In the fall of 2001, I was in the Victoria office of then-B.C. Attorney General Geoff Plant to discuss why the B.C. Liberal government had flipped positions on the Nisga’a treaty.
Previously, in 1999, the party, and especially leader Gordon Campbell, had opposed the agreement and had challenged the agreement in court via the BC Liberal party.
There were many concerns, not least of which was the likely unconstitutional nature of some Nisga’a treaty provisions.
In my conversation with the attorney general, and in response to my query as to why the Liberals changed their position, Plant told me they’d received advice before the 2001 election that the Liberals could not, as government, oppose a treaty in court to which the government of British Columbia was a signatory. And that, said Plant, is why the Liberals had not promised, in their 2001 election platform, to continue the challenge the treaty in court.
Interestingly, in an interview the next day with then-talk show host Rafe Mair on CKNW, Mair asked Campbell a question similar to my query of Plant: why did the BC Liberals and the premier drop their opposition to a flawed and possible unconstitutional treaty?
In response, Campbell claimed that he and his colleagues didn’t know that they could not oppose the Nisga’a treaty, as government, until after the election.
Campbell’s public contradiction of what his own attorney general told me the day previous was a light-bulb moment. Someone was being economical with the truth. I suspected it wasn’t the attorney general.
Here’s the connection to the recent HST referendum: A large reason the HST failed, despite the fact it was the least worst tax compared with the return of the GST and PST, and despite valiant efforts by pro-HST proponents to sell it, has to do with the character of the man who introduced it and how: Gordon Campbell, after the last election, and his claim it hadn’t been previously considered by his government.
The public expects politicians to fib on occasion. But it also expects them not to abuse the privilege. Insofar as Campbell gained a reputation for not always being frank, some it his own fault, some of it the result of hard work by his opponents to demonize him, it became more problematic to say to the public “trust me.”
Too many pundits and others have drawn the wrong conclusion from the HST referendum, that the referendum itself was the problem. Wrong. While multiple referendums California-style are problematic and confusing for voters, occasional referendums on a key issue are useful. In the latter scenario, they are an educational exercise for the public. Also, referendums treat the public with respect, as citizens that are capable of deliberation, instead, as too often happens, as ignorant peasantry to be deceived.
Proof of the possibility for educating the public on public policy comes from the recent referendum itself. The decline in opposition to the HST was a result of a vigorous debate over the HST’s merits. And the only reason that happened was because voters had a stake in becoming informed.
I’ve seen similar results before in 1992, in debate over the Charlottetown Accord (the proposed amendments to the Constitution). There, friends who would never previously have thought about Constitution-making began to read and ponder the matter. Besides, B.C. has a proud history of referendums. Voters extended the franchise to women in 1916 and effectively ended Prohibition in 1920.
Premier Christy Clark should re-submit the HST to a referendum at the next provincial election. It might just pass as the consequences of an anti-business reintroduction of the PST dawns on more people: jobs will be lost.
Regardless, we should be clear about why the HST failed this time, and it’s something the philosopher Aristotle explained long ago.
In the Art of Rhetoric, he asserted that to persuade the public, three things mattered: reason or logic (the facts), the disposition of the audience and the character of the speaker.
You can “win” without all three, but the more of those factors on one’s side, the better. Pro-HST proponents had one of those three elements: the logic of the HST was solid. But even after Campbell’s departure, much of the public simply was ill-disposed to those selling the HST. Campbell’s too-cute deceit always loomed in the background.
That made success difficult. •
