HOW ABOUT THE NEW SOCIAL CREDIT PARTY?
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VICTORIA -- Remember Scott Wallace, Victoria family doctor, one-time provincial Tory leader, a man who wouldn't tell a lie?
Scotty was also the man who, for a brief moment in B.C. history, held the fate of the Social Credit Party in his hands, could have destroyed it, but failed because his concept of truth wouldn't even let him conceal it.
What's that got to do with the price of tomatoes and the political scene in 1988? A whole lot, but I'll come to that in a moment.
First let me refresh your memory of those stormy days that followed the defeat of W.A.C. Bennett and his Social Credit Party.
Act 1: Only a small band of Socreds -- 11 to be precise -- had been returned to Victoria to form the official opposition. Also opposite the NDP government benches sat six Liberals and two Tories, Wallace and Hugh Curtis.
When the realization set in that the NDP had won the election with a margin of less than 39 per cent of the popular vote, there was a lot of talk about the need for merging the free-enterprise vote.
The most logical choice would have been the Socreds. After all, they had more seats than the two other opposition parties combined.
Unfortunately, the newly-elected leader of the Socreds was floundering. For most of the first 12 months, the NDP made minced meat of him in the legislature. He was unable to control his own people.
Into that vacuum stepped Wallace, quietly organizing meetings with Socred members, discussing the possibility of forming a united Free-enterprise party under the Tory banner. The strategy almost worked. Many of the sitting Socred MLAs, one Bob McLelland included, were ready to bolt the Socred Party and cross the floor to sit as Tories.
All this had, of course, been going on behind the scenes. There were no leaks of the impending coup, until the NDP's Graham Lea, then minister of highways, spilled the beans publicly in the legislature.
Faced with a flood of questions, Wallace said he would hold a press conference that day, which he did. Reaffirming his belief in telling the truth, Wallace told all. Yes, the meetings had taken place, the interest was there, and God knows what would happen now.
What happened was that the Socreds who had been plotting with Wallace suddenly got cold feet. No, they had no intention of becoming Tories. Another week or two would probably have been enough for Wallace to get all the pieces into place, but now the whole thing became unstuck.
The rest is history. Bill Bennett started cracking the whip, Hugh Curtis became a loyal Socred, so did the Liberals, and Wallace got out of politics.
Act Two: It's 1988. Government fortunes are down. The Socreds have just lost the byelection in Boundary-Similkameen. Many Socreds are blaming the defeat on Premier Vander Zalm's leadership. His cabinet and his backbench are restless. They fear a similar defeat in the next general election.
Cabinet ministers have made it abundantly clear that their leader must change his ways, but the premier has said he'd rather quit than change. The irresistible force is about to meet the immovable object, and everybody will be looking for a solution to the problem. Don't discount the possibility of a Scott Wallace solution.
Act Three: There are several people in the Socred cabinet who could organize a palace revolution. Grace McCarthy is the first one to come to mind. She is taking a very dim view of seeing the likely destruction of the party for whose 1975 rebirth she can take most of the credit.
At the same time other Socred members were ready to join Wallace under the Tory banner, Grace was touring the province, beating the drum for the Social Credit Party, signing up new members at a discount membership fee.
If Grace sounded the bugle right now, calling loyal Socred MLAs to rally around the party's old principles, my prediction is that Vander Zalm wouldn't be left with very many members.
Act Three is, of course, speculation at the moment. Although some Socred members are privately admitting that such a scenario cannot not to be ruled out, there are no indications that the revolution
is already happening. All I'm saying is that it could happen. The fruit is ripe for the picking, and a few people with ambitions to become head picker, are at least thinking about the possibilities.
Keep your eyes and ears open. The longer the premier refuses to listen to his own party, the greater the possibility of a revolt in his own ranks.
What would such a break-away party be called? How about the New Social Credit Party? Think about it. It has definite possibilities.
OF GOVERNMENT REPORTS AND MEDIA CYNICISM
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VICTORIA -- Had a call from an old friend the other day. Did I have time for a coffee? For Mike Hughes? Always.
It turned out that he wanted to talk to me about the media. News judgement, he said, seems to have gone all to hell. If it doesn't contain potential conflict, it doesn't seem to get covered.
No, Mike isn't a politician. He's an information officer in the provincial secretary's ministry. So what does a government flak know about news judgement? Well, Mike also happens to have an extensive background in journalism. He worked for Canadian Press for seven years and for a daily newspaper for about five years. His credential are impeccable.
The reason for Mike's disenchantment was the total lack of coverage of a report the Premier's Advisory Council for Persons with Disabilities. The report was tabled in the legislature on June 13.
Later that week, Provincial Secretary Elwood Veitch tabled legislation to establish a permanent advisory council for persons with disabilities.
Mike said the report contains recommendations that are of importance to disabled persons. The idea of establishing a council to deal with the plight of the disabled, he said, was born following Rick Hanson's historic feat of circling the globe in a wheelchair.
Try as he might, Mike couldn't find a word about the report in the major dailies. Television also didn't bother with it. He doesn't think that's right, and I agree. The report was and still is worth coverage, unless, of course, concern about the disabled is no more than lip service.
The report was put together by a steering committee which toured eight cities throughout the province. It received more than 300 oral and written submissions from disabled persons and organizations representing people with disabilities.
The steering committee was headed by Doug Mowat, Socred MLA for Vancouver-Little Mountain. Mowat, confined to wheelchair himself, is executive director of the Canadian Paraplegic Association and served as chairman of Rick Hanson's Man In Motion World Tour.
The other members were Christie Brown, co-ordinator for adult special education and human services with the ministry of advanced education; Paula Grant, director of rehabilitation and support services in the social services and housing ministry, and Mike Hughes.
So much for the committee. Here are some of the details of the report. You judge whether it was worth mention in the media. The goals of the council to be established under the act introduced last week are:
. Achieving greater economic independence for persons with disabilities. That is to include improvements in existing financial programs such as the Guaranteed Available Income for Need Act and employment incentives.
. Promoting better access to education and employment opportunities, housing, transportation, recreation and support services.
. Increasing public awareness of the abilities and potential of disabled persons.
. Launching education programs to foster greater understanding by the public of the nature of each particular disabling condition.
. Moving towards co-ordination of services to disabled persons provided by the community and the various levels of government.
You may say that sound very commendable, but will all these noble goals be achieved? Well, they certainly won't be, unless someone tries. More important, nothing will happen, unless the public gets behind such an endeavor. And how can the public support what it doesn't know about?
That's where news judgement comes in. While it's probably more interesting to write about the daily verbal carnage in the legislature, there are other things to cover. Mike thinks the report in question was one of them.
To reporters covering provincial affairs, the report probably looked too mundane, but to the disabled and their families, it is important.
"There are the big stories that certainly should be covered, but so should stories that are important to one or the other segment of society," Mike told me.
"Cynicism about government seems to overshadow everything the media report. If it isn't politically controversial, it isn't covered."
And just in case someone accuses Mike of having become a true bureaucrat and having forgotten what journalism is all about, I assure you he would have said the same thing before he started working for the government. He would have written something about the report.
THIS DEFEAT IS MORE THAN JUST A MESSAGE
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VICTORIA - If Premier Vander Zalm was under any illusion that the public is largely satisfied with his government, the Boundary-Similkameen byelection should set him straight.
The message couldn't have been louder and clearer: the public is not satisfied at all. The NDP victory was decisive. Bill Barlee whipped the pants off Socred candidate Russ Fox.
Most observers expected a close race. It was a reasonable expectation. Although the riding has been in existence in its present form only since 1956, the area had been a Socred bastion ever since W.A.C. Bennett exploded on the province's political scene in 1952, sweeping a tired and corrupt coalition government out of existence.
The NDP knew it would take considerable dissatisfaction with the Socred government to make voters in the area turn to them. The overwhelming victory indicates more than dissatisfaction it signifies disenchantment and resentment.
The premier blames the defeat on his strong moral views. That may be part of it, but it doesn't account for the magnitude of the rout. The public may resist the premier's attempts to impose his own moral views on them, but it took more, much more, for voters in that former Socred stronghold to support the NDP.
What defeated the government in that byelection was wide-spread resentment of some major cornerstones of Vander Zalm's administration.
The people of Boundary-Similkameen want nothing to do with uranium mining, for instance. Yet, the government lifted the moratorium on uranium exploration and mining and refuses to reinstate it. They remembered the premier's promise to listen to the people, a promise he broke.
The voters of Boundary-Similkameen are also skeptical of the free trade deal which will wipe out their grape growing industry. They remembered that Vander Zalm is one of the most ardent supporters of the deal.
The voters remembered that the government did nothing for the tree fruit growers who got a couple of cents a pound for their apples and saw them being sold for 69 cents at supermarkets.
But there was more to the defeat than local gripes. The defeat is also the first report card on the government's privatization of highways maintenance. People in the big cities probably don't care that much about the issue, but they do in the remote areas.
If W.A.C. Bennett left one legacy, it is the network of highways and bridges that spans the province. The elder Bennett turned British Columbia from a have-not backwater into one of the richest provinces by creating a first-class transportation system that gave access to the province's vast resources. By privatizing the maintenance of that system, Vander Zalm is chipping away at that legacy.
Alex Fraser's predictions are coming true. The former highways minister and MLA for the Cariboo has said the government could lose up to 15 seats in the next election as a result of privatizing highways maintenance.
The voters also remembered the increase in user fees for seniors. They didn't think the elderly, particularly those on a very limited income, should be used to eliminate the deficit which was, if not created, then certainly increased by ambitious mega projects such as the Coquihalla Highway.
The voters remembered the $8 million spent on what the government confidently continues calling decentralization. They knew the difference between decentralization and flim flam.
They remembered the creative budget exercise that resulted in the Budget Stabilization Fund, referred to by critics as the B.S. fund. They figured out that it makes no sense to borrow money to pay back your debts.
The general belief is that in a byelection people will often vote against the government candidate because they run no risk of defeating the government. The premier would be very ill-advised to attribute the defeat in Boundary-Similkameen to such sentiments.
The margin of the defeat was too big for that. The premier doesn't have much more than two years left before he must call a general election. He'll have one heck of a job to repair the damage in time.
If he wants to have any chance of winning the next election, the premier must start listening to people other than himself. His first order of business should be to find a number of good advisers, and having found them, listen to their advice.
Unless the premier dramatically changes his style of government, the province will go the way of Boundary-Similkameen. The clock is ticking. Time is running out for Premier Vander Zalm and the Socred government.
BRIAN SMITH SENDS SHOCKWAVES THROUGH GOVERNMENT
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VICTORIA -- The resignation of Brian Smith from his post of attorney general has shaken the Vander Zalm government to its very foundations, and the earthquake may not be over yet.
When Smith rose in the legislature last Tuesday to make a ministerial statement, nobody had an inkling of the drama that was about to unfold. Ten seconds into his speech, it began to sink in, and for the next few minutes you could have heard a pin drop.
Members on both sides of the House seemed stunned. The premier was visibly upset, fixing his stare at some spot on his desktop.
When Smith finished his statement, there was loud applause, but not only from the opposition benches. Several Socred cabinet ministers, including Grace McCarthy and Stan Hagen, joined in the desk-thumping.
They would later say they were applauding Smith's honor. The word honor featured greatly in Smith's resignation statement.
When he first entered municipal politics, his father told him a politician who doesn't have his integrity has nothing, he said.
"I am resigning as an act of honor," he said. "I am not a political renegade. I have loyally supported and campaigned across this province for the policies of this government."
Smith stated several reasons for his decision to resign. The main reason, he said, was his hope that this drastic step might protect "the unique independence" of the attorney general's ministry.
"This is an office of great sensitivity and neutrality in the administration of justice. I now find that I can no longer carry out my duties, as I clearly do not have the support of the premier and his office who do not appreciate the unique independence that is the cornerstone of the attorney general's responsibilities in a free parliamentary democracy," he told the House.
Smith said he has reason to believe that plans are already in place to weaken the independence of the ministry by reorganizing it into several departments with divided responsibilities, and bringing it under closer scrutiny of his office.
"Only by stepping down, only by speaking out now, can I hope to prevent a course which will weaken the independence and erode the tradition of the office of the attorney general."
Smith said the premier showed on several occasions his total lack of understanding why the attorney general must remain neutral and independent. One was when the chief justice handed down his decision on the abortion funding, the other during the Toigo affair. On both occasions, he failed to make his point regarding the attorney general's independence, Smith said.
The morning after Smith's dramatic departure from cabinet, it was Damage control time for the premier. Emerging from a caucus meeting, the first one Smith attended as a backbencher, the premier faced reporters at a press conference.
He couldn't see the point of honor over which Smith resigned, the premier said. The party was united, he said. Like all good things, his plans to reorganize government couldn't possibly "come easy," he said. In the end, the people will understand, he said.
Asked whether he was determined not to sway from his style of leadership, even if it destroys the Social Credit Party, the premier replied the party wouldn't be destroyed.
Meanwhile, other government members, including Carol Gran, maintained that there was no crisis, and even if there was, it had been brought on by the media.
As damage control goes, this one went badly. Neither the premier nor some of his supporters appeared to have realized just what Smith's resignation means. Smith was one of the coolest heads in cabinet. His political record was unblemished. His stature among
Canadian attorneys general was significantly above average. Next to Grace McCarthy, it was Smith whose resignation could do the most damage to a government that's been in disarray for some time.
The question now is, will others follow? A lot of people, including some Socred members, believe Smith won't be the only one. If that is so, the next logical candidate would be McCarthy. And she, in turn, could trigger a landslide of defections. That speculation is not based on rumors. It is based on numerous private conversations with Socreds, both sitting politicians and party officials.
There is great concern and anxiety among Socred supporters, who see their party drift towards oblivion, and the only one they can find to blame is the premier. Their choices to turn things around are limited. They can cut Vander Zalm lose or stick with him.
If they remain loyal to their leader, their only hope is to reign him in and force a different leadership style on the man. Should they fail in that effort, the Socred ship will be in great danger of sinking at the next election.
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