CKNW Editorial
for February 21, 2001

The Liberal Party of BC can be whatever it chooses to be .. it's certainly not for me to tell then how to run their affairs ... though I can give them a little advice from time to time.

The most successful party in BC history, by far, was the Social Credit party. It would be easy to say that this was due to the overwhelming personality of WAC Bennett but I think that would miss the point. Bennett Sr, and his son Bill, needed a vehicle by which they could attain and maintain power. Especially after 1975 that vehicle became, unabashedly, an umbrella party for all those not enamoured with the NDP. In fact, at the Socred Convention of 1975, under the leadership of Bill Bennett and Grace McCarthy the old Social Credit League was put to rest and the BC Social Credit Party was born. At that convention, attended by many former provincial Liberals and Tories, the name of the party was put on the table and the BC Social Credit Party was the label chosen as the one everyone found the least offensive.

There was a reason this seemingly innocuous move was made. Bennett and McCarthy recognized - as did most of BC on the right - that any other solution simply split the vote in favour of the NDP. Moreover, the short-lived but the most impressive Majority Movement showed that the people expected the right to bury the hatchets and get together. The practical ramifications of this move were not long in coming. In December 1975 the Liberals and Tories had little impact in the election and even less as the years progressed so that until 1991, they had both slipped unlamented from the scene. The secret of the Socred’s success was the name – no one, no matter what their federal politics, could feel the least offended by the name of the provincial party that sought their support.

We know what happened in 1991. The Socreds, in high odour after the Vander Zalm years, took a near mortal blow and the Liberals, with an irrelevant and lucky one-liner from Gordon Wilson vaulted from nowhere to Official Opposition.

Since then Gordon Campbell has worked, with apparent success, to make the BC Liberal Party an independent provincial party.

The fact is, he hasn't done so. What he has done is present an option, at a time when any option would be fine to BC voters, whereby the public can toss out the NDP. It is not independent of the federal party at all. Who are these guys trying to kid, anyway? This bunch is as independent of the Federal Liberals as Tibet is of China. Same brass ... same fundraisers ... and same old faces. Of course Federal Liberals should feel comfortable in the BC Liberal Party … but they shouldn’t run it. Not if they want non Liberals to feel comfortable.

Now as I said in the beginning the BC Liberal Party can do what it wants but I'll make this prediction. The Liberals will win a very big majority and within two years will start to come apart at the seams ... unless Gordon Campbell, from his position of enormous strength takes a leaf from the Bennett-McCarthy book of yesteryear and forces a name change through and not only honours the fact that his party is a British Columbia party only, but causes it to appear to be that.

The only way the NDP can be kept at bay in this province is for the right to be united. A Liberal Party beholden to the federal wing - for that's what it is in reality - isn't going to get the job done.
For the short term, all will be well. But as a wise man once said, all it takes for cheers to become jeers is the passage of a little time.
Gordon Campbell's Liberals meet the test of 2001 - but then so would the Rhinoceros Party if that was the only party around.
The public of BC are entitled to a non NDP party that lasts for the long term and this bunch of so-called BC Liberals ain't it.

Speaking of Liberals, who’s Jean Chretien trying to kid? Anyone who heard Andrew MacIntosh on the show yesterday giving chapter and verse of the tawdry mess in the Prime Minister’s riding knows that this man is a grubby little parish pump politician who belongs not in the league of the G7 leaders but with Brian Mulroney, Richard Daley Sr or Jr and Boss Tweed of the old Tammany Hall days. Chretien, puffed like a mating peacock, squeals that he has been proved innocent because his personal Ethics Counselor, knowing where his paycheque comes from, has cleared him and the RCMP, whose Commissioner owes him his job has decided not to investigate even though they haven’t spoken to then head of the Business Development Bank, Mr Beaudoin upon whom the Prime Minister laid the timber. Chretien now calls Joe Clark Joe McCarthy which not only dates the day before yesterday’s man but shows him as a man who can’t possibly deal with the merits of the case against him.

One of these days the hidden documents will be exposed but even without them it’s abundantly clear that the Prime Minister of Canada, supported by his faithful henchmen, including BC’s five lickspittles, leaned on a public servant who owed his job to him in order to get unsupportable loans for a crony and loans which clearly benefited the Prime Minister himself. No clearance from his personal Ethics Counselor can hide this fact, no abdication of duty by the RCMP can obscure the facts.

This Prime Minister is a disgrace and so are the toadies who support him in order to save their own political skills.

Joe Clark is bang on to continue to pursue this matter as is Andrew MacIntosh of the National Post.

Finally, as I’m in a police bashing mood, two matters arising on the North Shore which the Mayor of West Vancouver, Ron Wood may wish to address.

There hasn’t been a tap of work done on the Lions Gate Bridge since well before Christmas yet the West Vancouver Police continue, cameras in hand, to pinch – at double the usual fine – motorists who go over 40kph in what is erroneously called a "construction zone". How come?

And how come a restaurant in Horseshoe Bay gets nailed for serving a man a beer without a meal when it was a cruddy sting by the police … perhaps the RCMP not the West Van variety. Here’s what happens folks. Man goes into restaurant and orders a beer as the waitress sets the menu before him. Similarly, last night Rafe and Wendy go into the same restaurant and order a wine and a beer along with their menus. Difference is, the guy is an undercover cop and pays for his beer without ordering a meal. Whammo – the full impact of the law descends on the restaurant. What a crime! What police work! A guy gets a drink without the required meal!

Now quite apart from the pettiness of such a pinch, consider this – people go into restaurants in Horseshoe Bay all the time and pretend they’re going to have a sandwich in order to get a beer or two before the ferry goes or while they wait for a passenger. What’s the restaurant to do? Insist that the patron wait until the sandwich arrives? How long would regular customers patronize a restaurant where they couldn’t get a drink until the food actually arrived?

It’s this sort of chickenshit law enforcement – Lions Gate and Horseshoe Bay – that has people so contemptuous of the law and those who enforce it. Haven't they got better things to do?