Supreme opportunist is back

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 25/08/2010 (5704 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

VICTORIA — Anti-tax champion Bill Vander Zalm was always a man of the people when the people were with him. It was a different story when they turned against him.

Two dozen years ago this summer, he mounted a successful drive for the leadership of the governing Social Credit Party, then won a decisive majority in a fall election.

People loved him and he promised to love them back. "For the first time you’re going to see a government that’s committed to consultation on a continuing basis," he vowed in an election eve speech promising a "fresh start" for a polarized province.

Actual results varied somewhat.

His first budget imposed higher income taxes, higher fuel taxes and a brand new levy on property sales, a trio of cash grabs not mentioned in the election platform. In return he cut the sales tax by one point and promised to reduce it by a further point on a day that never came.

But in those days there was no initiative legislation or any recall mechanism to bring him to account for raising taxes without a specific mandate from the electorate.

He was going to improve labour relations too. "Just think of it," he said. "Labour and business sitting down to work things out without strikes and lockouts."

There followed a round of consultations, leading to a new labour law. The deputy minister of labour soon blew the whistle on that exercise. The consultations were a sham. The legislation was drafted in the back-room, with the input of lawyers who were plugged in to the business community.

Bill Vander Zalm in bed with big business and its lawyers? Yep.

The unions launched a one-day protest strike. The Vander Zalm government fired back in court, with a failed application for an injunction, sought on the grounds that labour was guilty of "subversion."

Yes, for daring to protest Vander Zalm legislation, the labour leaders found themselves accused of trying to "subvert the democratically elected will of the people by force."

You could look up that one as well.

His troubles, mostly self-authored, multiplied. In one of the biggest controversies, he cut off medicare funding for abortion services, doing it by long distance from a vacation spot in Hawaii, not consulting the government caucus, never mind the people.

A democratic verdict was not long in coming. Eighteen months into the term, the Socreds faced a byelection in a seat they’d held continuously for more than 30 years. Outspending the New Democrats by three to one, they lost by 5,000 votes.

The only real issue was his leadership. Still he refused to heed the will of the people.

"I can’t change," he advised a media scrum as the fallout settled over the party carcass. "I don’t intend to make any changes at all."

Rather he’d "sleep well," knowing he was doing the right thing, even if the people didn’t recognize it at that particular moment.

"I don’t want to become a fence-sitter," he continued, in a vein that suggested he could teach the current premier a thing or two about clinging to power. "I’m not going to run away from my convictions or compromise them because it is politically popular. If that is what I’m asked to do, I’ll just run out my term and somebody else can take it … I’d rather be a one-man show than a no-man show."

In the end, he was a no-show. Undermined by a string of byelection losses, stung by a finding of conflict from a commissioner he’d chosen himself, facing a non-confidence vote by his own caucus, he resigned in early 1991.

But not before turning on critics, including the media. "You’re destroying pride," he told reporters at one point. "You’re destroying optimism, you’re creating pessimism, and we all lose by this."

On another occasion, he wrapped himself in the flag of religion.

"Real leadership comes from someone with a real purpose continuing to fight on and win when your overwhelming majority is you and your Lord Jesus Christ," he told Campus Crusade For Christ.

"Can we as a Social Credit government be politically popular if we follow the precepts I’ve outlined to you? It won’t be easy … Christ didn’t have an easy way. He came into the world poor. He never travelled far from home. He was taunted and ridiculed. He never had a UBC education. He would have been low in the polls."

As the spate of accusations against him multiplied, the martyr complex swelled to invoke a fantastic comparison to his youth in occupied Holland during the Second World War. Or as he put it: "This is all very reminiscent of Nazi Germany."

Jesus Christ in one instance, Naziism in another. Incredible to think that such a crank, once driven from office, would be enjoying a comeback of sorts.

But thanks to the opening provided by the B.C. Liberals with their poorly justified, badly handled, deservedly unpopular harmonized sales tax, he is back.

Don’t blame the supreme opportunist for seizing the moment. Blame a dishonest, stumbling government for creating the opportunity in the first place.

 

Vaughn Palmer is a columnist for the Vancouver Sun.