Vancouver Province
for August 2, 2001

It’s an eerie feeling – we have an opposition-less government. It won’t last of course, (which is what this column is all about) but right now the Campbell government can do as it wishes with scarcely a discouraging word. The two NDP MLAs, muted by a partisan Speaker, face an impossible task. There’s no way, even if they had all the funding they have requested, that two people can scrutinize the Budget estimates, the legislation and the daily policy of a government with a pre 1989 Iron Curtain type parliament. Moreover, for the moment, the mildest of criticism of the government brings howls of protest from their supportive mob. I, a former Socred Cabinet Minster, have been accused of sins ranging all the way from NDP sympathies, through membership in the NDP to being an acolyte of Fidel Castro – all because I’ve said the NDP should have been given Official Opposition status.

The NDP is in tatters. Ten days ago I bumped into an NDP icon of years past who said, "I think we have to give the new government a chance", sentiments reluctantly expressed by Jim Sinclair, president of the B.C. Federation of Labour. This unexpected sportsmanship has more to do with a feeling of impotence, I should think, than a sense of good will.

But what happens when the wheels come off, as they are bound to do?

Every government, sooner or later, moves from being loved, to being tolerated to being supported by some and despised by the rest. It’s the nature of governance.

It can’t be forgotten that in the most polarized election in my memory, 42% voted against the Liberals. Under most systems in the world the Legislature would have 32 opposition members instead of two. What happens when that 42%, undoubtedly swollen to perhaps 60% (a 40% support for a government mid term is pretty good) and that 60% has no one to speak for them except two beleaguered MLAs who essentially have no party behind them?

Let’s remember who will likely be angry and why.

First the why? In order to come anywhere close to meeting their fiscal commitments (which they won’t meet, incidentally) the Liberals must go on a cost cutting exercise like those conducted in recent years by Premier Harris in Ontario and Premier Klein in Alberta. These cuts will hit all the social services, very much including the health and Education sectors.

The who?

Private sector Labour will be itching to catch up to their public sector colleagues. We’ve been through this before. During the Barrett NDP days of the early 70s public sector wages leapt ahead of the private sector to such an extent that Premier Barrett had to order the private sector back to work in 1975 undoubtedly costing him that year’s election.

The doctors will, within two years maximum, be on the rampage.

Patients will have even worse diagnosis and surgery lineups, which will, rightly, be blamed on the government.

The teachers will be on the warpath in a big way.

All in receipt of social benefits will be feeling the pinch of cutbacks.

Under normal circumstances, much of the anger of all these groups and others would be meted out in the Legislature. Question Period would be rancorous unto uncontrollable. Legislation would face filibusters. Opposition MLAs would be tossed out for excessive opposition.

Now some would argue that such behaviour is unseemly – I think that betrays a lack of understanding of how democracy is supposed to work. The legislature is where blood is spilt figuratively so that it is not spilled literally in the streets. What happens when the safety valve represented by that legislature is so firmly capped that almost no opposition passion is permitted?

No prizes for answering that one. It will spill into the streets. There will be illegal strikes, blockades and sit-ins. Instead of the Legislature being disrupted – which doesn’t matter because nothing is intended to be or is accomplished there anyway – society and the economy will be disrupted instead.

Today, all is calm. The opposition is in disarray and its party, the NDP, might just as well not exist. But nothing stays the same. And when, as it will, the barnyard droppings hit the fan we will rue the day that our antiquated system of voting so castrated opposition parties that the place for dissent moved from the Legislative Chamber onto the streets of the Province.