CKNW Editorial
for October 25, 2000

Yesterday, side by side, were two emails. One was most critical of my interview yesterday with Stockwell Day on the grounds that I was too easy on him … just threw him soft pitches which he batted out of the park. Hot on the heels of that was an email giving me hell for being too hard on him and not accepting, at face value, his promise to let caucus decide who would be on parliamentary committees and who would chair them.

Another berated me for saying I would support Day saying that this was highly unprofessional and that it explained why Jean Chretien would never come on my show.

Let’s deal with the last one first. I am not a journalist and make no pretence of being one. I am an editorialist and I publish my opinions, both written and oral, for money. I would neither be true to you nor to myself if I were to spend my time equivocating. I did not equivocate with Meech, with Charlottetown, with Nisga’a, with the Kemano Completion Project, with the Pitt River Gravel Pitt nor with a host of other matters. Of course it would be nice to have Mr Chretien or Mr Martin on the show but if I have to pull s single punch or tone down a single phrase to get that done it isn’t going to happen. Speaking quite frankly and somewhat immodestly I have got to the top of my profession without kissing backsides and I have no intention of starting now.

Now let’s go back to point two that I have not taken Stockwell Day at his word re the reforms he promises. I haven’t and I think there’s a good reason.

Mr Day is scarcely the first politician to talk about reform. One need only go back to the 1993 election when Jean Chretien promised reform to the voting system as the first item of business after the election. We heard nothing about it thereafter.

The reasons that politicians never bring in reforms is simple – once elected they want to stay that way and the system that got them there is the way they see themselves being re-elected.

Leaders, in spite of what they might say, don’t like contrary opinions. They not only want to be the boss as first amongst equals, they want full power. The system, having become personalized into a presidential one, gives the leader ample opportunity to be a dictator and leaders under such a system, invariably take all the power unto themselves.

Let’s look at an example here at home. Under the B.C. Election Act for a person to run under a party banner his nomination must be signed by two principal officers of the party. There have been some who naively suppose that two such officers might do so in isolation of the leader’s wishes. Ha! Look at Ujjal Dosanjh’s recent statements that Glen Clark can remain a member of the caucus but he will not be permitted to run for the NDP in the next election. Of course it’s a leader’s fiat that’s required – Mr Dosanjh has just confirmed that.

The federal act doesn’t even bother with principal officers – the leader has the power.

Therefore the only conclusion one can come to is that leaders, having powers to stifle dissent, will do that at all times they think it necessary.

I say that, despite his views and those of some of his fundamentalist allies, Stockwell Day is not infallible. Unless I hear a full commitment, without any equivocation, I will assume that Mr Day will retain full control of all of the levers of power. When he says that the decision as to who will be on Parliamentary Committees and who will chair them will be to caucus, but that as a member of caucus he will make his views known, I must assume it will be business as usual – namely the Prime Minister will continue to approve and thus tacitly appoint all committee members and their respective chairs.

I will also assume that a Prime Minister Day will still control absolutely all cabinet appointments, all parliamentary secretaryships and all sunny Caribbean conferences in the dead of an Ottawa winter for good little boys and girls. He may approve fixed election days but I have to assume that he will continue to have the deciding word on all the senior judges in the country and all patronage appointments. In short, I say to Stockwell Day this – if you are going to run on a platform of reform lay out before us precisely what it is you intend to do. If you don’t, you’re no more a real reformer than is Jean Chretien, which is to say not a reformer at all. All you are is a man who wants to talk reform talk but not walk the reform walk.