CKNW Editorial
for July 25, 2001

In 1911, having been refused admission to a prominent club, Winston Churchill and F.E. Smith, later Lord Birkenhead, formed what they called "The Other Club" to be made up of politicians of both parties (when the Labour Party appeared this definition was expanded) and other active people. One of its rules was "nothing in the rules or intercourse of the Club shall interfere with the rancour or asperity of party politics." Nothing did or indeed does as the club survives to this day, meeting fortnightly at the Savoy Grill for the very best and often bitterest of political discussion.

I’ve just finished reading volume three of the letters and diaries of Violet Bonham Carter, granddaughter of former British premier H.H. Asquith and grandmother of the famous actress. Lady Bonham Carter was a lifelong Liberal and her diaries and letters are full of political rancour and asperity yet almost everyone mentioned, from all parties, was a friend. It was to her that the young Churchill remarked "Violet, we are all worms but I do believe that I am a glow worm."

There is a maturity about British politics that permits those of the most opposite politics imaginable to meet socially and indeed often cross party boundaries when circumstances warranted. Evidently, by my mail, many of us lack that political maturity in British Columbia.

The hatred of the NDP is palpable – indeed it is all consuming for many people who simply don’t want the NDP to speak. I kid you not … I have mail that tells me that the writer will never listen to me again if I allow Joy McPhail back on my show. Similarly, I’m told by other writers that if I don’t dump David Schreck they’re off to the CBC, or wherever.

I come in for my share personally – yesterday I answered a man who decreed that I was a NDP convert because I had deigned criticize the Liberals.

Let’s all sit down, take a deep breath, and think this through.

The NDP were a rotten government for 9 ½ years. Most of their devoutest supporters will admit this at least in private. But that doesn’t mean that all the things the NDP stood for are bad … if only because Liberals agree with lots of them. Much of what went wrong with the NDP governments was incompetence of administration – no better example can be found in the Ministry of Children and Families.

It is also true to say that almost no one in the province is going to agree with everything the Liberals do. They are mere mortals and can be expected to screw up plenty. Some legislation will be terrible. Some of it ill thought out. Much of it will have unintended consequences for that is the common fault of legislation, however well intentioned.

What is my role in all this? The same as it was when Bill Bennett was premier, when Bill Vander Zalm and Rita Johnston were premiers and when the NDP was in power. It is my job to look at policy with a jaundiced, sometimes very skeptical eye. The government has unlimited resources to put their case forward. With very limited resources my job is to question what they do no matter how wonderful it sounds.

It is said that this makes me always – or very nearly always – negative. Of course it does. That’s my job. If I am wrong, so be it. The public are no fools – they will, for the most part, sort out who’s right and wrong.

Let me give a good example. But before I do, let me admit candidly that I have made my share of errors. But back in the summer of 1986 the premiers of Canada agreed to postpone all their constitutional grievances to the solving of Quebec’s. This was enthusiastically endorsed by Prime Minister Mulroney and all the media. What a noble thing to do. I said they were nuts, for they would thereby have to give Quebec a veto by which she could veto ambitions of other provinces for, say, a reformed Senate. The Meech Lake Accord came into effect because of this agreement a few months later. For two years everyone, politician and pundit alike, said this was a great idea. I said it was a lousy one and that to single out Quebec as a "distinct society" would be calamitous. Either those words meant something – in which case what – or they didn’t – in which case why?

By 1989 Clyde Wells and Gordon Wilson became allies in opposing this pact and it mercifully failed.

In 1992 it happened all over again. This time it was the Charlottetown Accord and this time not only were the vast majority of politicians in the country, including Clyde Wells in favour, so was business, labour and the artsy fartsy set as well. In public life Gordon Wilson stood alone and in the media there was Gordon Gibson, the late Mel Smith and I virtually alone in the entire country. For six years a handful of us were "negative" about what our masters thought was best for us. Whether we were right or wrong I suppose can never be proved one way or another but on October 26, 1992 67.9% of British Columbians by referendum agreed with us and tossed aside the Charlottetown Accord.

The point is not that I was right or wrong. Not at all. The point is that just because a government says something is so, and calls upon your deepest patriotism to join with it in its good cause, doesn’t make that government right.

Lord Randolph Churchill, in a famous aphorism, said simply "it is the duty of the opposition to oppose".

Let me cite an example where a member of the media did a better job that the Official Opposition. From the outset, Vaughn Palmer of the Vancouver Sun called into question the fast ferry program. While the government was using its taxpayer resources and those of the Ferry Corporation to sell its fast ferries, Vaughn asked skeptical questions. When the premier claimed that his costs estimates were even down to the cost of toilet paper in the heads, Palmer demurred. Every time a launch date was announced, Palmer was able to show that it wouldn’t happen. At the end of the day everything Palmer had said was borne out by the facts.

But what if they hadn’t? I say so what? A powerful government that is right should have no trouble discrediting the media when it’s wrong. But, in fact, Palmer was both courageous and right.

When you look back at the claims by politicians that the media negativity caused the trouble, they don’t hold water. It wasn’t the media who covered up Watergate and torpedoed the Viet Nam peace talks – it was Richard Nixon. It wasn’t the media that brought down the Conservatives in 1993, it was the policies of Brian Mulroney. It isn’t the media that’s caused Stockwell Day his troubles – most of the media coverage has come from press conferences called by members of one side or the other.

Yes there are media excesses just as opposition by politicians sometimes goes over the top. But their excesses pale into insignificance compared to those of governments.

But I suppose I’ve strayed from the point which is simply this – for governments there must be oppositions. For government to work, that opposition must be free and effective. And there should be, in a free society, in Churchill and F.E. Smith’s words, rancor and asperity.

But through it all we should take a leaf from the Brits book and be able to live together and not set our hair on fire every time we hear something or someone we don’t agree with.