British Columbia has never lacked for charismatic politicians to entertain the parliamentary press gallery or for voters to scratch their heads over and wonder where they’ll take the province.
B.C.’s premiers have ranged from the entertaining, politically and strategically smart builder-types (W.A.C. Bennett) to charismatic policy disasters (Dave Barrett, Bill Vander Zalm and Glen Clark) to policy smart but un-charismatic (Bill Bennett).
There was even the eccentric 19th-century Amor de Cosmos, B.C.’s second premier. Despite his sensible promotion of schools, farming, forestry and fisheries as key to B.C.’s development, de Cosmos was also known for his tears, temper and fistfights. He was eventually declared insane.
Thus, B.C.’s newest premier Christy Clark has a wide range of governing styles to choose from. The options range from quiet competence to statutorily deranged.
In my experience with Clark – she interviewed me over the years on her CKNW radio show – it was clear she preferred anti-conservative rhetoric and sound bites to deep discussions of policy.
That might work for some talk-show hosts, but it’s politically risky for premiers. If one doesn’t have a framework on how to spend tens of billions of dollars and how to prioritize competing visions of what governments can do and should not do, it’s tough to develop while one also tries to run a government.
Still, assuming Clark prefers to learn from B.C.’s longer-serving premiers who stayed in power in part because they had some policy depth, here are two of many issues that Clark should ponder in the months and years ahead.
Here’s the problem: through their federal taxes, families in high-cost provinces end up subsidizing the governments and thus the citizens of low-cost provinces. For example, depending on the neighbourhood, the average price of a bungalow in Greater Vancouver ranges from $440,000 to $1.2 million. So homeowners trying to pay off their huge mortgage in B.C. see some of their federal taxes go to government in Quebec, where in the largest city, Montreal, the average bungalow ranges from $235,000 to $340,000. Equalization is soon up for discussion as the program is due for a federal-provincial review. Clark should take some time to understand how the federal program negatively affects British Columbians.
As the example of countless European countries demonstrates, if you want more people to get better health care, competition in service delivery and insurance results in better and more accessible care.
Europe doesn’t have the ideological hang-ups common at the BC Federation of Monopolized Public Sector Services. Instead, from privatized Swedish hospitals to private Swiss insurance, European countries demonstrate that private delivery and insurance is the ally of competent universal coverage.
Politically, a female premier can probably make significant reforms in health care in a way a blue-suited-establishment, WASPish male cannot. If Clark can move B.C. (and, by example, the rest of Canada) to European-style health care, she’ll accomplish much and leave a legacy that will benefit millions.
In general, being born and bred in Kelowna, I’m biased, but I’ve long argued that British Columbia was never as well run as when the two Bennetts were in charge of the province. That’s because W.A.C. and Bill Bennett conceptually understood the necessity of smart policy and mostly practised it (no one’s perfect).
They balanced books most years, initiated mostly sensible infrastructure projects and understood that killing off the entrepreneurial spirit is no way to help everyone else.
The Bennetts also grasped that necessary public services are to be run for the public and not public-sector unions. If Clark wants to replicate two of B.C.’s longest-serving premiers, she should imitate the policy orientation of the two Bennetts.