CKNW Editorial
for September 19, 2000

Premier Ujjal Dosanjh has to make a substantial cabinet change if he’s to put a new face on the government … his trouble is that he’s scrapped the bottom of the barrel and there’s nothing left. He can’t recycle Moe Sihota one more time and there’s little else there. As Sir John A Macdonald said when he was criticized for the quality of his cabinet -–send me better wood and I’ll make a better cabinet.

Moreover, the Premier has some conspicuous failures in his present cabinet not the least of whom is Joan Sawicki. Being an environmentalist herself it was thought that she would set things right but she flip flopped over the Upper Pitt issue and utterly screwed up over Sumas 2. The latter was a no-brainer and somehow she managed to turn what should have been a slam dunk into a rebound to the Liberals.

Gordon Campbell, when he becomes premier, doesn’t have Mr Dosanjh’s problems. Of course, none of his people have had experience in cabinet but my point is that the opposition leader has lots of apparently good wood. My list hereafter is scarcely all inclusive but in Mike Dejong and Geoff Plant he has two able lawyers – I suspect the latter will be the attorney-general but the former will certainly make the first tier. Colin Hansen has been a very able health critic and the distaff side is well represented with Christy Clark, Sindi Hawkins, April Sanders and Linda Reid. No it’s not Mr Campbell that has a problem but there are real difficulties facing a number of Liberal candidates. Claude Richmond, Harold Long and Stan Hagen to mention three – perhaps Jim Rabbitt as well will surely think that their vast experience as Socred ministers will get them into cabinet automatically. But it ain’t necessarily so.

There are, you see, 35 foot-soldiers who have claims. As Napoleon said, every foot-soldier carriers a marshall’s baton in his knapsack. Even the most unlikely of candidates from the present caucus will be very unhappy to be overlooked for a newcomer.

When I went into cabinet as a freshman MLA way back in 1975 Bill Bennett didn’t have Mr Campbell’s mass of loyal opposition veterans. Apart from those who had crossed the floor from the Liberals and Tories – four in number – he only had ten veterans.

Mr Campbell will likely have 30 or more.

Claude Richmond would likely get a cabinet post only because Kamloops is such an important riding having always returned a government member since party politics came to BC at the turn of the century. But he may not get it immediately. And others not only have a skimpy claim no matter what political skills they bring to the table, their appointment would be taken in very bad grace by those who served in the trenches lo these past 9 years. The very last thing Gordon Campbell would want would be to start off with great dissension in his ranks.

A wise man once said that the difference between a caucus and a cactus is that a cactus had all its pricks on the outside. Any premier has his hands full keeping his caucus from making mischief – and we all know that idle hands do the devil’s works. When those idle hands are a band of brothers with their cohesion coming from battling for the leader in opposition that leader, if he’s wise, makes sure those idle hands are not only busy, but picking up the extra bucks that go to Cabinet Ministers and Parliamentary secretaries.

So, as it stands, both the premier and the leader of the opposition are up to their eyeballs in political realities.