thecommentary.ca » Gordon Campbell

Premier Christy Clark’s new cabinet highlights changes from Campbell’s regime

Joseph Planta — Tue, 15 Mar 2011 19:59:01 +0000

Focus on families and job creation reflected in new lineup of committees

BY JOHN TWIGG

For TheCommentary.ca

Christy Clark won the B.C. Liberal Party leadership by promising major changes from the Gordon Campbell era and with her installation as Premier and simultaneous cabinet shuffle on Monday (March 14) she began delivering those changes in a variety of obvious and subtle ways.

The overall look and feel of Premier Clark’s new cabinet probably is a lot more popular, successful and even clever than her opponents expected or wanted because it involves a surprisingly deft balancing of old and new, of Liberals and Tories, of women and men, urban and rural and of other such traditional B.C. dichotomies, even of religion and ethnicities.

In fact the tone of the religious content in the swearing-in ceremony at Government House was a subtle but still quite interesting example of the changes insofar as it was a return to mainstream traditional Christianity after a series of sometimes lukewarm Christian and multicultural non-Christian themes in recent decades. The invocation that Clark apparently helped structure was respectful of other cultures but closed with what Very Rev. Peter Elliott of Vancouver’s Christ Church Cathedral described as a prayer from the Christian tradition attributed to St. Francis of Assisi which probably was reflective of Ms Clark’s own devout Anglicanism. (The prayer begins “Lord make us instruments of your peace . . . “)

Probably only a few observers would have noticed that subtle change, a revival of some personal religiosity of a traditional Christian variety, because few people attend or watch more than a few swearing-in ceremonies and so few can make such comparisons and fewer still pay much attention to the varying degrees of religiosity in them.

There were in fact many such signs of changes in Clark’s many personnel moves and restructuring of the Ministries and agencies but perhaps the most obvious – by design – was the sudden ouster of numerous people seen as Campbell loyalists, apologists and appointees and their replacement with new people who are generally younger, brighter, more moderate, more pleasant, more talented and more female.

The most notable ouster, after Campbell himself, was of Finance Minister and Deputy Premier Colin Hansen, who drops to the backbench and apparently takes the blame for having botched the introduction of the now-hated Harmonized Sales Tax, though interestingly he does retain a seat on Treasury Board, which will usefully give the Clark regime some corporate memory. Interestingly Hansen seemed to recognize and support the view that he needed to leave in order to help sell Clark’s claims of bringing in major changes, in order to help her and the Liberals try to win the next election.

Also notable was the apparent firing of Martyn Brown as deputy minister of Tourism, where Campbell had tried to transplant him after he served more than 10 years as Campbell’s political deputy and chief of staff, where he became somewhat widely reviled as a control freak (as revealed in the Basi-Virk trial evidence). That similarly was the fate of Lesley du Toit as deputy minister of the troubled Ministry of Children and Families, and the earlier departures of lawyer Allan Seckel as deputy minister to the Premier, Ron Norman as head of the Public Affairs Bureau and Graham Whitmarsh as deputy minister of Finance, along with numerous other staff changes in the Premier’s Office and around the government. The new Chief of Staff, for example, is Mike McDonald, a long-time political organizer and associate of Clark’s who under Campbell had been somewhat edged out, and the new Press Secretary will be Chris Olsen, a widely-respected journalist who for several years has been the consumer affairs specialist for CTV News in Vancouver.

But nonetheless Clark was still careful to build a cabinet that keeps social and fiscal conservatives at the helms of key ministries and committees so as to not provoke the federal Conservatives into entering provincial politics against her in the next election, which is due in May 2013 but which could happen sooner under a number of pretexts and evolutions of events, such as Clark feeling she must deal with her present lack of a seat in the Legislature. (She had been planning to run in Point Grey when it is vacated by Campbell but recent polls may suggest that it could be winnable for the NDP and thus too risky for Clark.)

The most important new appointment by far is Kevin Falcon as Minister of Finance and Deputy Premier, where his first priority will be to try to win the province-wide referendum on the HST now scheduled for Sept. 24, though events and negotiations might cause it to be held sooner, with Clark favoring a date in June. Falcon, a small-c and fiscal conservative, only narrowly lost the contorted leadership contest to Clark in a three-ballot gerrymandered showdown but rather than be petulant he apparently has chosen to be a constructive part of what is obviously a coalition designed for one over-arching purpose: stop the New Democratic Party from ever again winning a provincial election in B.C.

Falcon served with distinction under Campbell, handling deregulation, transportation, megaprojects and finally Health but he somewhat broke ranks over the HST, notably being critical of its terrible implementation process and advocating that its PST portion be lowered from 7% to 5%. He is argumentative to a fault and so should be well able to field questions in the Legislature for the government in the event that Clark serves a somewhat extended period without a seat (which is unusual but legal).

Perhaps the most important change will prove to be what Clark is trying to sell as a new way of governing, one that she claims will be more open, consultative and collegial, which is reflected in the increased number and variety of cabinet committees with backbench MLAs on them, and in a proliferation of newly-targetted Parliamentary Secretaries. (A 52-page package of such details can be downloaded from www.gov.bc.ca or directly at here.

“Under my leadership every [Liberal] MLA will make significant contributions . . . real meaningful contributions,” Clark told a media scrum, trying somewhat to assuage the hurt feelings and reduced incomes of some nine MLAs who were demoted from Campbell’s upper ranks as well as of some talented backbenchers who were notably passed over, such as leadership candidate Dr. Moira Stilwell, who finished a distant fifth despite having emerged as a bright creative thinker.

Clark defended the symbolic and practical merits of having slashed the size of cabinet from 24 to 18, such as her wanting to appear more frugal than the previous (bloated) regime, but still the new cabinet also appears to have become more focussed on her top policy priorities: putting families first and helping to create more jobs to support them.

“Together, we will focus on creating jobs and building a strong economy because that is the single most important thing we can do to support families and ensure we can invest in critical services like health and education,” she said in the government’s main news release.

Clark moved to accomplish that feat by merging several functions into the new Ministry of Jobs, Tourism and Innovation to be headed by former forests minister Pat Bell of Prince George and be focussed on job creation, and adding three new cabinet committees: the Committee on Families First (to be chaired by new Minister of Children and Family Development Mary McNeil), the Committee on Jobs and Economic Growth (chaired by Bell but including numerous strong ministers and MLAs), and the Committee on Open Government and Engagement (chaired by Labour, Citizens’ Services and Open Government Minister Stephanie Cadieux).

Another notable move was to keep the Ministry of Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations and its minister, Kelowna-based Steve Thomson, but to partially roll back Campbell’s massive and arguably over-reaching reorganization of the so-called “dirt” ministries by returning the oversight of working mines to the venerable Ministry of Energy and Mines, now headed by long-serving Rich Coleman, who gives up Public Safety and Solicitor-General and loses the troubled gaming industry oversight role but keeps his Housing shtick.

That may seem like a demotion for the tough ex-cop but in fact he emerges as arguably the most powerful minister in Victoria because he also becomes Government House Leader and vice-chair (beneath Clark) of the powerful Priorities and Planning Committee, vice-chair (beneath Penner) of the integral Legislative Review Committee (which clears all of the Bills before they are introduced in the House) and a member of both the Committee on Jobs and Economic Growth and Environment and Land Use Committee (ELUC).

The general retention of Natural Resource Operations is also one of the most important moves because it means that the Clark government will try to make workable the streamlining of resource-project approvals intended somewhat clumsily and too secretively by Campbell but perhaps it will henceforth be done in a more transparent and consultative manner.

A good test case will be Taseko’s proposed Prosperity Mine in the Cariboo, which the Province under Campbell approved but which the federal Conservatives nixed because it would have destroyed a fish-bearing lake important to local natives, to which Clark during the campaign expressed some outrage; since then Taseko has revised its development plan in a way that would save the lake, ostensibly because higher commodity prices now enable a more expensive plan, but it appears the Campbell approach was too lenient towards such industrial development impacts and now one wonders what Clark will really change, if anything.

Also notable was the appointment of Blair Lekstrom as Minister of Transportation and Infrastructure, which is not only a major post but also marks the popular Lekstrom’s return to the fold after resigning as Campbell’s Minister of Energy in protest of the way the HST was imposed. That’s significant because if Lekstrom had wanted to do he could have easily fractured the coalition by becoming leader of a new political party and splitting the anti-NDP votes.

The appointment of backbencher Harry Bloy as Minister of Social Development and Minister responsible for multiculturalism is notable because Bloy was literally the only MLA who supported Clark’s leadership bid and now he will be responsible for maintaining good relations with some of the ethnic groups that helped her, especially Indo-Canadians and other Asians.

A big surprise was the appointment of Mike de Jong as Minister of Health, which is a big departure for the lawyer and former Attorney-General who finished a somewhat distant fourth in the leadership contest. Meanwhile Clark chose to retain Barry Penner as Attorney General, who only got the job when de Jong resigned to enter the leadership contest. Penner, a lawyer, was for a time Minister of Environment but not necessarily a fan of Campbell; like Falcon he has a family with a relatively young child.

The newcomers include Don McRae of Comox as Minister of Agriculture and veterinarian Terry Lake of Kamloops as Minister of Environment – both of whom are in the midst of fighting against formal recall campaigns.

The most powerful and senior woman is Shirley Bond of Prince George as Minister of Public Safety and Solicitor General but two or three other women could gain profile by doing well in tough new assignments, such as Naomi Yamamoto in Advanced Education and Mary Polak in Aboriginal Relations and Reconciliation.

Finally, leadership hopeful George Abbott, who finished a roughed-up third in the leadership after being critical of both Campbell and Clark, nonetheless got rewarded with a return to Minister of Education where before the leadership he had been developing improved relations with school trustees and the B.C. Teachers Federation in the run-up to a difficult new round of collective bargaining. Clearly Clark is hoping he will be able to deliver a peaceful settlement so the government can focus on other challenges.

While she didn’t play up the women in power angle, Clark was obviously proud of including seven women, which is a proportional increase from Campbell’s cabinets though only roughly the same proportion as in the Mike Harcourt NDP regime of 1991.

Several early news reports focussed on the apparently increased role for women, especially with Clark being only the second female Premier in B.C. history but also because other women were also given some senior portfolios, and that was portrayed and generally seen to have been based more on merit and talent than on gender quotas.

That’s notable because during the leadership campaign polls revealed that Clark would do better than anyone else at pulling some female votes away from the NDP and thereby giving her the best chance of defeating the NDP in the next election.

The NDP’s interim leader, Dawn Black, responded to the new lineup by astutely urging Clark to quickly act on behalf of families by moving to limit the sharp fee increases pending against families in Medical Services Plan premiums, B.C. Ferries fares and B.C. Hydro rates, which also reflects the reality that while Clark may have developed some momentum she still must make some substantive deliveries if she is to have much hope of winning the next election.

And it shouldn’t be overlooked that there were still a few questionable appointments in Clark’s new lineup too, with trouble-plagued former minister John Les of Chilliwack now installed as Parliamentary Secretary to the Premier, and even more troubled former minister Kash Heed of Vancouver appointed a member of the Environment and Land Use Committee even though he could be facing criminal charges over Election rules infractions.

Still, Clark has accomplished quite a turnaround from only six months ago when Campbell had an opinion poll approval rating of only 12 per cent, lower than any other Canadian Premier and even lower than George Bush and Richard Nixon at their nadirs. More recently the Liberals’ support had jumped back up to 41 per cent while the New Democrats, facing their own leadership problems, had fallen to 38 per cent.

A lot remains to be seen before the next election, including the NDP leadership vote on April 17 and pending leadership selections for the B.C. Conservative Party and the B.C. First Party, but you have to give the 45-year-old Christy Clark, a single mother with a nine-year-old son, a lot of credit for bringing her party back so quickly from its brink of destruction.

For those who may be interested, this is an internet version of the prayer read at Clark’s swearing-in ceremony:

St. Francis of Assisi Wedding Prayer
Lord, make us instruments of your peace
Where there is hatred, let us sow love
Where there is injury, let us bring the spirit of forgiveness
Where there is discord, let us bring harmony
Where there is doubt, let us bring faith
Where there is despair, let us bring hope
Where there is darkness, let us bring light
Where there is sadness, let us bring joy
For it is in giving that we receive
It is in forgiving that we are forgiven
It is in dying that we are born to eternal life.

Based on the Prayer of St. Francis of Assisi

John Twigg (www.johntwigg.com) is an independent journalist, former press secretary to premier Dave Barrett and former interim leader of the BC Refederation Party.

Christy Clark faces a daunting task as Premier-designate of BC

Joseph Planta — Tue, 01 Mar 2011 05:00:00 +0000

Urgent problems are many but main mid-term challenge is keeping the Liberals’ anti-NDP coalition together

By JOHN TWIGG

Special for TheCommentary.ca

It’s apparent from examining the entrails of Premier-designate Christy Clark’s narrow win of the B.C. Liberal Party leadership contest that she won because she became seen as the one most likely to be able to defeat the New Democratic Party opponents in the next provincial election, but there is no guarantee she will be able to do so.

Though the most recent opinion poll shortly before the vote on Saturday (Feb. 26) showed the Liberals with a 41 to 38 per cent lead over the NDP, the first such lead for the Liberals in about two years, Ms. Clark, a 45-year-old single mother, faces a daunting task in the weeks and months or perhaps years ahead before the next scheduled general election in 2013.

In fact the panorama of B.C. politics and policies is now a minefield of explosive controversies for Clark, and a maze of complexities, a morasse of conflicts, a jumble of conundrums and a lot of just plain cons – so much so that it will be some kind of a miracle if she manages to hang on to power, finish the Liberals’ third full term and then win an election against an array of opposing parties who are in the process of choosing stronger new leaders and mounting more populist platforms.

Clark is a lifelong political activist who entered politics as a young Opposition MLA and then a senior cabinet minister in Liberal Premier Gordon Campbell’s first government but she left in 2005 for a combination of reasons including family matters and unhappiness in the challenging Children and Families portfolio, made a failed bid for the mayorship of Vancouver but finally found success for four years as a talk show host on CKNW and then was wooed into the leadership contest after Campbell was forced to resign late last year. He is still nominally the Premier but will be resigning soon.

Clark’s win was all the more surprising because she had the support of no cabinet ministers and only one MLA, little-known Harry Bloy, but she did it with the support of a strong organization that featured campaign manager Mike McDonald, ex TV news anchor Pamela Martin, backroom eminence Patrick Kinsella, a long list of former Liberal MLAs and a team of local activists who combined to raise more than $500,000 for her.

The key factor that put her over the top probably was the finding in at least two opinion polls that she had a much better chance than her three male rivals of beating the NDP in the next provincial election, especially one poll showing she would pull more than a few women voters away from the NDP. But she also had a strong strategic campaign that helped her win the most support in almost every riding, albeit it narrowly, but especially so widely in ridings held by the NDP.

Many urgent issues

The many urgent issues Clark is facing probably were outlined in the briefing books delivered to her at 7 a.m. on Sunday morning and include such items (among probably hundreds of hot potatoes left by Campbell) as what to do about the hated Harmonized Sales Tax, the threatened Hydro and Ferries rate hikes, rising Medical Services premiums, the PavCorp stadium completion, several pressing Transit issues (Evergreen, Pattulo, Fraser Valley), the need to rescue the crumbling St. Paul’s Hospital, the stalled B.C. Treaty Process, the carbon tax and carbon trading questions, troubling child death reviews, understaffing in the courts and overcrowding in prisons, the revised Taseko Prosperity mine proposal, the wavering Therapeutic Initiative (regarding generic drugs), the contract renewal with the RCMP, the federal takeover of securities jurisdiction and more (e.g. what to do with the white-elephant German-made fat ferries now in only limited use due to fuel-guzzling). Not to mention tweaking the budget, recalling the Legislature, calling and winning a byelection in Campbell’s soon-to-be-vacated riding of Point Grey, meetings with about 50 MLAs, structuring a new cabinet, hiring a bunch of new staffers and – oh, yes: fulfilling her many and relatively-detailed campaign promises still viewable on her campaign website [grab copies before they're gone!!].

Could Christy copy Campbell and do a dramatic first-day symbolic “change” by fulfilling her promises to implement a set of new tax credits or rebates for lower-income families? Maybe she will, perhaps starting with the likely cabinet meeting on Wednesday. And/or maybe she will instantly restore all of the gaming grants cruelly cut by Campbell in the cause of reducing the apparent size of B.C.’s embarrassing overspending and budget deficits in and around the 2010 Olympics (along with many many other small cuts, such as slashing the SPCA’s budget for investigations, which was a contributing factor in the recent mass murder of about 100 sled dogs in the Whistler area, for example, not to mention the about equal number of avoidable deaths to humans from inadequate supports for street people, inadequate staffing in social services, over-crowding in hospitals and more than a few police-involved deaths of citizens).

In other words, like it or not, those misguided budget decisions have left Campbell with blood on his hands. The mainstream media may refrain from saying that but there is ample evidence that figuratively and politically that is the truth. (For example Campbell at first commiserated with the police who killed Robert Dziekanski at Vancouver’s airport, and he was among the voices denying there was a serial killer loose on Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside when he was chairman of the Vancouver Police Commission.)

And it wasn’t as if the Province couldn’t get the money needed to maintain basic and essential services – it has maintained one of the best credit ratings and lowest debt-servicing ratios on the continent even during NDP regimes, as well as owning a wealth of resources and other assets, but Campbell’s vanity and hypocrisy led him to decide it was better to lose a few people and animals and other public assets than to run up an embarrassing deficit at a bad moment in the pre-election process. So he grossly fudged the 2009 pre-election budget and right afterwards brought in the HST to try to hide his horror show – but it failed. And now it is Clark’s job to demonstrate that “change” – real change, has come, perhaps starting with the HST.

Challenge is holding the coalition together

But her even bigger challenge is over the mid-term: how to hold together her party’s anti-NDP coalition – which will be affected by whomever the New Democrats choose for leader on April 17 but probably even moreso by what the nascent B.C. First Party does following its founding annual meeting April 9 in Kamloops and then the renascent B.C. Conservative Party general meeting and leadership selection in May.

Shortly before the Liberals’ leadership vote Clark’s opponents released some opinion polls warning that Clark could endanger the anti-NDP coalition by being too much of a federal Liberal and thereby alienating the many federal Tory elements now in the “Campbell coalition” to the point that some might drift over to the Tories, and some of the Old Boys reminded voters that the only time the NDP has been able to win elections in B.C. was when the right-wing vote was fractured (as it was in 1972, 1991, 1996). It doesn’t take a lot, as little as 10 per cent, but it can make a big difference.

That was seen in fact in the 2009 election result too, when only about 3,500 votes delivered to the NDP in about 10 close ridings would have resulted in an NDP regime under Carole James, but as it was the NDP vote was fractured by an active effort by the B.C. Green Party, the NDP’s turnout was weakened by its gender-quotas policy and the Liberals’ coalition wasn’t threatened by a Conservative rump that was more of a rural regional redneck horse’s ass than a real populist movement.

But next time? Maybe the B.C. Conservatives will choose serious qualified leaders this time, perhaps also depending on what transpires in the federal election expected some time in May, but meanwhile Clark was demonstrably cheered-up on Saturday night when she told the media that Prime Minister Stephen Harper had just called her and wished her well, to which she assured the media that the B.C. government under her leadership would be working hard to maintain a close relationship with its “friendly government in Ottawa” – and rightly so, especially given that the Harper Tories have poured billions of dollars into B.C. in recent years in the form of stimulus projects and worthwhile new infrastructure to counter the global recession, and that Harper could kill off her coalition with a mere word to a handful of his B.C. operatives.

In any case the B.C. First Party probably will choose earnest Chris Delaney as leader – who was instrumental in collecting more than 700,000 signatures against the HST and so should not be under-estimated even though the main pollsters and much of the mainstream media continue to pretend he and they don’t exist. However the impact of BC First also could cut both ways because Delaney’s policy pronouncements are often decidedly populist and even progressive and sometimes he’s an even better critic of the Liberals’ record than the NDP have been, e.g. regarding ferry fiascoes.

A key factor in the next election thus will also and again be voter turnout, which has been trending downwards and now is around only 50 per cent. In fact the main reason the NDP lost the last election was not the success of Campbell’s lies about the province’s finances but the NDP’s own failure to craft a platform with broad-enough popular appeal to attract a better turnout and its even more glaring failure to pillory Campbell for his many blatant failures and scandals and so energize more people to turn out to vote against him.

Though many people, especially women, inside the NDP were and still are sold on the notion of “doing politics differently” – which is politically-correct code speak for not being critical of the opponents even when they deserve it – the history of politics in B.C. (as often elsewhere) demonstrates that many many people vote against some things moreso than for them, and if anyone wants clear proof of that just look at what happened to Gordon Campbell! The backlash was so strong that he was ousted in a manner not unlike Hosni Mubarak and other such despots, only thankfully here in B.C. we still do it with ballots, not bullets.

[I have to struggle to find kind things to say about Campbell now, given his atrocious despicable record of selling out the province, misleading the people and ruining lives, earning an approval rating that went below even Nixon's and Bush's, but I will give him this: at least he had the decency to realize the gig was up and it was best to leave as quickly and quietly as possible, which makes him a little better than say Libya's Gadhafi.]

In such a milieu why would Clark take on such a daunting challenge? Well partly it’s because partisan politics really is in her family’s blood, as in Big Red Liberal blood. And partly because it is a sweet job to have even if only for a short while, even better than being a talk-show host on powerful CKNW. But there’s also perhaps a dark side: it’s in her own interests and in the interests of some of her key supporters such as political strategist and lobbyist Patrick Kinsella and some of her own family and friends to keep a lid on a number of scandals, most notably the questionable giveaway/sale of BC Rail and the subsequent long-delayed trial and farcical guilty pleas of David Basi and Bob Virk – an inquiry into all of which has been loudly called for by numerous interests but which under Clark’s leadership is highly unlikely to happen.

As the NDP asked in the Legislature, was Kinsella really billing both sides at once? And if so, why? But under Christy Clark we’ll probably never know. However we do know from her public disclosure that his firm Progressive Strategies donated $20,000 to her campaign, and he attended some of her events and so probably coached her a bit too.

In other words, Patrick Kinsella, who has been a fixture in and behind the anti-NDP coalition since 1975, has found a new horse to ride.

Welcome to the real world, Christy, and for the sake of the Province, best wishes too. You may need them.

John Twigg (www.johntwigg.com) is an independent journalist, former press secretary to premier Dave Barrett and former interim leader of the BC Refederation Party.

Michael Klassen

Joseph Planta — Fri, 17 Dec 2010 21:20:42 +0000

CityCaucus.com editor and 24 Hours columnist Michael Klassen discusses the BC Liberal leadership race and other provincial political news, as well as the work of Vivian Krause, and other political news, with Joseph Planta.