CKNW Editorial
for April 23, 2001

The issue of the great debates proposed by BCTV and CKNW raise important issues.

The main question is who should appear? Back in 1991 then Liberal leader Gordon Wilson, whose party had no seats in the Legislature, went to court to be allowed to appear with the big kids and eventually did. We know what happened, he got off an utterly irrelevant one-liner which stole the show and 17 seats from the Socreds, winding up Leader of the Opposition. Since that time there seems to be some sort of notion that anyone leading a registered party ought to be allowed in the debate. I don’t think that’s right and I agree with CKNW’s Ian Koenigsfest that only the Premier and Opposition leader should be on our debate.

The obligation is to the parties is be fair not equal. The obligation to the audience is to see that the main issues of the election are thrashed out by those who have some prospect of having a say in how they are resolved by government.

In making this decision you must have some criteria. I don’t propose that they be cast in stone but you have to start somewhere. While it’s not for this station to prejudge how British Columbians are going to vote it is for us to judge who represents what they are going to vote on.

Going back to 1991 I think there was a case for including Wilson. The polls of the day – and we can’t ignore them – showed activity for the Liberals. They also showed catastrophe ahead for the Socreds. It was a tough call but I think that those who made the decision, weighed all the factors and determined that Wilson had a case – albeit not an ironclad one, but a case.

Here we have the Greens and Unity Party at 7% and 2% respectively. Moreover, if you can make the case that the Green Party, for example, may be competitive in a couple of ridings that scarcely qualifies them for a province wide audience.

Moreover, what do you do with the Marijuana Party? And the half dozen other fringe parties? If you allow The Green Party and Unity Parties who have no MLAs how do you turn down anyone else?

There is a practical element to this. Time is limited even in a commercial free hour … or even two. There are great issues involved here and does anyone really want to hear health issues dealt with, at length, by the Marijuana Party who presumably will counsel smoking grass as the panacea for all evils? One could argue that the Green Party represents one very specific area upon which they should be heard but so do other "single issue" parties. I know that Adrian Carr says hers is not a single issue party … but then so do all single issue parties. The single issues will be raised. One must assume that, for example, the environment will be raised not only by the leaders of the main parties but their interlocutors.

No … I think the criterion must be simple … does the leader represent a party that has seats in the Legislature and have any reasonable prospect of forming either the government or the opposition?

On the terrible business in Quebec. It will now be said "see, we needed all that fencing … look at the hooligans that destroyed it." One must, I think, consider that it was the existence of the fence itself that caused much of the trouble. The problem goes back to the beginning. The city of Quebec was the wrong place to hold this conference in the first place. Barbara Yaffe was right to observe that Ottawa would have been better. The Conference facilities are better and the accesses much easier to patrol and protect.

It will be argued that selecting a safe site simply gives in to hooligans. What it does is show some prudence. It is said that a pretty woman, scantily attired and hitchhiking doesn’t justify her later rape and of course it doesn’t. But it does speak to the prudence of the young woman. It would be no defence to assassination of a president that he walked unprotected into a large unruly crowd … just as it is no defence to being mugged that you walked into an American inner city ghetto draped in gold with a bulging wallet sticking out your rear pocket. It would, however be damned imprudent.

Now, it is said, no matter what you do there will be violence. I don’t believe that’s so but even if it is what about the right not only of the delegates to be kept out of harm’s way but the right of the peaceful protester to protest in safety? Do we say that because there is sometimes violence on picket lines we abolish picket lines? Of course not – we recognize that the right of a worker to demonstrate on behalf of his cause is sacred – so is the right of one to protest a meeting of people dealing with their rights.

This is not an easy subject, I grant you. And terrible scenes of violence are apt to make one who sees them in the comfort of their living room say "a plague on all their houses." But we must think this through and understand that the vast majority of those protesting in Quebec City had every right to do so and that their right is a precious one … it’s a right we must protect just as vigorously as we protect the right of the statesmen to deliberate.