BC Politics with Hubert Beyer

BLENCOE AND I GO BACK A LONG WAY

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VICTORIA – Some 27 years ago, I covered the city hall beat for the Victoria Daily Colonist, that great little paper founded by Amor De Cosmos, long since swallowed by the Thomson chain, its former spunk all but killed.

It was the time campus unrest, NIP and LIP grants, designed by Pierre Elliot Trudeau to keep a generation of rebellious youth occupied with numerous projects.

One such project in Victoria involved the sale of several old houses by the provincial government to a group of young people for a dollar a piece. The houses were moved to a new location, also owned by the province, where the kids were to turn them into duplexes for sale on the open market.

The project kept the young people out of trouble, I’ll say that much, although the finished product left a lot to be desired and turned out to be more expensive that comparable duplexes built commercially.

One of the young people involved with the group, the Fernwood Neighborhood Association, or something like that, was a chap named Robin Blencoe, a neighborhood activist in every sense of the word.

I remember Robin cornering me at a city council meeting, after I had written a less than complimentary column on the group’s duplex project.

"You Hubert Beyer?" he said glaring at me. "Yep," I replied. "Your name is not very popular in Fernwood," Robin said." I told him that if I ever entered a popularity contest, he’d be the first to know.

And from that first rather acrimonious meeting, a friendship sprang that has lasted to this day. Sadly, Robin doesn’t seem to have a lot of friends these days, whereas enemies abound.

You see, Robin went on to become a Victoria alderman, where he acquitted himself very well, concentrating his efforts on the delivery of affordable housing. Eventually, he ran for and won a Victoria seat in the legislature for the NDP.

During the Mike Harcourt administration, he became minister of municipal affairs. Robin’s political future seemed bright. A lovely wife and three children occupied his personal life.

And then the roof caved in. There were rumors of sexual improprieties. No official charges, not day in court, just rumors. And whereas once, the media would have taken a hands-off position until someone actually laid charges in a court of law, they went full-steam ahead, and damn the torpedoes.

The Times-Colonist, for which I’m happy to say, I no longer work, ran a story on Easter Sunday two years ago in which an unidentified woman gave a graphic description of alleged sexual advances Robin had made. It was one of the most disgusting pieced of so-called journalism I have ever had the misfortune to read.

Robin was confronted by then premier Harcourt and denied the allegations. Harcourt first said he believed him, but when further allegations surfaced – again the accuser didn’t lay charges – he fired Robin.

His political career in ruins, his personal life a living hell, Robin faded from the public scene – until last week.

Robin and his family had moved to a small town near Windsor, Ont., where he had landed a part-time job for the chamber of commerce. Somehow, the media found out who he was and a new round of hounding him and his family began – this time in Ontario and back here in British Columbia.

I don’t know whether Robin can hang on to his job. I guess that depends on just how much the chamber is willing to take in the interest of fairness.

Do I believe all the accusations against Robin? As a strong believer in our judicial system, in which someone is innocent until proven guilty in a court of law, I do not. As a friend, it doesn’t matter. I would stand by him anyway.

ARE LABOR CODE CHANGES REALLY NECESSARY?

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VICTORIA -- I am and always have been a supporter of trade unionism. It was trade unions that brought a measure of justice to working people.

When I left the daily newspaper business to set myself up as an independent columnist, I had served as president of the Victoria Newspaper Guild for a year, which gave me a valuable introduction to how mean, oppressive and petty management -- in this case under the directive of its masters in eastern Canada – can be.

In one particularly odious case, Victoria Times-Colonist management rejected an offer by B.C. Medical to expand coverage of medication at no cost to the company. That change would have benefited one of my colleagues who paid about $600 a month for medication for his child, medication that wasn’t covered by the plan.

The company nixed the idea on grounds that it would jeopardize its bargaining position when contract negotiations started more than a year down the road. It was a disgusting display of insensitivity and meanness.

I am convinced that even today, many employers would quickly revert to shameless exploitation of workers, were it not for unions. And by default, even those workers who are not organized or, for reasons of their own, reject being unionized, benefit from the leadership role trade unions take in establishing wage levels and working conditions.

Having said all that, I would like to stress that some of the changes, not all, to the labor code the NDP is introducing, are neither necessary nor productive.

I am all in favor of making it easier for employees to be certified and thus organized under the umbrella of a union. I am also in favor of making it impossible for companies to bully and blackmail their employees into decertification or abandoning a certification process.

On the other hand, the secret ballot for certification should never have been abolished. A simple show of hands is intimidating, not to mention undemocratic.

I am also not in favor of sectoral bargaining in which workers in a certain business group, say hotels and restaurants, negotiate a province-wide contract, one of the proposed changes.

Conditions are too disparate in a province the size of British Columbia. Costs to employers are vastly higher in some parts, the cost of living much lower in others. Employers and employees must be free to negotiate contracts that reflect the realities of the area.

Needless the say that business manned the barricades long before the government was ready to announce the changes it plans to make to the labor code. My fax machine and e-mail program worked overtime to log all the protests coming in from employer groups. Also needless to say they went overboard in their chicken-little reaction, shouting the sky is falling.

"Our province should be booming, but the government seems to be bent on legislating, regulating, taxing and spending its way into a made-in-B.C. recession," said Suromitra Sanatani, chairman of the Coalition of B.C. Business.

The changes to the labor code, Sanatani said, are bad news for the entire B.C. economy. Government is imposing a big-union straight jacket on an industry made up primarily of small and medium-sized businesses.

Pardon me if I take that with a grain of salt. The coalition’s response is very reminiscent of the hue and cry that goes up every time the government raises the minimum wage.

Way back, when the minimum wage went from 65 cents to 85 or 90 cents, business predicted the demise of the economy. The same when Terry Seggarty, a Socred labor minister of long ago, raised the minimum wage to $5.

Restaurants said they would go broke. Hotels said they would be empty. Terry, God bless him, said the industry was talking through a cocked hat and went ahead with the increase.

I am more inclined to buy the argument of B.C. Business Council chief Jerry Lampert, who said if it works, don’t fix it.

British Columbia, Lampert said, has had labor peace in the construction industry for a decade. Why, he asked, tamper with that record by brining in changes that aren’t absolutely necessary for anyone’s benefit.

JOBS ACCORD A REMARKABLE ACHIEVEMENT

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VICTORIA – What, my more than comfortable businessman friend asked me, did I think of Premier Glen Clark’s Jobs and Timber Accord? I said I liked it.

Wouldn’t it be far better if government stopped meddling in the economy, got out of the way and let business look after things? I said no, explaining as gently as I could, without hurting his sensitive capitalist feelings, that he had better get one thing straight: close to 95 per cent of the trees in this province belong not to the multinational forest companies, but to me, him and every other British Columbian.

I also explained, again very gently, that the forest industry had done a bloody lousy job in the past of making sure that future generations would have enough trees left to cut. In fairness, I added that 100 or even 20 years ago, we didn’t know what we know today, and that the industry, by and large, has been willing to change its ways.

The Jobs and Timber Accord is a remarkable achievement. It is Clark’s first successful attempt to make his mark. If successful, and I believe it will be, the accord will make up for his administration’s budget bungling.

The accord is to create almost 40,000 forest industry jobs over the next four years. The $1.5 billion seed money for the program will come from Forest Renewal B.C. funds which, in turn, come from the industry itself.

The nearly 40,000 jobs – 22,400 direct and 17.400 indirect – are to be created by intensified tree cutting, where possible, more forest restoration, stepped-up silviculture, and requiring existing employees to work shorter weeks, without overtime. To make sure nobody loses out, the government will provide $20 million a year to top up workers’ paycheques.

The accord also involves a boost to secondary industry. Manufacturers of things such as furniture, doors and windows will get up to 18 per cent of the province’s sawed lumber. That alone is expected to create more than 6,500 new jobs.

To ensure that the industry plays ball, there’s a built-in stick-and-carrot provision. Companies that live up to the spirit of the accord and create more jobs will get preferential access to timber. Those who don’t could see their cutting rights curtailed.

The idea to tie timber access to job creation came out if a simple statistic, according to which every other North American jurisdiction records more jobs than British Columbia per cubic-metre of timber cut.

The reasons are many-fold, including difficult terrain and climate, but also mechanization. If possible, and left to its own devices, the forest industry would gladly harvest our trees without having to pay a single employee. Machines don’t get sick, they don’t want paycheques, they don’t need pension plans.

Now, my friend, the Fraser Institute apostle, may not like the accord, but here’s what some of the industry people had to say:

"British Columbians as landlords of the forest resource have good reason to expect a lot from the forest industry." – Jake Kerr, Lignum Ltd.

Ike Barber, president of Slocan Forest Products, said he had made a career out of "unemploying people," but would now try to save as many jobs as he can.

Among the few who aren’t happy with the Jobs and Timber Accord are the militant environmentalists, who have stepped up their demands for protected areas to more than 40 per cent of the province’s land base.

Well, I suppose some people like the idea of shutting down the forest industry and turning chain saws into good-luck charms. Pol Pot thought it was a dandy idea to turn Cambodia into an agricultural society. He failed, but no before the country’s flourishing economy was devastated and a few million people had starved to death.

Mike Harcourt’s achievement was to bring relative peace to the woods. The next couple of years will show whether Glen Clark’s plan works. If it does, he will have brought security to the people who work in the forest and stability to the communities that depend on forestry. Not a bad legacy either.