Looking Back, Squinting Ahead

I know I'm a bit late. I was in London celebrating my birthday (my 39th Celsius). But this is still the season to take a bit of a look back, fortified with some prognostications.

First let me tell you a bit about Dec. 31, my birthday, which I spent at a lovely Italian restaurant in London with dear friends Geoff and Erin Chutter, she being one of my sidekicks on CBC Early Edition on Monday mornings. By talking excessively about sex and religion we managed to miss politics.

Having that birth date, I hate it when the year is a "9" going into a "0" as it just was. Led by a media that must have failed Grade One "number work," many people took 2009 as the end of the first decade of the 21st century, which it clearly is not. That will expire as Dec. 31, 2010 turns into Jan. 1, 2011. You can imagine what my year was like in 1999 when most of the world celebrated the millennium a year too soon.

Zero, standing alone, signifies no quantity at all and just as we don't start each month with January "0," etc., we start counting at day one of year "1." Somehow some people count years differently than they count bottles of single malt Scotch. However, if you can show me I'm wrong I will immediately send you "0" cases of your favourite tipple.

Political fortunes foretold

2009 was a terrible year for those who care for their environment and for public power, as the Campbell government won the May election which they will take as a mandate to continue destroying our rivers and the ecologies they support. They will take it as a mandate to continue forcing BC Hydro to pay independent power producers double what they can sell that power for. Hydro can't use this private power because at the time of year the produce it, the spring and summer months, Hydro has lots of power and full reservoirs.

The good news is that people all around the province are waking up to the fact that this power "plan" is hugely harmful, and are fighting back on all fronts, though it's a bit like locking the barn door after the horse has been stolen.

2010 will see the public getting angrier and angrier at Kim Il Campbell who will, in the Fall of 2010, bow out, saying it's time for new blood. After a short, decent interval, I think Campbell will move into a cushy six-figure salary in the energy field alongside his former colleague, Ralph Klein.

2009 saw the NDP butcher the election with the worst campaign I've seen in a lifetime of watching these things. Blame is placed on Carole James and leaders must assume responsibility for these things. The fault mostly lays with those in the campaign hot box who simply did not take advantage of the "power" issue. Indeed, from my observation, many of their candidates didn't understand the issue and used cutesy-poo slogans instead of arguments.

The NDP will move to dump James, but by the time any real decision is made they will have done nothing but divide the party on the basis of the "new" NDP -- led by James and supporters -- and the "old values" bunch which, like their British Labour Party counterparts, believe that it's better to lose on out-of-date philosophy than win with policies based on what's happening.

The result will either be an NDP led by a damaged leader (James) or by some derelict from campaigns past who will get full support from the union movement, which will give him/her the poisoned chalice of leadership. Then will come a certain electoral loss to a re-branded Liberal Party led by Mike DeJong who, as the barnyard droppings have hit the Liberal fan, has avoided the consequences.

The federal scene

Stephen Harper perfectly fits the wisdom of Mair's Axiom II, namely you don't have to be a 10 in politics, you can be a three if everyone else is a two. Harper is a three in a sea of twos. He will win an election next fall but will be denied a majority by British Columbia which will reject him and the Liberals and support Jack Layton -- if Layton takes the time to understand B.C.'s issues, especially the environment.

About the only interesting political watch will be the Liberal Party, which is privately urging Michael Ignatieff to go back to Harvard while publicly fearing a leadership blood bath to be won by Bob Rae.

The dreaded "C" word will be back for the first time since the 1992 Charlottetown Accord, which split the nation, leaving wounds still unhealed. The prime minister simply doesn't understand that an elected Senate, with the present make-up, would be disastrous. It would be disastrous for every province but Ontario and Quebec because it would give electoral approval to an upper house that is grossly skewed in favour of Central Canada.

Harper simply doesn't understand that if we're to change the way the Senate is constituted we must first construct a senate which gives regional balance to smaller (in terms of population) provinces against the unfairness of "rep by pop."

Bogged down in tar sands

The bigger problem will be Alberta and her tar sands. To Alberta (and to B.C. as well), provincial control over resources is an essential ingredient of the federalism which is Canada. The National Energy Program of the '70s will never go away and any attempt by Ottawa to gain control of the Tar Sands, either by taxation, power over exports or environmental moves will cause big trouble and seriously threaten national unity.

Finally on the federal scene, knickers from coast to coast are in a knot over Prime Minister Harper's proroguing of parliament. Wake up media and chattering classes! I've been on this issue for decades and now you finally notice that under our system the Prime Minister can do as he wishes when there is no procedure in the House of Commons to force a vote. If he has a majority even that won't stop him.

Please pay careful attention. MPs do exactly what they're told by the leader -- no ifs, ands or buts. Which raises this question: Suppose Harper had put this matter to a vote, does anyone really believe that Ignatieff or Layton would have forced an election? C'mon! They're brave as hell with shouts about Magna Carta etc. because they now have the "rum courage" that comes to politicians when they're out of danger of having to perform.

I will devote a column soon showing how MPs could be given the power and dignity they deserve with only one change in the Rules of the House of Commons.

We continue our fiscal policy of self-gratification and refuse to understand that the basic problems underlying the world's economy remain unsolved. Indeed those problems are aggravated by the fact that the mighty engines of corporate America and elsewhere) like the Bourbons, have learned nothing and forgotten nothing.

They remain awash in debt with the only difference being that their major creditor is the U.S. government. The United States still has staggering trade deficits, national deficits and national debt. To confuse a recovering stock market with a recovering economy is a fatal miscalculation, and like other methods of self-gratification brings (so I'm told, at any rate) intense pleasure followed by intense letdown. This is particularly so for British Columbia, whose incompetent government was completely fooled by the prosperity prior to 2008, grossly miscalculated its budget requirements and now must bear the hangover of the 2010 Winter Olympics.

I offer no advice. I'm in no position to do so. Neither are the stockbrokers, they are the only ones assured of a profit whenever you buy or are forced to sell. I can only tell you that our modest savings will remain in cash as we watch those naïve enough to think that anything has really changed, suffer the traditional fate of fools.

Oh, yes. A very Happy if not Prosperous New Year in this, the last year of the decade.