Vancouver Courier
for July 5, 1998

One of my favorite combatants is Ken Georgetti. We've done nigh unto mortal combat on and off air for years. We seldom agree on anything. And we're friends.

After we've had a particularly nasty exchange which has clearly got one or both of us really pissed off I'm often asked "How can you be friends?"

Damned if I know but we are.

Last week Ken was on about the new Labour legislation and we got to the part where the Liberals had moved adjournment of the House rather than of the debate, a procedural mistake which, for the time being, tubed Bill 26. Ken claimed that in taking advantage of this technical goof-up, the Liberals wasted the taxpayers' money instead of getting on with it.

Ken knows better so I was, very much against my will of course, forced to remind him how his beloved NDP behaved when they were in opposition.

I well remember their endless points of order used to delay and embarrass. The best, though scarcely untypical, was raised one day by Gary Lauk. After the Speaker had arrived in the Chamber but several minutes before the proceedings were to start, Lauk demanded that he require more cabinet ministers come into the House for Question Period.

Speaker Harvey Schroeder refused for the very good reason that he didn't have power.

Lauk challenged his ruling and hollered "Division" - meaning that a vote would be taken and all MLAs, including Cabinet Ministers would come in to vote.

I'm certainly not going to defend any and all legislative tricks pulled by oppositions - and I certainly was annoyed as hell by NDP posturing when I was there - but using the rule book is a time honoured and perfectly respectable tactic in parliamentary systems like ours which, in essence, create five year dictatorships of the majority.

In the U.S. system, where the party discipline is mild (since Congress cannot topple the administration as parliaments at least in theory can), cross party voting is very common. Under our system, government MLAs are toadies to be coerced by timely use of the stick and the carrot and must do as they're told. Consequently, when Bill 26 came into the House its passage into law was a mere matter of formality.

Oppositions can't use delay tactics on all bills, of course. There isn't time and, besides, the public wouldn't stand for it at election time. But when a matter of great public dissension comes up, the opposition is faced with two prospects. They can simply go through the motions, accept the time limits on debate and let the matter pass. Or they can oppose by every legitimate means, however thin, at their disposal. (There is, I suppose, a third alternative which I've only seen happen once. Back in 1978 when the Socreds decided to fund private schools the NDP were so internally divided that they decided not to even show up for the debate or vote.)

It happens, from time to time, that a clear and unmistakable clash in philosophies occurs where the parties, and the community, are divided. The NDP Land Bill in 1973 which brought in the Agricultural Land Reserve was just such a bill. To the "right", this went to the root of freedom and democracy. Either a man owned land or he didn't, a man's home is his castle and on it went. The Socred opposition, led by Don "Leatherlungs" Phillips filibustered the debate while huge demonstrations took place on the Legislature lawns.

Most people now agree with the legislation but that's not the point - it was a bill which went to the very crux of public division in the province.

Rosemary Brown and Dave Barrett are remembered, amongst other things, as two who brought the House to a standstill on several occasions over proposed legislation which they perceived as a threat to society as they saw it.

Such tactics are not designed to stop the legislation - the bill is bound to pass eventually - but to highlight a moment which the opposition can later use to fortify their claim that the rascals should be thrown out.

The government has all the tools - the majority, the timing, and the money. The Opposition only has the little red rule book and Beauchene and Sir Erskine May (the leading parliamentary texts) to rely upon.

Bill 26 goes to the root of the matter of labour management relations. The NDP speaks kindly sometimes about business but supports organized labour. The Liberals say nice things about unions but support business. And those positions reflect a deeply rooted public dichotomy.

The opposition can't defeat the bill but can expose the government to serious public scrutiny by holding its feet to the fire. That's precisely what Oppositions are supposed to do.

Far from wasting the taxpayers' money, the opposition is performing a service without which the lousy system we operate under would be utterly unbearable in a free society.