Vancouver Province
for July 9, 1999

Are we going to give Gordo a free ride just because there’s no one else who can beat the NDP? Will we demand from him no more than a promise that he’ll do better when, no matter how badly he does, he can scarcely do worse?

In marking time as he has, Mr Campbell has been very lucky – and so have we, come to think of it – that at no time has Glen Clark been in a position to call a snap election. The public, fed to the teeth with Clark & Co, has become so focussed on seeing off the NDP it asks nothing more of the Liberals than that they simply show up at election time. Big mistake.

Mr Campbell has been making a lot of promises lately – all sufficiently fuzzy that any politician in any party could safely make them - and one of them is for constitutional reform within the Province.

The politicians say that the people don’t want to talk about the constitution. They’ve got a lot of the media saying that too. But I can tell you that no other subject gets as fast and thoughtful response from my audience than this one. People know that they are being badly governed, badly represented, and badly bullshitted. And the last is what maddens them most.

Gordon Campbell knows that this is a hot button – a very hot button – but he’s dealing with the issue in such flatulent phrases that, like Humpty Dumpty, he can later say that his words mean whatever he says they mean.

There are two fundamental problems in our so-called democracy. First, the first past the post system leads to such gross distortions of the public will that a party with the second highest popular vote can (and now does) form the government. That’s a subject for another day.

Second, our system is topsy-turvey so that instead of the government being controlled by the MLAs, it’s quite the other way around. All power has moved to the top and any in doubt about how hard it is for a party to rid itself of its leader, need only look at the death grip Glen Clark has on the NDP.

Mr Campbell has tossed out some ideas such as public cabinet meetings, which is silliness and would just lead to a few bits of public make-believe and has suggested reviving the committee system in the legislature as if that will cure the ills of top down government. It won’t, for the following reasons.

Legislatures have "standing committees", roughly matching the main departments of government, so that, in theory, MLAs can hold the government’s feet to the fire. This is supposed to be how legislatures keep the executive (the premier and cabinet) responsible to them.

The facts disprove the theory. In Victoria, with the exception of the Public Accounts Committee, most standing committees meet once a year to elect the Premier’s choice as chair who thereupon adjourns the committee, never to be heard from again. And here is the snare and delusion of Mr Campbell’s proposal to activate these committees – they are chaired by the premier’s choice with the majority of the committee made up of the premier’s handpicked backbenchers, all of whom would like to be in cabinet. It won’t surprise you to learn that when committees do sit, they never do anything which even mildly embarrasses the government much less holds it’s feet to the fire. Any committee that is used, simply becomes a place where the premier keeps idle backbenchers’ hands from doing the devil’s work. "Give ‘em something to do that keeps ‘em out of harm’s way", is the motto.

If the number one problem of government in B.C. is, as I believe to be the case, that the voter is utterly unconnected to the elected by reason of the way the system works, then massive surgery not titillating tinkering is required.

If Gordon Campbell wants to make a greater contribution than just beating the NDP – gigantic contribution though that would be – he must promise that upon election he will immediately set up a Royal Commission or Constituent Assembly to tackle this problem of executive bullying and – here’s the important part – commit to placing the recommendations therefrom to the people in referendum.

If we don’t force Mr Campbell to make such a commitment now, a Liberal victory will simply mean business as usual, and the public will continue, quite rightly, to distrust the system and the people who run it.