CKNW Editorial
for July 31, 2001

It’s going to be interesting to see how the next four years in the Legislature play out. Our system is supposed to be an adversarial one. This is why the opposition and government benches are set two sword lengths apart. As the system developed, especially in Canadian jurisdictions the House ceased to be a place of debate (which the US Congress still is for reasons I’ll go into in a moment) but a place where spleen is vented. It ceased to be a place of debate once the party system took hold and majority governments ruled by maintaining that majority at all costs. Quite apart from all the other carrots and sticks the Premier has, no government backbencher wants to put his seat on the line any sooner than necessary and that in itself is a great incentive never to break party ranks and force an election.

In the United States, unlike here, governments don’t fall on an adverse vote. This has meant much looser party discipline. Probably the best example of this was during the Clinton Impeachment proceedings where Republican whips could never get enough Republicans to vote against the President. In the US Congress, while there is party discipline to an extent, debates are still debates in the sense that some minds are nearly always open on any subject.

Our system is utterly unsuited to government without opposition. For one thing, it’s no fun to listen day after day to people standing up to praise the government … or to hear Question Period becoming cabinet flattery period with pre-arranged questions being lobbed at grateful ministers.

Our legislatures are supposed to be places of passion – places where blood is shed figuratively instead of literally in the streets. They are meant to get ugly … harsh words are expected. Sometimes, happily rare, actual physical combat takes place.

Think about it – we run our clubs the same way. Do we spend more money on the course … on the clubhouse … on the dining-room or locker rooms … do we hire a new pro … or do we cut back and cut dues? On and on the debates range, often with passion, amongst members who all have the same overall objective, namely, to play golf.

Many deplore this very human trait and look to a peaceful legislature as a good idea. They are deluding themselves. A peaceful legislature means a place where the government is always getting its way without having to justify its actions.

This is what opposition means under our system. It doesn’t mean that the opposition party has any say in legislation because it doesn’t. The government, assuming a majority, does what it wishes with this large BUT. BUT, it must justify its actions, which actions will come under careful and often harsh scrutiny. This opposition scrutiny seldom changes anything but it does something perhaps even more important – it casts the light of public scrutiny on government actions.

Imagine, if you will, a legislature where 77 out of 79 are committed to whatever the government decides to do. Imagine having to sit through all those so-called debates without every uttering a discouraging word! Imagine Question Period after a month or so of watching colleagues loft slow pitches at cabinet ministers. Imagine a legislature where the Speaker has nothing more to do than did the Speaker in the Polish Parliament prior to 1989.

But you might ask, won’t these 77 have a hand in all the policy though caucus meetings? The answer is that this is what Premier Campbell is going to try to pretend. He will want his MLAs to feel part of the process but the fact remains that legislation is implementation of government, namely cabinet policy, and cabinet policy is essentially that of the premier.

We’ve got to understand that the premier, under our system, is a four year dictator and what he says, goes. He will, through the thin veil of caucus committees and free votes do everything he can to make individual Liberal backbenchers feel needed. And it will work for awhile. But it won’t take long before MLAs realize that much of this is make work to keep idle hands from doing the devil’s work. The frustration of only being able to disagree behind closed doors and then only in terms deferential to the Premier and Cabinet will eventually show through.

I would be very surprised indeed if this caucus holds together for four years.

You have to look down the road. As the years go by, the government will do a lot of unpopular things. If it is to balance the budget it will have to. More and more backbenchers will be getting earfuls from constituents who will remind them how they got elected in the first place. Just wait until the cuts start to hit home and the public, who were cheering the Liberals when they were promising things, will now start jeering when those things turn out to be unpleasant medicine.

This is no knock at the Liberals – it happens to all governments. Sooner or later governments have to govern and that means unpleasant decisions.

I think Premier Campbell will get through this session without difficulty. By the time of the second session, by that I mean ’02, there will be some grumbling in the ranks. Those who were sure Mr Campbell would rectify his mistake not putting them in cabinet, will now find that they have been passed over in the first change. To make things more interesting, the first cabinet shuffle will see some cabinet ministers go to the back bench and they will be unhappy as hell. By ’03 there should be some real live dissent appear.

I predict that the Liberals will rue the day they won so many seats. Many privately rue it now. It’s not their fault they won so big – in fact it’s not even the electorate’s fault. The blame belongs to two things – a system that allows such distortions between popular vote and elected members and the NDP who were such a lousy government that they lost all but two seats.

I believe, also, that Gordon Campbell will rue the day he arm-wrestled the political and pliable Speaker into denying Official Opposition status to Ms McPhail and Ms Kwan for within a year, perhaps less, they will have become martyrs as they struggle to do their job opposing the government. Far wiser it would have been to kill them with kindness. For as this pair struggles to deal with the estimates of 28 ministers, their legislation and cabinet policy they will be seen by ever increasing numbers of British Columbians as out-manned but valiant warriors deserving of respect.

Gordon Campbell knows all these things except the part about the Official Opposition and he will spend an enormous amount of time and energy trying to keep 50 backbenchers on-side.

But at the end of it all I can guarantee he will be wishing that the electorate in 2001 had been a little less generous.