Friday, May 18, 2001
Playoff hockey and Day’s days of Alliance acrimony - THE COMMENTARY
By Joseph Planta
VANCOUVER -- You’d have thunk with a score like 76-3, it’d be a Grizzlies game or something. So the election has come and pass. We’ve had a good day or so to digest the fact the entire province is Liberal. Not since the 1912, has the Legislature been so lopsided and not even W.A.C. Bennett or Bill Bennett for all their historical popularity could match that score. One would beg the question that with a win so sweeping and so decisive, that it would be slightly dangerous for our democracy. Perhaps. But let’s just ingest and see what happens. We’ve got four years with this bunch, so we’ve got plenty of time to dissect and rip apart.
Since I opened up with a bad sports joke, this sports thought. I am not a hockey fan. Never have and while not a watcher, I’ve come to respect, admire and recognise the enamour Canadians have with playoff hockey.
In the States their CRTC, the FCC, made it law that television networks airing sports should not cut their coverage should the game exceed their allotted time. For example if TV Guide says football is on from 5:00 to 8:00, and at 8:00 is something like the Regis Millionaire, don’t expect the Reege to hit the air, should the game not have finished. So, gridiron antics would continue unfettered until the last down irrespective of exceeding what TV Guide says.
It all can be a headache for those not watching sport and programmers alike, alas that’s the law. The same applies in Canada, unless you consider last Wednesday night. Seems that the hockey game on the main CBC network -- Colorado at St. Louis -- featured a see-saw battle that went into double overtime. So the zealous CBC wanting its news division on top (ha!) of the competition decide to cut away from the game to feature some silly election night coverage. I woke up Thursday morning with the blustery Neil Macrae bitching about the CBC’s ineptitude and how if they didn’t value hockey, they should cart their expensive rights over to SportsNet or TSN. Once again, I am in agreement with Neil. Don Taylor, CKNW’s Sports Grill host held the same sentiment after having the first hour of his show bumped off by NW’s coverage of the same said election.
In BC, politics is a blood sport. One forgets that BC’s still part of Canada and hockey is equally demanding on the attention spans of British Columbians. The CBC made a colossal error. I believe those very few that tuned into the CBC’s coverage of Gordon Campbell’s win, would not have been so upset had they stuck with the game. They easily could have gone to Newsworld, rather than the commercial competition. While not a hockey fan, I sympathise with the hockey viewing populous. CBC British Columbia has lost its mind thinking it had to be there for an election that wasn’t so nail biting. They’ve lost their mind too, if they think they’d scoop the giant BCTV is and the lowly VTV which both did admirable work.
I thought I’d spend the rest of this space talking about the comedy of errors in Ottawa. Stockwell Day has provided the pundits with much of their livings as of late. It’s too bad Air Farce and 22 Minutes are off till the fall.
Even though I voted for the NDP candidate in my riding on Wednesday (Ujjal Dosanjh), I am a card carrying member of the more conservative, Canadian Alliance. To digress with my much notified tale: I joined the Alliance seeing the excitement and momentum surrounding the unite-the-right movement, as it looked to provide the Liberals with a good run for their money. That Treasurer guy from Alberta, Stockwell Day (when?) looked interesting too. Some said he looked like the Pierre Trudeau of our time. How dumb and naive were we? In a nutshell that’s why I became a small-c conservative.
Stockwell Day shouldn’t resign. Those eight Alliance MP’s shouldn’t have left either. Well a good maybe on both points. What is most distressing is that the gulf between Day’s defiance and the renegade’s bitterness is impossible to reconcile. It’s impossible so says their party’s ideals and the system with which their party is a player. Jean Chrétien for all his faults, and he has a ton, has held an iron grip over his caucus. The salivation’s of Paul Martin on his leadership have been muted and it’s because historically our system demands it so. Parties must maintain “confidence” within our archaic and unworkable Canadian system of ‘responsible government.’
The Canadian Alliance was born from Reform, which was born as a movement that ran contrary to the way things were with the Tories and they way things are under the Liberals. While laughable amongst the Ottawa establishment, Reform won the hearts of “Westerners” because they weren’t the Liberals nor were they the Tories. The Alliance wants to play the game. It wants to be considered a serious party -- a party ready to govern. This unprecedented mess is the Reform Alliance working to reconcile those that brung them to those that hold the key to their desired future.
Stockwell Day is damaged goods. Whether it’s talk of Niagara Falls or dinosaurs, Day’s been tested (unfairly) in the electorate game and he’s come up losing. He’s loosing rather badly, don’t you think, with how his team is reacting? Alas, that’s the game of politics in our fair land. Our election was pretty boring, who’d have thunk we could find fun in Ottawa? Who’d have thunk, I used the word ‘thunk’ thrice in the preceding column?
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