Vancouver Province
for April 26, 2001

Exasperation. That’s the word. Thoroughly pissed off if you prefer three. The public, by a recent poll commissioned by the Province, gives Gordon Campbell’s Liberals a 54 point margin over the Dosanjh and what’s left of the NDP.

I’ve voted in elections since 1953 and I can only remember twice where rare paradox of ennui and anger has swept the land. The first was in 1988 when the voter so dog tired of Trudeau, and mad as hell, that after giving John Turner a brief honeymoon, trashed the Liberals at the polls giving Brian Mulroney a huge electoral sweep. Then there was Mulroney himself who, nine short years later, became Canada’s most hated man, arguably for all time. Now it’s the turn of the BC NDP who face an utter wipe-out.

Why did this happen? After all, Mike Harcourt and the NDP were seen as a breath of fresh air in 1991 as they swept the Socreds from power and, indeed as it turned out, from the political landscape. There are, I suppose, a lot of things but two factors come to mind.

The NDP, in their years in opposition, had become little short of magnificent at calling for ministerial resignations from the Socred front bench. Such sins as forgetting to take oneself off the share registry of a company doing business with the government; a Forest Minister having shares in a forest company in his RRSP; a minister letting a political supporter distribute lottery lolly; or an attorney-general, in what he assumed was a private conversation, bad mouthing a lawyer acting against his ministry; these and other sins brought from the NDP lips some magnificent speeches about cabinet sinning and consequent obligations under the great British Parliamentary system. In fact the student, seeking out just what these great traditions are, could do no better than to re-visit Hansard of the dying days of the Socreds where there is a gold mine of oratory dripping with pious preaching from the NDP benches declaiming the sins opposite combined with self professed virtue. Thus it was that the expectations raised by the NDP were that they, of all people, wouldn’t sin and if they, against all these expectations did so, why resignation would be instantaneous.

It didn’t turn out that way. As I commented to then Premier Harcourt after a year in office, "you have well and truly lost your virginity." Probably the point where the claim of innocence rang with an eternal hollowness was when their Attorney-General swore a false affidavit and was not required to stand aside while he was being investigated by a Crown Counsel who had done about $150,000 business with his department the year before. The Glen Clark caper was, admittedly, a lot of icing on the cake but by that time the public knew that this bunch made the worst of the Socreds look like choirboys.

But the overriding sin of the NDP over nearly 10 years was, plain and simply put, gross incompetence. Nothing worked. Forest Renewal did nothing to create jobs. Back of the envelope deals with Indians with Carriere Lumber’s licence brought shame and an immense lawsuit. And, of course, there were the fast ferries. All of this and more doubled the provincial debt.

The social services ministries, supposedly the area of socialist expertise, became political minefields where explosion after explosion took place. A well known social worker told me – and said that this was felt by many of his colleagues – that there hadn’t been a decent minister in the field since the Socred of all Socreds, Grace McCarthy, ran things efficiently and saw that social money reached people who needed it.

But it’s what all this and more has done. Simply put, the NDP has destroyed business confidence. Talk to people around the province, a province made up of perhaps a dozen discrete regions, and the word is the same. Nothing is happening. Not only are we unable to compete with Washington, Oregon and Alberta for business, we’ve lost confidence in ourselves. Business is blah. This is perhaps best exemplified by the bankruptcy of Sheppards Shoes, in business since 1931 selling high end shoes right across the street from the Vancouver and Terminal City Clubs. Survived the Great Depression and all recessions great and small since. But can’t survive the NDP.

Neither, say 72% of us, can the province.