July 6, 2000
BC politics, at the end of the session - THE COMMENTARY
By Joseph Planta
VANCOUVER -- Sometime today, the BC Legislature will wrap up its current session and recess until the fall. Unlike other Legislature’s in the country, the BC Leg has had the dubious distinction of being the only house that has no set sitting schedule. As autocratic as our current federal government is, they’ve managed to have a schedule that has them sitting in the fall, through a winter break and in the spring again. Our BC Legislature has been sitting in the Spring to hear the Speech from the Throne and the budget speech, they proceed to sit through the summer and do it all over again the following spring. Thanks to Premier Dosanjh, the house convened in the Spring of this year and now will break and meet again in the fall. That is, unless an election will be called.
This session started off with the sincere and hopeless hope of Dosanjh that the Legislature would be a calmer and less volatile house. His hope was pathetic as his party failed to endorse Jack Weisgerber to the Speaker’s chair. Weisgerber, in this session went on to endorse Tom Long’s candidacy for the Canadian Alliance and then almost-endorse Gordon Campbell and the Liberals. The independent member for Peace River South has gone on to be the most respected and well-versed member of the legislature. He evokes fear in the government side when he rises in Question Period. Had the NDP elected him to the Speaker’s chair, the House would probably have a deeper semblance of civility, at least the kind that the Premier was hoping for.
Weisgerber, a few weeks ago stood up at a Liberal fund-raiser and admitted that his role as leader of Reform BC in the last election, led to the vote splitting that elected the NDP in 1996. Had he the chance to do it all over again, he’d do it differently were his words and that could only mean he’s probably going to join the Liberals in the next election. He’ll be comfortable because a lot of his old Socred colleagues, namely Claude Richmond are running under the Liberal banner next time around. (Furthermore, lending great comedy in that the Liberal party isn’t that liberal after all.)
The government tabled another deficit budget and proved that their current harping on about balanced budget’s is merely faint hope. The economics of the province has proved to be too difficult for the NDP to comprehend and proof of that has been seen in their handling of that said area in the last 9 years. The NDP has stumbled generously on topics about the economy in this session and the Liberals have done a pretty good job at exposing those wounds.
What the Liberals have assumed in this session is a foreboding sense, that they’ll be elected to the government side the next election. On a recent episode of Vaughn Palmer’s Voice of the Province, the media panel (BCTV’s Keith Baldrey and the Province’s Mike Smyth) came to the conclusion that the top performers in the House were Liberal’s like Christy Clark, Gary Farrell-Collins and Mike De Jong. Notably absent was the leader himself, Gordon Campbell. Campbell’s performance in the house has been miserable at best. There’s no passion in his speeches and in his performance during Question Period. He’s going a different route than Clark, Farrell-Collins and De Jong, who are known for their loud voices and rabble rousing; Campbell has gone to be very diplomatic, almost acting Premierlike knowing a year from now he’ll be in that office.
If you think about it, it all hasn’t amounted to much, the session that is. Glen Clark tabled those Private Member’s Bills, causing consternation to the new Premier. Then there were those hair rasing moments when the government was nearly defeated in close vote situations. Other than that, BC politics is at its most difficult and miserable at best. It makes us angry and then it makes us bored and apathetic. Sometimes at the same time. The Full Monty, as it were.
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An archive of Joseph Planta's previous columns can be found by clicking HERE .