BC Politics with Hubert Beyer

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Hubert Beyer, Biography

Hubert Beyer was widely known as one of Canada's most read journalists. His columns were published regularly in most BC Community Newspapers, and his perspective sought on the Federal level as well as by NORAD in the US, Beyer lived up to his reputation as the "Fairest of them All."

Born in a small village in West Germany, Beyer immigrated to Canada in his 20s where he married and had 4 children.

A German Language publication in Winnipeg was Beyer's first foray into writing in Canada, it was soon followed with work at the Winnipeg Free Press as a Reporter covering many different beats. more

Click to read the Eulogy for Hubert Beyer

Top Search: Forestry

Find out what Beyer had to say about Forestry in BC through the years. With the forestry industry supporting a large segment of employment and opportunity in British Columbia, it's no surprise that it's a top search.

Top Search: Elections

Election are always a hot topic. Anytime the faintest hint of a provincial or federal election announcement draws near, the search for quotes and history on past British Columbia elections starts to climb.

Top Search: Budget Release

When is the Budget not a hot search. Provincial Bugets are introduced with fanfare and fraught with talk from pundits, experts and critics. Take a few minutes to see how BC Budgets of the past were often projections of the future. 

OTTAWA NO FRIEND OF B.C. IN SALAM WAR

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VICTORIA – The Feds didn’t know how to shut up our combative premier, whom they regard as a one-man America-bashing army, so they leaked remarks of a conversation Glen Clark had with federal officials, including Fisheries Minister David Anderson.

The premier, the unnamed sources told a newspaper, had said at the private meeting he was looking for a way out of his threat to close the Nanoose Bay missile testing range. Clark, they said, wanted to abandon his stand without losing face.

Whether or not Clark actually made the remarks leaked by federal officials, isn’t an issue. The fact that a premier cannot have a private meeting with federal officials without having the contents of the conversation leaked to the media is offensive in the.

Since Anderson was present at the meeting, it must be assumed that he knew about the leak, and that’s even more offensive.

Anderson keeps saying that threats won’t bring the United States to the negotiating table to hammer out a new salmon treaty. Diplomacy and goodwill, he insists, are the only way to resolve the nasty dispute.

And where, pray tell, has Anderson’s diplomatic route got us? Nowhere. The treaty expired years ago, and long before the current fishing season began, Ottawa had ample opportunity to prove whether or not the issue can be settled without rancor.

They failed miserably, because the U.S. had no intention of reaching a new agreement on the allocation of the salmon catch. They preferred to raid the resource in a fashion not known since pirates infested the world’s oceans.

I find it galling that our own federal government lines up with the Americans against British Columbia, to the extent of trying to publicly humiliate and ridicule our premier. What a spineless and disgusting behavior.

The US and Canada have now appointed special envoys who are reporting directly to Prime Minister Chretien and President Bill Clinton. And? Are we supposed to feel overjoyed at this display of US largess?

Where the hell was Clinton before the latest plunder by the U.S. fishing fleet started? If Canada is the great neighbor the US always claims it is, why has the U.S. refused for years now to successfully negotiate a new salmon pact?

You bet that Clark is a thorn the federal government’s thigh. He’s the only one I can see and hear who hasn’t grovelled before the US. And let me make one thing clear: this has nothing to do with US-bashing.

This issue has everything to do with making it clear to a normally good neighbor that as of late, he isn’t being very neighborly. Unless, of course, you call the Alaska fleet "inadvertently" catching 500,000 sockeye salmon, as a by-catch, so to speak, while going after pink salmon.

Back to our premier and his belligerent stance. Aside from the fact that it was unconscionable to reveal what was said at a private meeting, I have no idea if the federal officials told the truth when they said Clark wants a way out of his threat to close down Nanoose.

I suspect he doesn’t, unless there is a clear indication that US negotiators are really willing to reach a new salmon pact before the next fishing season.

Clark told me recently that his training as a union organizer has taught him never to make a threat he isn’t willing to carry through. And that, I’m sure, goes for his threat to cancel the Nanoose seabed licence.

Meanwhile, the federal government can always expropriate British Columbia’s rights over the seabed and assure the Americans that they can continue playing with their missiles.

In the meantime, my mail tells me that the majority of British Columbians are siding with the premier in this issue. Makes sense, too, considering the federal government’s track record in the management of the fisheries resource on Canada’s east coast.

WILSON EYES MERGER WITH REFORM

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VICTORIA -- B.C. politics, never dull to start with, just got a little more exciting. Gordon Wilson says his Progressive Democratic Alliance and the B.C. Reform Party are "exploring the options" of working together.

Wilson didn’t say it, but the most interesting option would undoubtedly be a full merger of the two parties.

On the surface, neither party amounts to much. Wilson is the only sitting member of his party, and Reform has two members in the legislature. Even together, they would be one seat short of official party status.

So why even talk about forming either a loose alliance or merging the two rump parties? Because opinion polls show that there is a political vacuum which neither the NDP nor the Liberals appear to be able to fill.

In a recent poll, the Reform Party came in first, followed by the Liberals, with the NDP trailing both. And that’s without a leader. It’s obvious from these figures that the public wants a party other than the Liberals and the NDP to play a role in B.C. politics.

Some of the public support for Reform is probably a spill-over from the federal Reform Party, even though the two have little in common, other than the name. But that doesn’t account for a leaderless party to claim first place in opinion polls. There has got to be more to it.

Wilson says his phone has been ringing off the hook, people telling him that the Liberals don’t have what it takes to be an effective opposition and take on the NDP in the next election.

"They are telling me we had better get our act together, and I’m sure the Reformers are getting the same message."

What Wilson says is true. The Liberals have been the most ineffective opposition that

ever graced the legislature. They have the numbers, they have a few bright people, but they just don’t seem to have the wherewithal to ride herd on the government and show the public that they’re worthy of eventually becoming the governing party.

The Liberals are the only party I’ve ever seen that managed to turn the daily Question Period into a mine field for themselves. They are the only party I’ve ever seen that dislikes the media. Usually, an opposition’s way to power is through careful manipulation of the media. The NDP knew exactly how that game worked. The Liberals don’t have a clue.

And while being without a leader doesn’t seem to diminish public support for the Reform Party, having a weak leader certainly harms the Liberals. Gordon Campbell is at the root of the Liberals’ problems.

How sweet it must be for Wilson to see the man who replaced him as leader of the Liberal Party to fail so badly.

And how much sweeter it must be for Wilson to contemplate the possibility of leading a merged Reform-Alliance party and kick butt in the next election.

Jack Weisgerber and Richard Neufeld, the two sitting Reform MLAs, have, I’m sure, serious doubts about working with Wilson, let alone for him.

Wilson likes to say that it was the Howe Street Boys in Vancouver who knocked the slats out from under him and replaced him with Campbell as leader of the Liberal Party, but that’s only partly true.

Wilson has an authoritarian streak in him that got him into trouble as leader. A colleague of mine said the other day that Wilson can only lead a one-man caucus, but he has plenty of smarts. And maybe he has learned from his mistakes.

Wilson is the best parliamentarian in the legislature. He would bring a lot of talent and style to an alliance of the two parties. And if he eventually manages to become leader of that alliance, so be it.

BLATANT FLIP-FLOP COULD END TWO CAREERS

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VICTORIA – In the dying days of the legislative session, a political bomb went off last week, the destructive force of which may well herald the end of two careers – that of Liberal leader Gordon Campbell and his lieutenant, Gary Farrell-Collins.

The bomb was planted, activated and detonated by the Liberals under their own feet. It was one of the most blatant breaches of a promise ever made by a party and a politician.

Remember the Liberal promise to wipe out the "gold-plated pension" MLAs were used to? Campbell and his Liberals would have none of it, they kept saying.

"Being an MLA is a public service, not a career. We cannot ask others to tighten their belts if MLAs are not willing to tighten theirs," said Campbell in a 1996 Liberal Party election platform document. "We will vote to wipe out pensions for MLAs," the document went on.

During the campaign, all Liberal candidates made ample use of the pledge to scrap the MLAs’ pension plan. It was a major plank in their platform.

Mind you, the plan had already been scrapped. The NDP government under former premier Mike Harcourt, in a shameless display of political expediency, killed the pension plan itself, thus taking a major initiative from the Liberals.

I would like to reiterate here my personal position on the issue. I’m with Gordon Wilson, former Liberal leader and now leader of the Progressive Democratic Alliance: "We need to say to the people of British Columbia, if you’re going to pay peanuts, you’re gong to hire monkeys."

Simply killing the pension plan without having another, perhaps less lavish plan in place, was stupid, but hell, opportunism knocks only once. For better or worse, the pension plan existed no more.

All along, it was understood that eventually, a new plan would come into force, but the Liberals kept insisting that it wouldn’t be "gold-plated." Benefits would no exceed those of people in the public service and the private sector.

And then last week, the politicians got caught with their hands deep in the cookie jar. It turned out the four parties, NDP, Liberals, Reformers and the lone Wilson, had reached a quiet agreement to give birth to a new pension plan that was far from the version the Liberals had promised.

To make matters worse, the cozy little arrangement was hidden in the "miscellaneous statutes amendment act," a housekeeping bill that might easily have gone unnoticed. Thanks to Vancouver Sun report Justine Hunter, it didn’t. She spotted it and broke the story.

The first one to run for cover was Campbell. He hadn’t really known about the changes, having left the all-party negotiations over what shape the new plan was to take to Farrell-Collins.

Left hung out to dry by his leader, Farrell-Collins took a swing at Campbell, saying the matter had been thoroughly discussed in the Liberal caucus. It was Campbell’s word against that of Farrell-Collins.

Following a hastily convened meeting between the two, Farrell-Collins announced that if his party colleagues had had the wrong impression, he was sorry. What was really sorry was the way Farrell-Collins folded under pressure.

Two possible conclusions can be drawn: either Campbell knew about the arrangement, thereby committing the most obnoxious political flip-flop, or he didn’t know about it, which would make him look pretty stupid. In either case, he has added a big nail to his political coffin.

Farrell-Collins, for long the heir-apparent to Campbell, lost all credibility when he succumbed to Campbell’s pressure and became the fall guy for his leader.

All of which should please Mike de Jong, who has been very busy grooming himself to take over the Liberal leadership when Campbell bites the dust. He’s one giant step closer to his goal.

MLA WANTS NATIONWIDE DNA DATABANK

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VICTORIA – Private members’ bills -- legislation proposed by an MLA rather than the government – have about as much chance of becoming law as the proverbial snowball in Hades. The same goes for motions put before the House by individual MLAs.

MLAs, usually those of the opposition kind, introduce them by the dozen every session, only to see them die when the legislature adjourns at the end of summer, ignored and rejected by the government in power.

But there is one motion before the B.C. Legislature this session that shouldn’t be ignored: Barry Penner, MLA for Chilliwack, recently introduced a motion urging the federal government to establish a nationwide DNA bank.

The premise of Penner’s proposal is that any convicted killer’s or sexual offender’s DNA goes into a databank, accessible to police across Canada. If the person offends again, his or her DNA could then easily be compared to any of the stored samples.

The idea is compelling, and its basic premise isn’t new. In solving crimes, police have relied on finger print databanks for years. Without it, their hands would be tied even more than they are.

Penner was prompted to pursue his proposal as a result of the RCMP’s frustration over the so-called Abbotsford Killer case, in which Tanya Smith, and Abbotsford teenager was slain.

An RCMP officer told him that they had found enough DNA samples at the crime scene to convict a suspect if a match could be made. Police, however, had no suspect, from whom, in accordance with a law passed in 1995, they could have taken a DNA sample.

If, on the other hand, there were a nationwide databank of DNA samples from convicted sex offenders and murders, the DNA found at the sight could be compared to all samples stored in the databank. And if a match is made, a conviction would probably follow.

"I thought about this idea and I wondered whether it would work, considering the restrictions that the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms might impose," says Penner, a lawyer himself.

He hit the law books and came up with two Supreme Court of Canada cases where the current requirement to provide fingerprints prior to conviction was challenged and upheld.

There’s no doubt that any such DNA databank would best work if ever person accused of a crime were required to provide a DNA sample, similar to the requirement to provide fingerprints.

To avoid a lengthy constitutional battle, however, Penner believes it’s better to err on the side of caution and make DNA samples a mandatory requirement only after conviction for murder and sex crimes. The disadvantage is that only repeat offenders would be identified as a result of a DNA match.

Penner points out that DNA samples can not only help convict a criminal, but free someone falsely accused of a crime, as in the case of Paul Morin.

He says that according to federal government estimates, it would cost about $3 million a year to operate a DNA databank, a small price to pay, considering the help it will give police is solving violent crimes. Administering the controversial gun control law costs about 10 times as much.

Penner’s motion should receive the unanimous support of the legislature. Unfortunately, before it gets to that stage, it must be put on the agenda by the government.

In the interest of the public, the NDP government should forget about partisan politics in this case and depart from the tradition of ignoring opposition motions.

The DNA databank Penner wants the legislature to endorse could go a long way to putting away sexual predators. And that’s more important than any petty partisan squabbling.

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