Vancouver Province
for March 29, 2001

Of one thing there seems little doubt – after the next election both the Liberals and the NDP will face problems of quantity, though vastly different ones. The NDP, if recent polls and my province wide soundings are remotely correct, will be lucky to hold half a dozen seats. If that happens, how on earth to rebuild? And with whom? One assumes that Premier Dosanjh, if he holds his seat (no slam dunk), will not be in much of position to rally the troops – after all, he was given that job 13 months ago and has been a spectacular failure.

Joy McPhail? If she holds her traditionally solid NDP stronghold (again no certainty) she has many virtues, is not afraid of hard work and has, bearing in mind it’s the NDP we’re talking about here, a good record. There are two problems – she is too identified with the trade union movement, whose leadership is grossly out of touch with today’s realities, and she says she doesn’t want to the job. And if the NDP wind up with just a handful of MLAs, one can’t really blame her.

Gordon Campbell faces quantitative problems too and really not all that much easier than those of the NDP. For he will have too many MLAs, at least half of whom will be new to the House. It is, I suspect, not a commitment to better democracy that has Mr. Campbell promising to revive (if one can revive corpses) the legislative committee system, but rather the sobering knowledge that he will have several dozen pairs of idle hands to keep from doing the devil’s work.

It was once thought that the vice-presidency of the United States was the most anonymous job in the world – that’s before anyone considered the plight of the backbencher on the government side in the parliamentary system. It is utterly devoid of meaning. Legislation comes by way of fait accompli and support thereof is mandatory. Caucus meetings are where you get your marching orders.

Let’s assume – and this is by no means far out – that the Liberals win 70 seats. Take away a Speaker, a deputy speaker and, say, 20 for Cabinet (Campbell says he’ll cut down from that) and you have 48 pairs of idle hands. Take away a Chief Whip and a Deputy Whip, workless titles that at least have a little pay attached and you’re down to 46. Then create 20 Parliamentary Secretaries – another no work for more pay job – and you still have 26 people in Caucus going nuts. They’re going nuts because they honestly believed, and so informed their constituents, that they were off to Victoria to be legislators, only to find they were about as independent of the premier’s political machine as toast is of a toaster.

This presents the Premier with an even greater problem. On the one hand he will have about 30 colleagues who put in their time and paid their dues in Opposition, all of whom will expect their just reward. Then he will have some former Socred cabinet ministers who assume, quite wrongly as they will find out, that their "Honourables" have just been gathering dust awaiting their return. Moreover, the premier can’t afford to have all his backbenchers rookies or he’ll have a huge herd of uncontrolled malcontents on his hands. (t’s often been remarked that the United States runs its government with 1/3 the number of cabinet members Canada has. The answer is easy – in the United States cabinet members come from outside the legislatures while here they are used only partly to get the job of governing done, and much more to keep MPs and MLAs out of harm’s way.)

This may ultimately be all to the good. Mr Campbell is not only going to be forced by these circumstances to use a half dozen or more legislative committees he will pretty much have to let them do their thing without much interference from him. And if he thinks about it, why should he care? If these committees uncover all sorts of government errors and inefficiencies it will only hurt until the public gets used to the idea.

If a Premier Gordon Campbell permits the legislature to become a democratic institution, something it’s never been, he could just discover that it starts to work like a legislature should, and that the voting public likes what it sees.