Rafe’s Revenge

My next-door neighbour Ray, whose transistor radio is constantly tuned to either golden oldies or talk shows, thinks he knows Rafe Mair. “That right-wing bastard,” he says, when Mair’s talk show comes up in conversation. Then for no reason Ray reminds me for the 42nd time that he himself has picked the winner of every election he’s witnessed since he learned to count.

Ray knows what he knows.

Down at Paul’s Place, an old-school lunch joint at the south foot of the Granville Bridge, Mair’s reputation prompts Rafe himself to mutter a mild expletive of his own. Whatever pretensions we have about ourselves, humans are still prone to tribal behavior, and B.C. politics is good evidence of that.

But go figure. Who does Rafe Mair name as his three greatest heroes in Rafe: A Memoir (Harbour Publishing) Wild salmon advocate Alexandra Morton, B.C. bear-hunting opponent Anthony Marr, and ant-whaling crusader Paul Watson. What’s more, Mair actually describes himself as a socialist in the book.

‘Hard line’ Liberals

Of course, even W.A.C. Bennett was, as Mair puts it, “mildly socialist” — he turned BC Electric into a public utility and created BC Ferries. This tribalism we’re susceptible to is getting complicated. “W.A.C. Bennett is now an NDP saint,” says Mair. Certainly Glen Clark’s bold (though bungled) effort to drive economic development with the fast ferries project owed at least a tip of the hat to the senior Bennett’s philosophy.

So what does Rafe Mair, right-wing socialist bastard, make of the current government? He thinks they’ve fallen prey to the rhetoric that the government that governs best governs least. “The Liberals really believe that if you take a billion dollars and give it to rich people it’s going to trickle down and help the poor. This government is a hard-line right-wing government.”

Mair argues that Gordon Campbell’s administration is a far cry from the Social Credit one he served in after Bill Bennett defeated the NDP in 1975. “The reality is that the government I served in interfered a lot in the marketplace with a lot of consumer legislation.”

Mair’s ministry of Consumer and Corporate Affairs imposed new regulations on banks, car dealers, and travel agents. Mair says one of his proudest achievements in government was creating a playing field that encouraged small, independent wineries — and not large, corporately owned ones — in part by waiving taxes on cottage winery products in B.C. liquor stores. Mair’s book makes it pretty clear that fans of B.C. wine today owe at toast to the former cabinet minister from Kamloops and his deputy Tex Enemark, and their understanding of the nuances of the “free” market.

‘Tired of left-wing, right-wing’

Mair, whose environmental crusades have become his trademark, also trumpets the role of Bill Bennett’s government in saving the Skagit Valley from flooding by a U.S. utility. He’s a longtime fly fisherman (who hate the taste of fish by the way) and conservation is another area where he feels the BC Liberals fall short.

However, Mair doesn’t see a significant change to B.C.’s political weather on the horizon. “The problem is the lock-step relationship between the NDP and whomever is on the right…. A lot of people are pretty tired of left-wing, right-wing, and they’re pretty tired of the philosophical debate in the province. That’s why nothing gets done.”

Of course, governments left and right do get some things done. Mair’s claimed some accomplishment for himself. And the Agricultural Land Reserve and public auto insurance are generally well-regarded legacies of the NDP government that Mair helped to defeat.

However, many British Columbians, despite our personal tribal tendencies, remain frustrated by our governments’ wild mood swings. We want them to be more sensitive to the range of public concerns, and we want legislatures that are more representative of public opinion.

Mair doesn’t see much hope of that without reform. “The legislature is the way it is because of the way the system works. It passes legislation that it’s told to pass by the people who are the boss.” he says.

“We need to change the structure of government,” Mair insists, arguing that majority governments don’t make room for diversity of opinion. “Almost the entire world gets along just fine without majority governments” Mair says Canada and Britain’s parliamentary systems are an exception in the world, and that even the current dominance of the Republicans in the U.S. Congress, the Senate and the White House is a historical anomaly.

Fingers crossed on electoral reform

The 73-year-old radio host, who says the creation of the Citizens’ Assembly on Electoral Reform resulted partly from the early advocacy of himself and Gordon Gibson, is still trying to make up his mind about the proposed single-transferable vote system recommended last month by the assembly. The system, which promises long ballots, “surplus votes,” and headache-inducing methods of vote tabulation, lacks the kind of clarity and simplicity that many voters prefer. And that worries Mair. “If it is not explained to the satisfaction of the public, it won’t fly.”

Still, he thinks the system would yield good results — strong, electable independent candidates, greater diversity of opinion, and governments that would be obliged to respect diverse interests.

“The people that prefer first-past-the-post are the solid interests, the solid socialists, the solid capitalists.” They are the folks who benefit from the devoted patronage of having their person in the premier’s office. “It’s not in their interest to have actually lobby the broad base of an entire legislature.”

Mair, a frequent fishing tourist in New Zealand, points to that country’s experience with proportional representation as a positive example. They thought it would be nirvana when they voted for it, he says, and three months later they hated it. “Now they all say: ‘The system is the shits — but we would never go back.’”

The Rafe Mair Show airs Monday to Friday at 8:30 a.m. on 600AM. Charles Campbell is a contributing editor to The Tyee.