CKNW Editorial
for April 26, 2000

Two political parties on the federal scene are in deep trouble, one, the NDP will feel the impact in the next election while for the other, the Canadian Alliance, the pain will be postponed perhaps up to a decade but no more likely less than that.

The NDP, though it was a provincial bun toss, showed how removed they are from reality at the recent leadership contest that anointed Ujjal Dosanjh. It truly sounded like something from a distant yesteryear with all the chants and mantras from ancient battles trotted out for all to see. There is no policy because no one has the courage to face the fact that the party is dead from the neck up. But let’s look at the national scene. Alexa McDonough has been simply a continuation of the catastrophe started by her predecessor Audrey McLaughlin. Yes she knows all those chants and mantra off by heart and has added a few of her own. But if you examine what she is saying it breaks down to two policies.

First, she wrings her hands about globalization, Nafta and all that goes with it. Her answer is a Tobin tax on any profits made by the simple act of money trading. This would reap billions she says, and it would be fair. The problem is that like everything the NDP proposes it looks great on the black board but is hopelessly impossible in practice. You couldn’t make this stick unless you had the agreement of every stock exchange in the world. If you passed such a tax in Canada, people would stop trading in Canada and go elsewhere. And since that elsewhere, the United States, has no intention of passing such a tax this notion is a non starter and the pubic know it.

Second, she wants to co-opt the health issue and be able to beat Ralph Klein over the head and gain votes. It won’t work for a very simple political reason – the anti Klein position has already been taken by the Liberal Party and it’s their issue whether Ms McDonough likes it or not. Without a new leader and some 21^st century notions, such as developed by the Labour Party in Britain, the national NDP is looking down the gun barrel of a wipe-out.

The Canadian Alliance are really no better off except they have a very large niche to fall into, namely the whole right of the spectrum. But it is this very opportunity that will be its ultimate downfall. Let me explain. The Federal Tories aren’t crumbling, they’ve crumbled. Where they count, in Ontario, the Alliance has all but demolished the party. Joe Clark – and this is truly sad to see – is making himself into the national Windbag and the National Fool at the same time.

But isn’t this just what the doctor ordered for Reform cum Canadian Alliance?

In the short term, yes. In the Long term, pun intended, it will be disastrous.

The Reform Party was the party of western protest, especially the party of protest, though for different reasons, for Alberta and British Columbia. It became that party of protest when far westerners saw what they took to be a sell-out to Quebec and Ontario by Brian Mulroney. If the Alliance makes big political inroads into Ontario – and I believe that it will – that has to be at the expense of the things British Columbians, in large numbers, believe in.

The Alliance will always keep its far right adherents – they have nowhere else to go. But the middle of the roader – the one who sees the Reform Party fighting for political justice for B.C. – will, unless I miss my guess, be quickly and badly put off if the Alliance is led by either Mr Day or Mr Long, both of whom are really Ontarians. Does anyone suppose for a moment that any Alliance leader is going to campaign in Ontario and Quebec on the platform of diminishing Central Canada’s absolute power in favour of the outer regions like British Columbia? Will we hear it for Senate reform from any Alliance leader in Ontario … I mean real reform not just a little tarting up by holding elections? Does anyone seriously believe that any Alliance leader is going to go into Ontario and cry out that 50%+1 of the House of Commons elected with 40% or less of the vote, mostly from Central Canada getting 100% of the power is unfair?

Of course you won’t hear those things. Oh, you’ll hear pabulum like we must make parliament more accountable … and we must examine reforms to the system … and perhaps have some free votes in the Commons but let me make this clear once and for all. The Canadian Alliance cannot gain votes, and indeed would lose votes if it called for the real reforms British Columbians want, in Central and Atlantic Canada. That’s why you will not hear any concrete positions for real reform.

The Alliance will likely get away with it at the next election simply because the public is tired of the Liberals and in the far west especially, they would like to see how the Alliance party will do. But – and I’m sorry to say this – nothing will change and there will, by the time of the election after the next one, be a need and a movement for another Reform Party which will listen to the problems in British Columbia and speak out in Ottawa for this province. We’ll be back where we started and, worse, we will have lost valuable years for reforms the lack of which threaten the existence of the country itself.