Thirty-seven years ago, Halloween 1987, I became the leader of the BC Liberal Party.
British Columbia was badly polarized. Social Credit held one side and the NDP the other. It had been twelve years, 1975, since Liberal MLAs Garde Gardom, Pat McGeer, and Alan Williams had walked away from their party to join Social Credit, one year after the lone Progressive Conservative MLA Hugh Curtis had abandoned his party to sit with Bill Bennett, the son and heir apparent to long-serving BC Premier, WAC Bennett.
An unwritten agreement by the biggest Canadian political shareholders, the federal Liberals and Conservatives, decided that if British Columbia was to remain a lucrative franchise from a revenue perspective, they couldn’t risk splitting the electoral vote and electing the real enemy, the NDP, so no resources would be used to finance either a Liberal or Conservative party provincially.
“There are two sides to every street,” I was told by a very prominent Canadian businessman who continues to stay above the political fray, “the sunny side and the shady side, and Vancouver’s Howe Street is no different. You think you can bring light to the shadows, but those on the shady side like it the way it is, so watch your back because they will be coming for you.”
The conversation occurred two weeks after I and sixteen colleagues had made a remarkable breakthrough in the 1991 provincial election.
He was right.
My rise to become the Leader of the Official Opposition came with the hard work and support of a great many people who worked tirelessly over the four years that led to the breakthrough election in 1991.
The Social Credit had suffered fatal internal fractures during the leadership of Bill Vander Zalm, and his replacement, despite her exceptional personal qualities, Rita Johnston, could not re-engage the voters.
The BC Liberals, on the other hand, were a truly independent, populist party that had developed policies that did not serve the elites, were committed to a principled platform, and did not hold as their primary objective the defeat of the NDP in order to cater to powerful special interests.
My naivety as a newly elected politician was putting my faith in the principles that we ran on, overestimating the extent to which the people at large could or would stand up to defend those principles, and underestimating the power and reach of those who, from the shadows, pull the strings of government.
During the four years it took to build a party from scratch, my refusal to take a knee before the corporate elite, who had gone to great lengths to manufacture a “free enterprise coalition," drew little attention because they didn’t believe that I would be elected.
After the election, my refusal was considered arrogant, impudent, and dangerous. Gordon Campbell took over, and a new free-enterprise coalition was built, even though the world liberal stuck like a chicken bone in the throats of many conservatives.
Fast forward to 2024.
Only a few weeks before the Writ was dropped, Falcon, having already removed the name liberal from the party, collapsed the entire Official Opposition, choosing to scratch the BC United horse from the race. He did so, not because the horse/party was unsound, but because he didn’t believe he could ride it to win.
Many riding associations had been corrupted, BC United party staffers were quietly working with the conservatives while still “organizing” for BC United, and in the process of capitulation to the Conservatives, those in control made sure that the BC Liberal party name was held to prevent any candidate from running under that banner.
We all know the result.
The post-election narrative is now being carefully crafted, suggesting that the Conservative Party came out of nowhere in response to a grass-roots movement.
It didn’t.
It can be argued that we all have a vested interest in who governs us. I don’t disagree. Some, however, have a greater investment and a long-standing interest in determining who forms government.
Kevin Falcon didn’t get a message from a chorus of electoral angels who provided some kind of divine direction that called for him to scrap his candidates, along with his party, on the eve of the election.
What I suspect he did get was immense pressure from the backroom powers to do exactly that. It remains to be seen how altruistic his capitulation has been.
I'm aware that writing this blog is a bit like singing against a strong wind. The backrooms are hard at work with AI-produced narratives of what went down in British Columbia, and I don’t doubt they will be successful in convincing many.
If people do know, they don’t seem to care that we are well into a world where the growth of a grass-roots democracy has been paved over and replaced with one that is manufactured.
It's an old movie; the names have been changed in the script, but it's the same plot, and it is only a matter of time before Rustad is taken out, and the shady side of Howe Street will orchestrate a process to put in their guy.
There was a great deal of hope on that Halloween night in 1987 that we really could break through the political polarization with a principled seeding of ground in BC, fertile, and desirous of an end to a black or white world, where only the interests of those who benefit by such polarization are served.
The price to protect the treat that democracy provides is eternal vigilance against politicians who turn a trick.
Gordon
Wilson is a writer and business consultant who served as an
elected MLA from 1991 -2001. During that time, he held several cabinet
posts including Minister of Forests, Aboriginal Affairs and Minister of
Finance. He has consulted widely matters pertaining to the Canadian resource
economy, and the Canadian Constitution. He lives on a small sheep farm in
Powell River.
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