Vancouver Courier
for January 6, 1999

As we all know – we who can count, that is – we’re still two years away from the millenium but because the media cannot be scooped, we’ll all celebrate it a year early. (I won’t because New Years Eve being my natal day I intend to have a humdinger of a party, all by myself no doubt, on December 31, 2000.) But perception being reality I’m forced to treat 1999 as an important year. (Incidentally, did you see the Toronto Globe and Mail on New Years day? It showed it’s January 1, 1901 edition which quite properly started the new century that day … which proves, I suppose, that even the TG&M can be right once a century. But I digress.)

1999 will be another terrible year for Glen Clark and the NDP. Moe Sihota, the man upon whom Glen Clark is putting his hopes for a recovery, will accomplish nothing. He’s already declared that the NDP will spend its way out of the expanding recession we’re in and it won’t work. Moe and the NDP are in a philosophical straitjacket. They simply cannot make things better for business, even though it helps the workers they profess to care so much about, because their political base has never been able to draw the obvious inference that a healthy business community means more work opportunity. Moreover the NDP is wed to the notion that bailing out highly unionized losers helps the economy, simple laws of the marketplace being beyond their intellectual capabilities.

Nisga’a is the smoldering fire which will eventually consume the NDP. Glen Clark, who knew diddley squat about the file until he went to New Aiyinsh last July to claim authorship of the deal, has badly miscalculated. He was sure that because the dreamers and poets were prepared to give native bands whatever they demanded that the public felt likewise. Following misleading polls that gave the NDP the answers they wanted by asking the wrong questions, Glen Clark assumed that a huge ad campaign would sell the deal. He was wrong. He was dead wrong, an error compounded by the eminently predictable desire of British Columbians to have a referendum. Mr Clark will, in 1999, see the deal pass his tame legislature and pass Ottawa too but he will be left with a minefield of 50 or 60 more claims that will explode when least expected throughout the remainder of his mandate. Moreover, if the courts stop playing social worker and actually decide what the law is, the Nisga’a treaty will be tossed out as unconstitutional.

Speaking of courts, if you want a bit of a long shot for your money, keep an eye on the BC Hydro case where one of two prominent NDPers has to be lying – either John Laxton or Glen Clark. That’s another mine in Mr Clark’s field.

It’s not all peaches and cream for Gordon Campbell either. While the public in increasing numbers detests Glen Clark, they’re still not

fussy about Mr Campbell. In a rare moment of wisdom, Bill Vander Zalm observed that no one likes Gordon Campbell and no one knows why.

Campbell actually had a pretty good year. He found that issue he needed to show independence from the federal Liberals (Nisga’a), handled the Paul Reitsma case well and won the ensuing by-election going away. His problem remains in the Interior although my spies tell me that this may be changing. If the rising though reluctant support for him continues in the Northwest and the Northeast, the NDP are in terminal trouble.

Bill Vander Zalm will continue to gather crowds which is what sustains that huge ego. But he’s a spent force. People may have short memories but they’re not that short.

Gordon Wilson is finished as a party and a politician. Because he supports Glen Clark on Nisga’a where he was staunchly pro referendum with Charlottetown, his armor has lost it’s shine and the white horse is lame.

The people to watch in 1999?

Ujjal Dosanjh will continue to be the only shining light for the NDP as he starts a serious and long overdue look at the justice system.

For the Liberals look at four people – Mike DeJong (who has blotted his copybook badly with some law suit attracting excesses) and Gary Farrell Collins have been outshone by Christy Clark and especially by Geoff Plant who’ve become, along with one or two others, the people Premier-in-waiting Campbell will rely on as showpieces for a future cabinet.

But there’ll be no election in 1999 and there may not be one in 2000. When you’re down badly as political alley cat Glen Clark is, you don’t toss in the towel but wait as long as you can in hopes that something turns up. It worked for him in 1996 and he’ll hope lightning strikes twice in the spring of 2001.

Better put on your woolies and store up on turnips, Maw, it could be a long, tough time until the sun shines again.