CKNW Editorial
for July 17, 2001

I am getting some mail saying that because the majority of British Columbians (so they say) think I’m wrong about the NDP’s entitlement to Official Opposition status, I therefore am wrong. Not so fast. I have never in nearly 21 years in broadcasting accepted the notion that on a matter of principle you are wrong if most people don’t agree with you. I want to emphasize, however, that this scarcely means I’m right just because a principle is involved – only that principles are not overturned by the mob’s momentary passion.

I am a man of parliamentary traditions even when they have been flouted for years. I say that it’s no excuse to ignore tradition just because others have done the same … or that most people would like to make an exception in this case.

The Liberal government has already flouted several longstanding principles even though some may have been honoured more in the breach than the acceptance with past governments.

To start with, under a parliamentary system the government is the government and the non government is the non government. Traditionally the government is composed of members of the majority party and it owes its existence to the continued good will of the backbench on all sides of the house and is called the cabinet. It is sworn in separately and has a separate function. Liberal backbenchers who tell you that they are part of the government are wrong – they are government supporters, no doubt, but not government. When Premier Campbell took backbenchers and put them on cabinet –as distinguished from legislative committees – he has violated a very important principle of our form of government. Granted, our system has not worked well and no one has said more on the subject of the dictatorship of the premier and cabinet than I – but the answer is to give power back to the legislature not bribe backbenchers into submission by bringing them into government roles. Perhaps, you would say, no big deal. I disagree but surely all must agree, however seriously one takes it, that it is a breach of the system.

Then there is the tradition that the second largest party in the house is the official opposition. This has nothing to do with how many members a party must have to be "official" though the Campbell Liberals have, quite successfully sold it as that. The argument that the opposition must be able to form a government is spurious. The NDP would be no better able to do that with 4 seats or even 24 seats. In order for a government with a majority to fall, the majority of the legislature, including many of their own supporters must vote against it. In the very unlikely event that 38 Liberals suddenly bolted the party, one of three things is likely – they would join with the NDP making a majority, they would form a party themselves and try to govern with the confidence of the house, or the premier would ask for a dissolution and call an election. Since 1926, the year of the "Byng" crisis, it has been the invariable practice to have an election. The notion that the NDP cannot be official opposition because they could not, without Liberal defections, form a government is nonsense. Besides that, how do you know? If enough Liberals deserted the party so that Mr Campbell lost a key vote, and the Lieutenant-Governor called upon Ms McPhail to form a government and face the legislature, who’s to say that she couldn’t do so under those circumstances.

The third breach of tradition is by Speaker Richmond himself. He is a creature of and responsible to parliament not the government. He must then always have it appear that he is independent. To do that he takes submissions of members of the legislature publicly and renders his decision to the House. Speaker Richmond, unable to cite any authorities from Beauschene or May supporting his decision re the official opposition, adopted the arguments of the premier, made to him in private. He has, thus, seriously compromised his independence. He has shown himself not to be a man of all the Legislature, but the Premier’s man. I had hoped for more but knowing his personal hatred of the NDP individually and collectively, I’m not surprised.

Finally, one of the principles we have lived by since the early 1900s is that the Workers’ Compensation Board, in rendering its judgments, is not interfered with politically. No group in opposition pushed this principle harder than did the Liberals.

There is very good reason for this. It is the mandate of the Workers’ Compensation Board to protect the health and safety of workers. This is not a political mandate. They don’t exercise this mandate just in good times … or just in bad times … or in favour of any special interest group in the community. They exercise their mandate with ironclad independence. As all adjudicators are, the WCB has come in for lots of criticism. And of course it is both the right and the duty of governments to pass legislation or make procedural changes that help the WCB to do its job better. But Gordon Campbell, through his pliable Labour Minister Graham Bruce, is going to postpone if not outright cancel the WCB ruling against smoking in restaurants, cabarets, casinos and the like.

This WCB ban isn’t a political act – it is based upon their finding that second hand smoke is harmful to workers and that workers should not, therefore be compelled to work where there is smoking. In short, they have done precisely what their mandate compels them to do – they have examined conditions in the workplace, found them unsafe, and have insisted those conditions be corrected.

Now in steps Gordon Campbell on behalf of his namesake Vance Campbell fronting for tobacco interests, after I might add making a generous donation to the Premier’s party, and interferes with the independence of the Workers’ Compensation Board.

If in any of these areas the government had been the NDP and the opposition the Liberals, you would have heard the Liberals scream like stuck pigs against the flouting of parliamentary tradition and the independence of crown agencies like the Workers’ Compensation Board.

Were the NDP as bad? Infinitely worse and many times you heard me catalogue their wickedness. But that’s no excuse for the Liberals who promised so hard and often that they would be better.

What is really scary is that the Liberals have done all this in just over a month.