Georgia Straight
for December 1994, Article 3

When Bill Vander Zalm was premier, I said that he and the Socred government had lost their moral compass. No one would have agreed with me more, I'm sure, than then Opposition Leader Mike Harcourt who, almost daily it seemed, gave lectures on public morality to anyone who would listen.

Well, folks, it seems that moral compasses go out of whack when they are moved from the Opposition Leader's office to the Premier's precincts.

Bill Vander Zalm's problem was that he simply didn't understand the issue of political morality at all. He was politically amoral. It wasn't that he intended to break conflict of interest rules - he simply could not get his mind around them. No better proof of that can be found in the fact that he was so bewildered over the fuss about his entertaining a prospective purchaser of his business at Government House, that he referred the matter to Conflicts of Interest Commissioner Ted Hughes for an opinion. Mr Hughes must have been as surprised as everyone else in the Province was to think that Mr Vander Zalm could have been in any doubt.

The point is that while Mr Vander Zalm may have been a sinner, it might reasonably be inferred from his conduct that he didn't know any better.

No such defense is available to Mike Harcourt. He is a lawyer, implying though not proving, a rudimentary understanding of these matters. Moreover he made all those speeches on political morality when the object of public attention was Mr Vander Zalm and the hated Socreds.

And pretty speeches they were too. For one can find no better summary of proper parliamentary practice or democratic principles like free speech and the Rule of Law than to read Hansard and the speeches of Mike Harcourt and Moe Sihota when, for example, the Bud Smith tapes affair was raging.

The recent TNL-MacBlo affair forces us to examine Mr Harcourt's practicing of these principles he professes to hold so dear. For if ever there was an opportunity to state in no uncertain terms that violence has no place in British Columbia, it was after the disgusting assaults which occurred on the picket line on November 24.

Yes, both Harcourt and Georgetti denounced violence, but scarcely in vigourous terms. In fact Georgetti insists that the violence was utterly "spontaneous" and something which the union leadership could not control.

That's a bit much for many British Columbians, who have watched labour disputes a-plenty, to stomach. In fact Chief Justice Esson, in the injunction hearing, had this to say: " .. it was an order made after the fullest possible hearing and consideration. It is simply not credible to suggest that the violence visited upon those who sought to serve the order and the police who sought to protect them was a spontaneous reaction. There must have been a considerable degree of calculation in assembling 400 persons to act as some of them did. (emphasis added.)

It was not the Premier who took the lead before the recent convention of the B.C. Federation of Labour - his remarks on the matter of picket line violence were token at best. No it was Labour Minister Dan Miller who left no doubt that violence had no place in B.C. labour relations. Mr Harcourt was cheered - Mr Miller was greeted with stony silence.

For Premier Harcourt it was a difficult time. The B.C. Federation of Labour and individual affiliated unions, are strong supporters of the NDP. Ken Georgetti, the President, is not a man to be trifled with and in his view, TNL has a "rat" union, a very great sin indeed to the left. The bond between organized labour and the NDP is very strong and it's no secret that the changes to the labour code favouring unions, the so-called "Fair Wages policy and the sweetheart deal between the government and labour on the Island Highway contracts came as clear political payoffs to labour.

Yet Mr Miller was able to strongly enunciate a matter of principle, before this very tough audience at a particularly volatile time while the Premier, who is expected to show leadership, was not. The question is, why not?

I think that the answer is clear. Mr Harcourt, like Mr Vander Zalm before him, has something less than a vigourous commitment to principles when they interfere with politics.

And we shouldn't be surprised to learn this. If we look at Mike Harcourt's record when it comes to principles fashionable to hold dear, he only stands firmly behind them when it is politically safe to do so.

You might recall that the Premier, when Mayor of Vancouver, tried to stop a former Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, from speaking at a local meeting. The left, you see, doesn't like Dr Kissinger. So much for the Harcourt stand on the right of free speech when it's politically inconvenient..

Mr Harcourt is the man who shrilly demanded, on principle, that Bud Smith resign for saying something unkind about a lawyer in what was supposed to be a private conversation. He quickly forgot that principle when his own Attorney-General was caught swearing a false affidavit.

Mr Harcourt, so quick to criticize on principle the politicization of the bureaucracy by the Socreds, has loaded the upper echelons of the public service and the Crown Corporations with NDP hacks from across the land.

Now, as we have seen in the TNL matter, Mr Harcourt, a man lightening quick to criticize right wing parties for pandering to the business community, won't risk offending the labour movement and his unofficial cabinet minister Ken Georgetti, under any circumstances - not even by dumping on violence.

Mike Harcourt, on the issue of political morality, is, sad to say, no better than Bill Vander Zalm and since he knows better, he is arguably worse.

Because of this, the NDP just might pay the same price the Socreds did.