Vancouver Courier
for January 3, 1999

It’s always a puzzlement at this time of the year whether to review the past year, predict the next or make out a report card of politicians. I’ve resolved the matter by presenting you with two big stories which seem utterly unrelated and try to convince you that they are very related indeed.

For the United States and the world, Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinski, in a story, which has been blown (if you’ll pardon the expression) out of all proportion, dominated the headlines and the 1998 supply of bawdy jokes. In British Columbia the main story has been the Nisga’a Treaty (proposed).

How on earth does one marry these stories? Read on.

The United States government is a three part balancing act – the legislative (Congress) the executive (president and cabinet) and judiciary (Supreme Court.) Because the executive is divorced from the legislative, members of Congress have considerable independence. If a bill proposed by the president or by the majority party gets defeated, nothing happens. No one resigns and the government doesn’t fall. Thus party discipline is much weaker than in a Canadian parliament leaving legislators not only more free to act, but with a much closer identification with their voters than is the case here.

President Bill Clinton has obfuscated and probably committed perjury. Though he is the most powerful man on earth he is in big trouble. He has been impeached and if not thrown out of office, certainly will be fined and censured by the U.S. Senate. His hopes rest with the American system, which puts the governed in such close electoral proximity with their elected officials. In fact the one third of the Senate coming up for re-election in 2000 is the best thing the president’s has going for him.

The lesson? In the United States, when the executive arm of government gets too big for its britches it can be and usually is given a sharp lesson by people’s legislators who always face a looming election.

Premier Glen Clark and his cabinet have made a treaty with the Nisga’a Indian Band without even the remotest notion of a mandate. The negotiations were in secret and the terms never debated in the public forum. Even the premier himself admits that, if ratified, Nisga’a will be a huge change to the social compact in British Columbia yet he and his cabinet refuse to even entertain a referendum insisting that their judgment is to be preferred over that of the people.

The world’s most powerful man is naughty and lies and is immediately in peril for his job. The premier of British Columbia makes a secret deal, dissembles ad nauseum through a taxpayer financed ad campaign and refuses elementary democracy and he rides along as if nothing had happened. The lesson? During his term of office Premier Clark can do as he damn well pleases

What’s so amazing about this comparison is that, on paper, British Columbians can call their governing executive to task much easier than Americans can hold their president accountable – the operative words being "on paper". For us it’s a technical cinch because all it takes is the legislature to vote non-confidence in the executive and the premier and his cabinet are down the road. The trouble is, this cannot for practical reasons happen. Our system breeds flatulent sycophants who support their leader whate’er betide because their political existences depend upon it.

For ever so long, British Columbians – indeed Canadians generally – have simply gone along with this rotten system. But the news stories of 1998, namely Clinton’s impeachment and Clark’s arrogance, have brought our systems of governance into sharp focus. Many of us may feel that the Clinton/Lewinsky affair is merely a tawdry bit of sexual jiggery pokery (though pokery has been vigorously denied) but the operative point is that President Clinton is accountable where Mr Clark is not.

This lack of politically accountability was exemplified in the APEC affair, which saw Prime Minister Chretien able to obfuscate, sacrifice ministers and ignore public opinion without consequence.

I believe that the events of 1998, contrasted as I have just done, will lead to ever more discontent with our system, a discontent which will eventually make itself felt. We are supine and anally retentive to an astonishing degree in this country but I sense that the rumble you hear from afar is an awakening electorate about to administer a wake-up call to their political masters. We may just have had enough of our seven Liberal lickspittles in Ottawa (Lou "the silent" Sekora being the latest addition) and the organized sycophancy of the NDP caucus in Victoria.

If it does transpire that British Columbians and other Canadians rise against their masters it will have a lot to do with the stark contrast they saw in 1998 between how the American Republic can and does deal with abuse of executive power and the inability of the voters to do anything about Victoria and Ottawa.