Campbell’s Liberals Are Fat Targets

The election formally begins and it looks like a slam dunk for the Liberals. Probably 50 seats plus. Much as Gordon Campbell and crew would like to take credit, the polls really show how bad the NDP are. There can be no doubt that many 2001 voters, in their minds, gave the NDP a double major and they expect it to be served in full. But consider the Government’s record:

Cutbacks unto cruelty in many social services.

The Doug Walls case. The man from Prince George who was to be put in charge of $600 million in taxpayer dollars from the Children and Families Ministry even though he was an undischarged bankrupt with a million dollars in fraud charges. Like Peter, Premier Campbell thrice denied any association with Walls even though he was a prominent Prince George Liberal and even though the Premier’s wife is cousin to Walls’ wife and even though Mr. Campbell had stayed with the Walls and had gone all the way to Prince George to lease a car from him.

The tubing of the Environment Ministry leading to proliferation of farmed Atlantic with the resulting demolition of Pink salmon runs, with the Pink salmon run in the Broughton Archipelago in November almost certainly a wipeout.

The failure to build long term care beds as promised by Campbell and two ministers on my show.

The Safe Streets Act which, by putting the poor in jail, takes us back to Dickensian days.

The adjourning of the Legislature, using closure to end debates on ministerial estimates (this it’s the single most important – perhaps the only important – function the Legislature has).

Busted contracts . . . the sale of BC Rail . . . turning wilderness areas into private lodges where overseas gunslingers can take pot shots at record Mountain Sheep . . . and the list goes on. When I was a politician, this would be the sort of record to attack I wouldn’t have imagined in my wildest reveries.

No time for tentative

Why, then, are the NDP sputtering to a distant second place standing?

Part of this is because the loss so demoralized the party that they are only beginning to get a soupcon of courage back. The election of Carole James was tentative and her leadership has reflected that tentativeness. It’s almost as if the NDP is running a campaign on half hearted promises combined with a letter of apology for past sins.

Let me remind you again of when the Socreds, in 1972, found themselves all but wiped out. Under the rules then, 135 hours in all were allowed to debate ministerial estimates, the process where all ministers are questioned on their proposed expenditures. Bill Bennett and the Socred opposition ran the time out, deliberately, so that when the Minister of Finance’s time came the Speaker simply approved each and every item. This was a contrived issue but Bennett, sniffing blood, went around the Province proclaiming the financial ineptitude of the NDP shouting “not a dime without debate!" It won him the next election.

Carole James simply couldn’t take advantage of Liberal high-handedness and they got away with it. In fact Ms. James spent the next month visiting the boonies. There’s no doubt that she has worked hard but she hasn’t learned that getting a standing ovation in Pouce Coupe gets no media coverage where she needs it.

I used it earlier and I think the operative word is tentative. Ms James, constantly reminded of the past, can’t put it behind her. Rather that putting forward a vision, she casts her eyes backwards saying “please forget the past and that which you can’t forget, please forgive.”

Lacking the politician’s instinct for the jugular, she has come across as a thoroughly decent, nice woman who, according to the Peter Principle, probably reached her level of incompetence once she left the Chair of the Victoria School Trustees to become leader of the New Democratic Party, BC version. The great baseball manager Lou Durocher is reputed to have said “nice guys finish last”. So it is for nice gals.

Rafe Mair can be heard weekdays on 600AM 8:30-10:30 and writes a weekly column for the Metro Valley Community papers. His website is www.rafeonline.com