CKNW Editorial
for October 30, 2000

So Premier Dosanjh is going to shuffle his cabinet and bring in some outsiders. These outsiders will have to promise to seek election, as NDPers, in the next general election probably in April.

This procedure is not unknown and it doesn’t always work. Back in the early days of W.A.C. Bennett’s reign he wanted a well known accountant, Einar Gunderson, to be his Finance Minister. Unhappily, Mr Gunderson couldn’t win a seat so Mr Bennett took the Finance Portfolio himself with results that satisfied the voters for 20 years.

Pierre Trudeau brought the CBC’s Pierre Juneau into cabinet and he too failed to win a seat. On the other side, Jean Chretien brought Pierre Pettigrew and Stephane Dion into cabinet and they did win seats. In 1986 Bill Vander Zalm became premier of B.C. without a seat and won one later that Fall.

In assessing such a move I think it helps if the leader is bringing someone in for a very specific reason not because he has run out of talent in his backbench. In Mr Dosanjh’s case it is clear that the talent pool, that was pretty thin from the start, has little left in it. Some have been tried in cabinet and found wanting. Many now in Cabinet shouldn’t be there and ought not to have been from the start.

In order to understand Mr Dosanjh’s dilemma one must also understand that making a cabinet is only partly a matter of matching talent to jobs. It has a lot more to do with raw politics.

For example, when I went into cabinet immediately following the election of December 1975 it was scarcely because I was known as a man with brilliant potential. In truth I was unknown to most and very little to Bill Bennett. What I did have going for me was that I represented Kamloops, a swing riding and one that was accustomed to being represented in cabinet. I hope I didn’t turn out too badly in the end but any proficiency I showed was after the event. The leader not only feels it necessary to have a regional balance but often gender and race enter the equation.

Cabinet shuffles sometimes come about because the premier wants ministers to be better rounded in experience. Sometimes they are meant to reward or punish. Sometimes they are just to prevent staleness. Usually they involve bringing in some new blood if only to show the backbench that if they’re good little boys and girls they may be rewarded.

Whatever the reason for a shuffle, the media and political junkies will try to read into it all manner of motives. This one will be no exception.

Premier Dosanjh will want to put a new face on his government going into the last six months of his mandate. His cabinet has been weak in many respects. His Environment Minister, Joan Sawicki, badly handled the Sumas II file. Gretchin Brewin has proved disappointing at Children and Families. Mike Farnworth, one of the brightest and certainly the most accessible of ministers has made a mess of the doctors situation. His Forests Minister, Jim Doyle, is the perfect example of the Peter Principle which holds that in a hierarchy one gets promoted until one reaches his level of incompetence. With the softwood lumber case coming up next month the Premier must have a better face in the Forestry ministry than the likeable Mr Doyle’s.

There are other problems. The competent Andrew Petter wants out. The strongman, Dan Miller, isn’t running again and anyway, as a former premier is a lame duck. Paul Ramsey, no heavyweight, has lucked out in that the economic turnaround happened in his administration.

I think Mr Dosanjh will want to go outside in several areas. The first is Forestry. Another is Industry. Then there’s Health and also Children and Families.

His difficulty is that he feels it necessary to demand that any outsider pledge to run as a New Democrat in the next election. The speculation by Mike Smyth was that three of the people might be Nelson Riis, Tom Berger, and Michael Francis. Riis would have to leave federal politics which he won’t do. Over the years he has always been rumoured to be about to do something bold but he never has. Besides, what has he ever had any experience running? Berger, once the NDP leader and briefly Leader of the Opposition, has the Nisga’a case amongst other major cases on his plate and, again, what has he ever run in his life other than a law practice which has mostly been just himself? In the case of Francis the main problem is that he probably isn't a New Democrat and, as a member of the Owen Clan is not likely to want to break out of the appearance of, if not the reality of being a Liberal.

I have no idea of whom Mr Dosanjh might be considering but I must say this … for the potential minister it’s rather like the man about to be tarred and feathered saying were it not for the honour of it all, he might well decline. Any who takes on an appointed Cabinet position has to face the certainty of a certain amount of public disapproval if not actual pain.

Finally, what this says is that with 39 people in his caucus, Ujjal Dosanjh cannot field a full cabinet. He will try to offset this by pointing to the fact that his neophytes might well be in his next caucus but since most people don’t think that the NDP will form the next government, this is pretty thin gruel.

If nothing else, life for political junkies under the NDP is always interesting and this week looks to be especially so.