End B.C.'s political gong show? Not likely.

By Gerry Warner
Cranbrook Daily Townsman
Nov. 19, 2010
A few days ago I sent an email to a friend saying the Liberal government of B.C. was disintegrating. Now I have to revise that email and say the Liberal government of B.C. is exploding. Or should that be spitting? Kind of hard to tell these days.
Whatever the case, we certainly have an extraordinary political situation in the province now.
I have followed B.C. politics for almost 40 years and I’ve seen times when there was one lame duck leader or one party going around like a wounded goose. But until now, I had never seen two lame duck leaders at the same time and two parties so out of touch with the body politic of this loopy province.
I returned from Spain just after the provincial election in 2009 and when I heard the results, I can’t say I was surprised. But when I found out the number of people that bothered to vote – 50 per cent – I did a double-take.
Only half the registered voters exercised their precious franchise, a right that has been gained at the cost of many lives and much spilled blood over hundreds of years. Obviously there was a message in that abysmal turnout in the 2009 election; the people of British Columbia didn’t want either party or either leader. Subsequent events have only confirmed my conviction.
So where does this leave us? In a fine kettle of fish as my dear aunt used to say.
Some things have got to be done and they’ve got to be done soon. If outgoing Premier Gordon Campbell could scrap the ridiculously complicated HST referendum voting formula by executive fiat and make it a 50 per cent plus one vote, he could go one step further and move the date of the referendum to next January to get this destructive and divisive issue out of our hair once and for all. Ironically, if he had done this a few weeks back, he might have saved his job, but I digress.
The important thing now for British Columbians regardless of party is we’ve got to know as soon as possible where our government stands on this rightfully or wrongfully vilified tax. Until that’s done, B.C. is going nowhere and it will matter not whether tweedle-dee or tweedle-dum is premier. Or which party has a majority.
This leads to Part 2 of the Save British Columbia Strategy, namely that both major parties in the province have got to sort out their leadership issues as soon as possible. Leadership reviews and convention dates are not set in stone and can be moved as deemed expedient. And expediency is the order of the day now as this province increasingly looks like the political laughing stock of Canada.
The Liberals will hold a leadership convention Feb. 26 to replace Premier Campbell and that should give enough time to hold the HST referendum first and remove that albatross from the new leader’s neck. It will also give the NDP plenty of time to sort out their leadership mess, which we don’t hear as much about now only because of the spectacle of the B.C. Liberals self-destructing before our very eyes.
But if the NDP are going to maintain any credibility at all they must resolve whether they’re going to stand behind Carole James or choose a new face. Otherwise they run the risk of looking as bad as the Liberals.

And there’s another little political cloud on the horizon too, namely the possibility of a third major political party in B.C. Chris Delaney and his merry band of B.C. First’ers are signing up prominent people all over the province to join the B.C. First cause and considering that Delaney and his buddy Bill Vander Zalm played a key role in bringing down the Campbell Liberals, this is a possibility not to be dismissed. And the B.C. Green Party is still out there with a sizable amount of support.
All of this, in fact, is a recipe for political chaos and disarray that won’t do any good for anyone in this province regardless of which party they support. And there’s something else too.
Talk of who’s spitting on whom, the Stockholm syndrome and who is a bully and who isn’t, is not going to solve our very serious political problems either. That’s the kind of politics that got us in this mess in the first place.
It’s time to move on.

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