CKNW Editorial
for May 8, 2000

The big issue out of last week’s news is the pressing question – who’s lying? The National Post or the Tory caucus. On Wednesday the Post had a lead article saying that the Tory caucus had issued Joe Clark an ultimatum which in essence said get something together within two weeks or you’re toast. The reaction was swift and through their caucus chairman who was utterly inarticulate either because he was so angry or, more likely, because he’s just inarticulate we got word that at the caucus meeting Mr Clark was given a three minute standing ovations. Having been in a beleaguered caucus I can tell you that when the going is a bit rough a fresh cup of coffee can bring a standing ‘O’ twice as long as that. But no one seemed to have the wit to ask just why it was that the day before yesterday’s man was getting any sort of an ovation. If it was for being long suffering that’s a bit redundant – Joe Clark is a born sufferer. He has to be to have endured 30 years in public life without any noticeable success unless it was turning a potential rout of the Liberals in 1979 into a squeaky minority.

But the Tories were on the warpath and it looked like the Post was on the defensive until people like Mike Duffy, who’s been around Ottawa longer than the statue to Robert Borden on Parliament Hill said, "hey folks, any Tory you talked to said that if Clark doesn’t get his act together by the time of our much vaunted policy convention in a couple of weeks there’ll be hell to pay."

Clark has been utterly unbelievable. For example - the Liberals, finally after forty years of kissing Quebec’s backside, having been dragged against their will into Guy Bertrand’s constitutional fight in the Supreme Court of Canada and having heard the decision thought it might be a good idea to give some statutory meat to the decision’s bones by the Clarity Act with which almost everyone in the universe agreed with except Lucien Bouchard and Joe Clark. Without even a seat in the House and without prior consultation with his caucus, Clark’s against the bill. Then he won’t run in a by-election because he might lose. Now, reversing his field and with less than a year before the next election he’s looking around for a safe seat so that one of his caucus can make room for this man of long ago.

There is only one real political issue in Canada and if you have just arrived from Mars and don’t know what it is take a look at the one thing no politician wants to talk about and that’s sure to be it. And that issue is the only one that counts – national unity. All the other issues are important of course but their importance is as much as anything the skilled efforts of the politicians and their spin doctors to make them outshine the unity issue. No one, but no one wants to talk about it seriously.

Am I nuts? Have I taken leave of my senses? Why every day we’re told it’s healthcare … or jobs … or whatever. The constitution and the system of governance are just elitist issues raised by people like Rafe Mair riding his favourite hobby horse. And it may be. But you’ll not be surprised to hear me say I’m right. That the other issues, important thought they are, are transitory.

This country has been on tenterhooks since the day it started. And the danger of it falling apart are greater now, in my opinion, than any other time in its history not excluding the two Quebec referenda on separation in 1980 and 1995.

The disaffection in British Columbia is not of the taking to the streets with Molotov Cocktails type. There is no viable separatist party. So what’s the big deal?

The big deal is that we’re becoming tired of the country. Partly bored, but mostly just fed up tired. The federal government is seen as a nuisance which inhales money and exhales hot air. Government MPs are a bad joke and have been for years. The influence of British Columbia, full of proud British Columbians many of whom just arrived from Toronto now with the traditional zeal of the convert … proud British Columbians who have just about had enough and there is no help in sight.

We’ll find out soon enough, I suppose, what Tom Long has to say. But we know that neither Stockwell Day nor Preston Manning understand. In the first place they don’t understand just how constitutionally hip British Columbians are. They don’t understand why, after sticking it to Ottawa with a near 70% vote against Ottawa in the Charlottetown Referendum in 1992, the next year we sent the rest of them packing including British Columbia’s only home grown Prime Minister. They don’t understand that when we voted for the Reform Party it wasn’t to stick it to gays, or bring back the noose and the lash, or give shovels to the unemployed … it was because we wanted reform … not pallid reform like free votes in the Commons every once in awhile or electing senators to a Senate where we’re outnumbered 106 to 6. No … and I doubt that whatever he says Mr Long will understand this … British Columbians simply will not sit still forever while as the Tory party dies to be replaced by the same thing with another leader.

I won’t look so far down the road as to see British Columbia leaving confederation except to say this – if the Canadian Alliance turns out to simply be the revivification of the old Tory party, complete with empty promises of reforming the House of Commons and one of these days getting around to doing something about the Senate B.C. will be out of here and I’ll live to see it … and I’m no spring chicken.

It’s gone on long enough and there have been too many false prophets, most of them of the right. At least the Liberals have always given us the finger … but the right has trifled with our affections and they might have one more chance … but no more than that.

Without real reform, the Canadian Alliance might just as well be the Progressive Conservative Party and it might just as well have Joe Clark as it’s leader.