Financial Post
for October 2, 1998

Rarely do Ottawa and Victoria have anything in common but now they're each home to a first minister who perpetually looks like that proverbial deer caught in the headlights.

Before the hearings into the APEC disgrace even begin, Jean Chretien's been exposed as a man to whom the truth seems a stranger while Andy Scott, his ever faithful Solicitor-General, looks like a shoplifter trying to brazen his way out of it.

Chretien is a man ideally suited for one thing - leading the totally unprincipled Liberal Party whose schtick is to make false promises and evade tough questions while seducing Central Canadians into believing it alone can keep the country together.

We're such a polite bloody lot in this country. Even Alexa McDonough seemed shocked when I suggested that the protesters might question the impartiality of the RCMP Public Complaints Commission.

From the start may I state unequivocally that I don't question the actual impartiality of any of the panel. I simply ask, if you were one of the protesters, would you feel that this set-up looked fair?

I put to Ms McDonough - a vocal and effective critic of the PM on this

issue - that here's a panel appointed on a short term by the Solicitor-General who's in charge of the RCMP, the objects of the inquiry - a man who has a huge stake in the outcome. He's also the man who gets to re-appoint, or otherwise these same commissioners.

But it goes further, of course. Mr Scott was appointed my Jean Chretien who's up to his eyeballs in this mess, and owes his job on a minute to minute basis to him. Which raises this further question - Mr Scott gave all the RCMP high priced lawyers and denied even Legal Aid to the protesters. If you don't think that this decision was made by the Prime Minister himself you must be smoking something you shouldn't. For you can be certain that Mr Scott doesn't do anything on this case without the Prime Minister's express approval.

Glen Clark also is on but the barest nodding relationship with the truth but recently his most obvious political attribute, raw hypocrisy, has been vividly on display.

It started with David Black, proprietor of 60 B.C. Community papers, announcing that all his editors would be opposing the Nisga'a Treaty and that he would be running an 8 part series by Mel Smith, QC, noted constitutional authority and outspoken critic of the deal. Many, very much including me though I too oppose the deal, were appalled at what, at first blush, looked like an effort to shut out the Treaty's proponents. But, after all, the man owns the papers and in a free country, subject to defamation laws, you can print what you like.

But Premier Clark, after trashing the media in general at a trade union conference, summoned Mr Black to a meeting and demanded that Mr Black provide "balance" and equal opportunities for proponents of the treaty.

If you think that this simply shows what a fair minded man our premier is, read on.

While Premier Clark is suing the Vancouver Sun for not, he alleges, providing fair and balanced reporting of a brewing scandal involving his government in recent MLA recall campaigns, and while he is decrying the concentration of media ownership and alleged partiality, his government is churning out raw propaganda in favour of the Nisga'a Treaty all, of course, at taxpayers expense. Moreover, when Opposition leader Gordon Campbell asked that his party be able to mail out their view of the treaty along with the government stuff, he was refused!

The pro-treaty campaign is a slick PR job done by the NDP's favourite flacks complete with the sound of running water, drums and loons in the background. It does not, as Gordon Campbell states, tell half truths - it out and out deceives.

Canadians often look with horror at the American system where the House and one third of the Senate are up for election every two years. Why, it's said, Congressmen must start running for re-election the morning after they win!

Yet that system puts the voters close enough to the exercise of power that they can call the most powerful person in the world to account while we must look at the likes of Chretien and Clark and only gnash our teeth in disgust and frustration.