoping that somehow Gordon Campbell finds a way to screw up.