The Written Word
for December 16, 2001

I hold, and hold strongly, the view that all propositions of consequence must be tested. And well tested.

This is not necessarily a popular view these days as the public – or a majority of it – consider any questioning of the Gordon Campbell government to be tantamount to embracing the late, unlamented NDP. But popularity of that view fades into insignificance to the difficulty one has in making critical judgments.

In the well run democracy – if that’s not as much an oxymoron as "military intelligence" – the propositions and policies of the government are tested by the opposition. Leaving aside for another day the obvious truth that the federal Liberals have so corrupted parliament that this can’t happen, let’s look at the Campbell government. It has but two opposition members. Two to handle about 20 major portfolios.

Doing a show like mine, in the past the testing of any government initiative was easy – one simply called the opposition critic, put him or her on the show, and the issue was joined. This was not laziness on our part – the opposition was funded and well funded to analyze government policy and that which they couldn’t analyze from their own efforts came by way of the ubiquitous brown envelope.

Now when there is any government policy to deal with, the opposition member can only answer with vague generalities or one-liners – simply because the NDP opposition MLA simply has neither the time nor the money to analyze policy in depth.

What this is going to mean – and has already started to mean – is that opposition will come from interest groups in areas affected. They always played a role in the past, to be sure, but as a back-up resource not a primary one.

Former NDP MLA David Schreck is now conducting a one man band with his website strategicthoughts.com. Indeed, his research is excellent and his points are the ones an opposition ought to be making. But he is just one man with the smarts, the time, and the experience to play this role. That is scarcely enough scrutiny.

Let me give you but one example of the problem. Ten days or so ago, the Attorney-General floated the notion that damage awards against the government ought to be limited by the government and that a citizen’s right to sue the government ought to be curtailed. This goes to the very root of our freedom. Under democratic philosophy you cannot have one party to a dispute – here the government – deciding what the damages ought to be. The right to sue the government was only recently obtained and ought not lightly to be cast aside. But where was the criticism?

Certainly not from the NDP. They have no lawyer in their caucus. It was left to editorialists like me to raise the obvious questions of citizens’ rights.

Before the next election the public will rue, I think, the day that they gace almost unanimous consent to the Provincial Liberals.

Our system doesn’t work especially well in the best of circumstances. It doesn’t work at all when there is no political opposition.