Vancouver Province
for April 23, 1999

We’re witnessing mass hypocrisy on the level achieved when Caligula made his horse a consul. Glen Clark will shortly present a freshly sealed Act formalizing the Nisga’a deal to Chief Joseph Gosnell for which he will receive copious honours and praise plus some glorious photographs to put in his scrapbook to blot out the memory of his disgrace. This Act – the most serious in our history – is pure Glen Clark politics.

No one denies that Nisga’a are entitled to a Treaty. That’s never been the question. What is the question is simple – is this particular treaty fair to all? Bearing in mind that once the treaty is in place it’s major provisions are unalterable for all time one would have thought that any government would tread very carefully in answering that question - but they haven’t. From the outset the NDP decided, based upon raw sentimentality, that any old treaty is fine with them.

It’s pointless to rehash all the things that can go wrong but I’m compelled to point out that my colleague Mike Smyth unwittingly put it in focus on my show last Monday when he said perhaps it was time to get it over with and see if the naysayers (of which I’m a charter member) are right. Trouble is, if we are it’s too late to do anything.

The most remarkable part of this story is that in a few days Gordon Wilson will be Premier capping the greatest political comeback since W.A.C. Bennett left the Tory backbench in 1952 to lead a strange collection of misfits to power under the name of Social Credit.

Wilson is not without his talents but integrity and the ability to lead are not amongst them. He led the Liberals to Official Opposition in 1991 with a fluky remark on the TV leadership debate (which he crashed) when he intervened between a scrapping Mike Harcourt and Rita Johnston to say "see, that’s why nothing gets done in this province.

From there he proceeded to make his mistress House Leader then lie about the relationship even to his own people. Thereafter he called for a leadership review and, when he lost to Gordon Campbell, behaved like a pampered child, storming out of the party to form his own. He held out great hope with his new Progressive Democratic Alliance then, when the opportunity came to betray them, did just that by crossing the floor directly into the NDP cabinet, leaving his party in the lurch and in debt. This was done without any consultation with the party he had formed and nourished with his high blown promises.

When I first spoke to Mr Wilson after he had jumped to the NDP he didn’t tell me that he had suddenly seen the light and become a socialist – no, he said "someone had to step in there and clean up the mess." So we don’t put modesty on his list of offsetting virtues.

Gordon Wilson’s political career is strewn with unfinished political vendettas not the least of which is with Gordon Campbell whom he deprived of office in 1996 by helping to split the vote. For this reason, when Gordon Wilson becomes Premier and is confirmed as NDP party leader in June, it will be a new political ballgame in this province. For it won’t be the NDP record that’s the issue nor will it be competing visions – it will be the continuation of the vendetta between the two Gordons. Of course Mr Campbell will try to put the NDP record in issue but - and depend upon this – Wilson will draw Campbell, Farrell-Collins, Plant and DeJong into personal pissing matches because that’s what Gordon Wilson does to people. It’s well nigh impossible to do battle with him on records, philosophies and visions when his very presence seems to inspire (if that’s the word) a slugfest of ad hominem attacks.

One must not, however, overlook the fact that Wilson will provide a more competent government – he could hardly do otherwise. He will make over the cabinet and present a new NDP to the electorate. But on that basis alone he cannot restore the NDP’s fortunes.

Gordon Wilson knows that voters tend to look at elections as leader against leader and he also knows that the Liberals can’t blame him for what Harcourt/Clark did. That’s why he’ll fight the Liberals on the battlefield of his choosing.

And that’s what makes him so dangerous.