CKNW Editorial
for July 30, 2001

I must say that I enjoy controversy. I suppose that’s why I enjoyed competitive individual sports like golf and squash so much … why I got onto law … politics … and now political commentating. Enjoying controversy, I’m having lots of fun dealing with my email these days.

I think, however, it’s useful if I tell you, especially newer listeners, where I’m coming from.

Dealing in the area of public affairs I believe I have an obligation to let both sides of an argument have a fair say. What this does not mean, however, is that I am personally impartial or indeed even handed. I have opinions – often strong ones – and express them – often strongly.

My job takes me to scrutinizing government policy and how it is implemented. This I do, admittedly, with a jaundiced eye. And I consider it an obligation to point out what I think is wrong.

In tackling this job it must be remembered that arrayed against me is a huge propaganda machine. The government – and it’s agencies and crown corporations, let’s never forget them – have the very best of Public Relations counsel both in house and out, with virtually limitless funds at their disposal. Added to that, we now have the government using – some might say abusing – Question period so that by pre-arrangement supine backbenchers can lob easy pitches to eagerly awaiting cabinet ministers for even more policy releases.

I also know from personal experience, which has been fortified many times over by members of government since, that enormous effort is undertaken by governments and their agencies to put the best spin on things.

I don’t consider it my job, in these circumstances, to do the government’s PR work for them. Rather I think I should look at government policy and say to you, "but what about this?"

Doesn’t this lead to negativity on my part?

Of course it does and we should acknowledge and understand that from the beginning. I’m not going to act as a press release for government – they do very well at that without my help – but to test the propositions put forward by government.

If you talk to people with political experience in government they will, to a person, admit that all policy – almost without exception – ought to be tested in the crucible of debate. Like it or not, that’s the system.

When the Liberals, Ottawa or Victoria version, place legislation before the House it is not in anticipation that government backbenchers will ask any tough questions about it. By that time it’s gone through the government cabinet and caucus and it is there to be supported, down to the last comma, by government members. While it is true that some legislation is agreed to by all, most of it carries within it sections that will affect someone or something adversely. This will never come out … come to the media’s attention and thus to public attention without debate … to the public’s attention so that they, when the time comes, can assess the governments overall performance.

Sometimes the most raucous of debate helps the government. The best example I can think of is long ago – 1973 to be precise – when the Barrett NDP brought in the Land Freeze. Angry Socreds and others stormed the Legislature. Then Socred frontbencher Don Phillips, who became known as "leatherlungs’ by his efforts, conducted the longest filibuster in the history of the Legislature. Yet, in the end, the legislation was popular and has never been substantially altered by any government since.

Again, after winning an election in 1983 on the issue of "restraint", the Bill Bennett government brought in restraint and had the province shut down by the opposition in retaliation. While Bennett made some minor concessions the bulk of the "restraint" program remained untouched by future governments. On both those issues the media and the opposition were, for the most part, against the government yet at the end of the day the public didn’t agree with them. It works the other way, of course, where governments get virtually everyone including the opposition on side yet lose public support – the Charlottetown Accord referendum on October 26th1992 is an excellent example of that.

I see my job as being the man from Missouri … the man who asks questions … the man who is critical … the man who sometimes is very critical.

At this moment – and believe me it will change – it’s not fashionable to criticize the Campbell government. But take two recent issues – the tax cut and the firing of Mary Woo Sims. Isn’t it not only fair but necessary that someone point out that the amount of our deficit to be is almost exactly the revenue that will be lost by that 25% tax cut? And isn’t it fair comment to say that while no one could reasonably have expected Ms Sims to survive this administration, announcing her firing in Question Period was pretty classless?

Let’s look ahead a bit. The Liberals have a gargantuan majority. There is no way in the world that the two NDP MLAs can do a proper opposition job. They don’t have the numbers, the status or the money. This means that the media will scrutinize the government just as carefully, indeed more carefully than it did the last government and ones before that. This is why, when we do Schreck and Leamy on Fridays, Leamy will be taking most of the heat – something he knows, understands and incidentally relishes.

Let me close this morning with an anecdote. In 1975, while I, as the nominee for the Socreds in Kamloops, was anxiously awaiting an election I used to read the late and great Marjorie Nichols columns in the Sun. And what fun it was. Every night she would be battering hell out of Dave Barrett, his ministers and the NDP government generally.

Came the election. We won. I won and was in the new Socred cabinet. And what, I asked in bewilderment, had happened to Marjorie Nichols? She must have had a brain transplant for there she was kicking hell out of Bill Bennett and his cabinet, night after night! Why, she didn’t accept our utterances and press releases as gospel – she shredded them into tatters!

And then I understood what being in government was all about. And the Campbell Liberals will learn this in spades because in Marjorie’s day there was a very able and large opposition – today there is virtually none.

But as Marjorie Nichols would have told you – and I tell you now – it is not the editorialist’s job to convert anyone to any particular point of view but to try to make sure each issue gets a better airing than that provided by the carefully polished government release.

That’s what I have always tried to do and what I intend to do in the future. When I say something, never take my word for it – but the very same advice goes for the government!