CKNW Editorial
for June 11, 2001

I came home from London last night to see, for the first time, the list of new BC cabinet ministers. Talk about jobs for the boys and girls … it takes a half a dozen cabinet ministers to run the United States of America and 28 to run British Columbia!

I suppose that the so-called Ministers of State will not attend all cabinet meetings – if they did, the meetings could go on forever! Still, the reason for the large cabinet is obvious – and is something I commented upon extensively before I went on vacation. Gordon Campbell has to keep a hell of a lot of hands from doing the devil’s work and here is how you start. Will we see 28 parliamentary secretaries next?

I was astonished to see the Health Ministry split into four where what the old ministry needed was not more cooks with ladles in the broth but one minister with a cabinet behind him or her to make difficult decisions. Now the blame can be split amongst at least four – five if you count Linda Reid’s Early Childhood Development - with each passing the buck to another. This is not efficiency, it is political cowardice. It will be almost impossible for the two lonely opposition members to get a handle on whom to hold to account – more importantly, it will be impossible for the public to know who is really responsible for whatever health mess is bound to occur.

I suppose those of us who are mental health consumers can be thankful for a separate minister … but I’m not so sure. Mental health is health – it’s only society’s inability to grasp that fact that gives rise to the term mental health in the first place. Why should a person with depression … or schizophrenia … or any other mental disorder be treated differently than someone with cancer or who has heart problems? What this move will likely do is further marginalize care for the mentally ill.

Who is the Minister of Municipal Affairs? Has that been downgraded to Intergovernmental Relations under Greg Halsey-Brandt? Is that what Minister of State for Community Charter under Ted Nebbelling means?

As I looked down the list there were, frankly, names I barely recognized and some I didn’t recognize at all. But I did recognize the name Linda Reid who Gordon Campbell once told me, better than most, mastered whatever critic’s role she was given. She slugged away at Health and Children and Families – and she did know her stuff, I can tell you – yet she is Minister of State for Early Childhood Development … important though that subject is, one could hardly call it a major portfolio. Somehow Linda Reid has got on the wrong side of Premier Campbell somewhere down the road and I suppose with Richmond a lock for the Liberals – where isn’t for that matter? – Mr Campbell can afford to leave Ms Reid on the outside.

Why on earth does BC need a junior Finance Minister in the form of Bill Barisoff as Minister for Provincial Revenue? This is just a title – Finance will be run by the Premier and Gary Collins and the Finance Ministry surely doesn’t need a minister as head bean counter. This is utterly unjustified.

What the hell is Sustainable Resource Management? It can’t be the old Ministry of Environment because that must be Water, Land and Air Protection. These are titles like you would expect in the Kingdom of Ruritania as run in an old Peter Sellers movie!

I suppose we’ll have to wait until it all shakes down before we’ll really know what this 28 headed monster is all about. What it shows I think is that Mr Campbell intends to run the province with a four person junta, himself, Gary Collins, Christy Clark and Geoff Plant with the rest ministers in name only. As I write this I don’t know who will comprise Treasury Board but that will give a clue as to where the real power rests.

I wouldn’t go into ancient history except Gordon Campbell has said many times over that his BC political hero is not W.A.C. Bennett but Bill Bennett. Well, this is not a Bill Bennett style cabinet. Bennett Jr’s first cabinet had only 14 members with several ministers holding down two portfolios, and doing so quite handily, while the premier assessed what talent he had in his backbench. Bennett’s ministers had power – they were expected to run their ministries and be accountable for them. Ministries sure as hell weren’t carved up, like splitting amoeba, into little bits and pieces.

No … my first reaction is this. Mr Campbell had two objects in mind – pay off as many as possible so as to keep his backbench happy with bigger salaries and perks and exercise the real power through a small unit of four or five.

This isn’t a cabinet … it’s a monkey house with four or five zookeepers in charge.