The Written Word
for February 28, 2001

Premier Ujjal Dosanjh made his pitch to the people last night and it was an uneven effort at best. Mr Dosanjh is articulate and telegenic – and sounds sincere. On the other hand I question, from an optics point of view, the decision to have him speaking in several places with several different outfits on.

If his object was to speak to the traditional support of the NDP I would give him a C-. It was the usual stuff of which socialist speeches are made but I fear for Mr Dosanjh and his party that they are badly out of touch. For example, three times as many union workers voted for the Canadian Alliance in the last election than voted NDP! This is a different world out there and terms like "attracting capital" are no longer dirty words.

If it was Mr Dosanjh’s wish to capture the middle of the roaders he gets an E- or maybe an outright F. For there wasn’t a word about attracting business to BC. Everyone knows that of the four competing jurisdictions – Washington, Oregon, Alberta and BC, BC is by far the least attractive because the cost of doing business is far higher here.

Quite apart from the message itself, one has to ask, why spend $70,000 at the minimum 6 weeks – more probably 8-10 weeks – before the election. He’s shot his wad and the battle lines haven’t been drawn yet. Moreover he’s given Mr Campbell all the time in the world to get his act together on his areas of vulnerability – privatizing BC Hydro and giving tax breaks to the rich at the expense of health care. It’s just plain stupid.

The sensible thing to have done would have been to keep using the cheap, indeed free method of communication through announcements to the press and appearances on open line shows. Then you go into the legislature, have a throne speech, table some legislation on water and other touchy-feely stuff, announce a budget with a surplus then use free air time to give an abbreviated version of last night’s extravaganza – which was far too long anyway – to announce the call of an election.

Mr Dosanjh swung at the first pitch – and even if you give him a base hit, it still leaves lots of time for Mr Campbell, whose bench is loaded with offensive power, to win the game.

Judging from what I hear and feel in my tummy, the public of BC is fed to the teeth with the NDP and whatever Mr Dosanjh says isn’t going to alter that.