CKNW Editorial
for March 31, 2000

It’s come to my attention that there are more than two choices for British Columbians in the next federal election. And that thought is tempting since the Liberals have shown in many ways – especially over the Nisga’a deal – that they couldn’t care less about British Columbia. Moreover, they are the last party in the country that will push for any reforms of national institutions of governance.

The Reform Party, belying its name, has no institutional reforms in mind either except to make the Senate electable which would only mean that we would be electing members of an upper house that is stacked against us. Moreover, I’ve come to the conclusion after talking to Stockwell Day that no matter who leads the new party, he will be a clone of Jerry Falwell.

What then of the NDP?

Well, on the constitutional front they haven’t a single idea. When you put to them the inequity of 50%+1 of the House of Commons having 100% of the power their eyes glaze over. They are centrists and really don’t get too excited about regions.

The other problem is that the NDP hasn’t had a new idea since 1961 when they founded themselves. They talk airily about a Tobin Tax for example, which is a tax on speculative profits glibly ignoring that in order to tax this, at the source, you would have to have the agreement of virtually every country in the world. As if that weren’t problem enough, since the United States shows no inclination towards such a notion it’s stillborn.

The NDP, unlike their British counterpart, the Labour Party, is utterly unable to cut the umbilical cord that binds them to the union movement and thus can offer no policy that isn’t philosophically defensible in the Union Hall.

What about the Tories. I think their leadership race last year told the story – a beat up politician from yesteryear (at which time he also looked out of date) a Saskatchewan farmer who is against Nafta which was the Conservative Party’s baby, an unknown Manitoba cabinet minister and a backroom boy from Toronto. Wasn’t that an inspiring thing to watch?

Joe Clark is hopeless. He still looks at the country through the lens of the Meech Lake and Charlottetown Accords, he is a born again appeaser of Quebec and is at least as far to the left as the Liberals. His leadership of the party has been a catastrophe and what’s left of it is badly divided. His chances of getting any seats in British Columbia are zero. The conservatives, once our voice of protest, are now the voices of the past and the distant past at that.

This points out one of the weaknesses of our system compared to the American one. Because there is not the same need for party discipline below the line, the two political parties are able to contain within them wide ranging opinions. Neither party can afford to be too far left or right and therefore have developed into leftish or rightish parties. Sometimes the left takes over the Democrats such as under Carter and Johnson and sometimes, as happened with Ronald Reagan, the right carries the Republicans. The overall picture is that each party must be within a wide political net or they simply do very badly at the polls. Our system rejects those who carry banners for single issues so people who hold strongly to those issues have nowhere to go. Take a pro-lifer for example – and there are lots of them – where do they park their votes when no one in any party will speak for them?

I’m sure this is the wrong thing to say but it all rather makes one wonder if it mightn’t to be best to just sit out the next election rather than give any of them any credibility, much less power. The way things are going, that’s an option I’m certainly going to consider.