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Front Page » Archive » Vol
2 No 57 » here
In recent speeches, a dirth of information
Deep into a governing mandate, the BC Liberals
and their leader seem to be still battling the election,
and learning nothing.
by Kevin Potvin
The Republic
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| Why is this man smiling? |
Gordon Campbell and the BC Liberals swept to office in a
landslide election twenty-one months ago. One of the Liberals'
promises was to hold the next election exactly four years
into the mandate--perhaps in continuing homage to all
things American. That puts us this month 40% of the way through
the mandate. To put it into perspective, that would be 34
games into an 82 game hockey season schedule. That's long
enough for underperforming NHL coaches to begin getting fired,
and certainly long enough for government ministers to show
what they've got.
Campbell delivered three speeches in December, prior to
departing for a long and fateful vacation to Maui: one to
a BC Liberal Party fundraiser in Surrey, one to the BC Board
of Trade, and one more to the BC Coalition of Small Businesses.
In all three instances, one overarching theme emerged predominant.
Each speech was nearly an exact recitation of his 2001 campaign
speeches.
At a time when a government might be settling into the tough
slog of governing, presumably deep in the minutiae of bureaucratic
reports, bulked up from wrestling with the wily big issues,
and sagely enlightened by the nuances of the refined art
of leadership, Gordon Campbell is instead still playing the
barking carny, filling his speeches up with evangelizing
slogans.
Surely the audiences gathered for these speeches--party
loyalists and strong business backers--have heard it all
before, having already been converted. Backers like to see
their boy stump effectively when the campaign is on. But
what do Liberal Party workers and supporters, executives
at the Board of Trade, and small- and medium-sized business
operators--all of whom must be growing anxious to learn
some hard facts--make of the spectre of their boy still
out on the now-cold campaign trail?
Liberal press releases to this day still sign off with the
groaningly tired, "It's just another of our New Era for BC
commitments." There's no new information from legislature
debates because there is no debate so long as the government
jealously withholds official party status from the opposition
NDP. And we certainly learn nothing from speeches Campbell
delivers, which even for dyed-in-the-wool believers, by now
must be propelling their eyeballs deliriously around in their
sockets.
"The Olympics is an enormous opportunity to set the stage
for an exceptional future for the entire province, and for
the role that BC should be playing in our country," Campbell
drove home to the Board of Trade on December 10. He offered
no elaboration, however, about what role he envisions BC
should play in Canada, no illustration of what constitutes
this enormous opportunity, no vision of what that exceptional
future looks like, nor any description of how exactly the
Olympics can set the stage for that future, or how the entire
province will participate in it. Instead, Campbell chose
to describe to busy executives how he overcame fears at a
public swimming pool when he was a lanky 12-year-old.
How do the executives who deal daily with hard-to-balance
bottom lines, cut-throat quarterly competition, and tough
decisions about inventory ratios and payroll sizes, sit quietly
through this juvenile reminiscence?
Consider this nugget from Campbell, praised for his decades
of public service: "Leadership is facing the facts and then
not being frightened to act on them," Campbell informed the
hall full of the province's top business executives. "It's
putting fear behind us and reaching out. It's saying 'I am
willing to risk failure so that I can succeed.'" What are
BC's executives doing here, listening to this nonsense? Don't
they have work?
The speech goes on at length in a similar juvenile vein. "Leadership
is recognizing that we can always do better--we can always
improve." There is nothing anywhere in this speech that distinguishes
it from a grade 10 essay on leadership. There is no quote
offered in the entire speech, nor is any fact related, nor
insight offered, nor illustration drawn. Having been on the
inside of government for over a year-and-a-half, Campbell
seems to have read nothing, thought about nothing, nor learned
anything. How can the Board of Trade justify wasting an entire
afternoon listening to a schoolboy read his high school essay?
The BC Coalition of Small Businesses fared no better. "We
have to continue our work on employment standards. This is
one of the most important parts of creating an environment
in which employers and employees are working together, where
they see the future and the success of their enterprise as
mutually beneficial," he told a room full of employers.
"If you think there are things that are wasting your money
for no public benefit," Campbell told small business representatives, "if
you think there are things that are getting in the way of
providing public safety or even logical public policy, you
should come and tell" the government. This speech also goes
on like at length in this simplistic manner. There is no
indication of strategy, no hint of a plan, and no mention
of thought on the vast body of labour issues.
If a vision of government can be glimpsed through this dark
fog, Campbell provided some notion of where he sits on the
spectrum of governmental philosophy. It is a treasonous position.
He hates the institution he strove these many years to lead. "How
many of you," he asked the small business representatives, "want
to give more money to the government so we can manage it
as well as we manage all the other dollars we take?" That's
quite a sales pitch for an organization one has sworn to
lead in good faith: I will squander your proceeds, give me
less.
"Government," Campbell waxed, "should not be thought of
as a controller in an open democratic society." And therein
lies the ruins of the dreams of a sophisticated, educated,
and thoughtful 21st century electorate.
Nor, Campbell may well have added, should government be
thought of as a thinker, as a forecaster, as a prudent planner,
or as a leader.
Business people know that their job is to return profits
to their shareholders, whether that's themselves or other
investors. They, along with the citizenry, expect the government
to corral the energies of society, to encapsulate its aspirations,
and to give voice and authority to its values.
Campbell and his Liberals offer precisely the opposite.
They appear to be, at this late stage in the season, not
a different government, but an anti-government. There is
no new steersman at the helm; there is simply no steersman
period. This cannot have been what the electorate voted in
favour of in 2001.
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