CKNW Editorial
for April 3, 2001

Yesterday I interviewed Don Richardson, a New Brunswick political reporter, about the time in 1987 when the Frank McKenna Liberals won all 57 seats in the Legislature. I was interested in his observations because, of course, we could have a similar situation here.

Even the most optimistic of NDP observers is predicting a maximum of seven seats for their party and even then, few would guess which seats this would be. I don’t know – it’s hard to see it being that bad but for sake of argument, let’s suppose the Liberals capture 70 of the 79 seats. What then?

Question period will depend upon who is on the opposition benches. What will happen is that the questions won’t be very broad ranged for the simple reason that there won’t be enough bodies to man the guns. The committees Mr Campbell says he will put to work will mostly be Liberals since the NDP will want to concentrate on Public Accounts.

What I find of even more interest is how the House will look four years later when the government will, under Mr Campbell’s proposed and long overdue law, have to hold an election. If one assumes 20 cabinet ministers plus the premier, 20 parliamentary secretaries, a Speaker and a Deputy Speaker plus two whips that leaves 25 people on the backbench with little to do except make trouble. It will also give Mr Campbell nightmares as he tries to best organize his troops.

For openers, he will have over 30 MLAs who were in the trenches with him. If he doesn’t reward them he has an immediate morale problem. Yet if he does, he will have to leave a lot of new, antsy talent sitting on its hands. And he will have a lot of talent because since he is expected to win every seat, every constituency will have had a highly contested nomination. While that doesn’t always being out talent, it’s far more likely to than when the constituency looks like a dead duck from the start.

The Liberal party is a coalition – as is the NDP and as was the Social Credit Party. The trouble is, the Liberals are a coalition with a difference. All NDPers, wherever they come from, are prepared to pay at least lip service to a tradition. So were the Socreds who, though they often belonged to different federal parties, strongly felt the BC first tradition of the Social Credit Party under both the Bennetts. The Liberals, on the other hand, are made up of Federal Liberals and those outside that party that they’ve persuaded to believe that the federal Liberals are not involved with the provincial party of the same name.

For the first year or two, this won’t matter. In year one all the backbenchers will be looking to the first cabinet shuffle with lust that blinds all other passions. This will likely carry over to year two. By that time the cracks will be showing. The grumbling backbench will be manna from heaven for the media. People like Vaughn Palmer, Mike Smyth, Les Leyne and others close to the action will have a field day and it will all be too easy.

The point that Don Richardson made, namely that where there is a political vacuum, something will fill it is an apt one. The question will be, where is that vacuum? On the left where the NDP used to be?

Sure. And assuming that the NDP have to start from scratch, with a new leader and few if any MLAs that could be a large vacuum.

What about on the right?

Sure again. Despite efforts to paint the Gordon Campbell Liberals as Howe Street’s poodles, that really is not where the mainstream of the party is. It’s middle of the road, with several prominent members even center left. In fact it looks a lot like the pre Vander Zalm Social Credit party … the Bill Bennett party. This leaves a vacuum on the right. Not the far right for it, like the far left, are marginalized by our system. If we had proportional representation, there might be far left and far right members. With first past the post they either don’t exist or are to few to be of any influence.

Another thing Don Richardson said, which I found interesting, was that you never know just who is going to fill that vacuum. Now he said that in the context of New Brunswick where the Conservative Party, though wiped out, still had a strong federal party as a presence. The NDP is toast on the ground … the traditional support just isn’t there. And here is the tough part – they will not only have lost, as the New Brunswick Tories did, because of scandal but because they have been for nearly ten years shockingly bad government. They will have no good old days to refer the voters to … they will have massive debt, some discredited and hugely expensive ferries and the Carrier case to help their opponents remind people what an NDP government is like.

The Barrett NDP, discredited too, had some advantages. The land freeze, so bitterly fought by the right at the time, became popular with voters. ICBC, then in its early years, seemed better than the bad old insurance companies. Moreover, many social policies, including the one I inherited in Consumer Affairs, were not only continued by the Bill Bennett government they were expanded. Given that, it took the NDP 16 years to get back into power and even then it took self destruction by the Socreds to allow it to happen.

No, I make no hard predictions. I only say this – by 2005 you can be sure that everything will be very different. The chances of the Campbell Liberals not suffering some sort of split are not good. Someone will be poised to square off against them – will it be a revived NDP? Will it be something new? Might it … wait for it … might it even be the Socreds who, after a few disgruntled Liberal backbenchers do just what W.A.C. Bennett did 53 years before … find a vehicle for a populist party, see the Socreds shell available and dust it off for another miracle. After all, and think on this Mr Campbell, there will be at least three former Socred Cabinet Ministers in your caucus and they’ll probably be on that idle backbench of yours waiting, with bated breath, for the moment remind people with time on their hands how things used to be done in the old days when your idol, Bill Bennett was the premier,

Bill Bennett’s advice to the Social Credit Party after it bit the dust for what seemed like good and all in 1996 was to keep the party name and shell alive because you just never know …

All speculation – idle speculation … improbable speculation. I quite admit it. Just for fun … just a teaser.

Yet politics, like nature, abhors a vacuum and, like nature, will let it be filled with whatever happens to be handy. And, as it happens, there will be a few old Socreds handy not plotting, mind you, but ready if that old political vacuum comes their way.