The talk started about A Matter Of Confidence: The Inside Story of the Political Battle for B.C. months before it was published.
One of its co-authors, Richard Zussman, was abruptly fired from his job as CBC's legislative reporter in Victoria, for conspiring with the enemy - in this case, the Vancouver Sun's Rob Shaw - on this book. Canada Pravda canned one of their top B.C. journalists for not getting permission properly, in triplicate, or whatever. The firing was so reviled that B.C. Liberals, NDPers, Greens and journalists across Canada all agreed it was outrageous.
As soon as it finally appeared this spring, it was a bestseller for its behind-the-scenes glimpses into the fall of Gordon Campbell over HST, the rise of Christy Clark, her surprise 2013 election win over the NDP's Adrian Dix and her eventual downfall, culminating in the NDP-Green coalition that eventually threw her and the Liberals out after the super-close 2017 election.
For the folks who love to read about insider politics, it's a fun, quick read, filled with lots of juicy little tidbits.
For example, readers learn near the very end of the book that the current occupant of Prince George-Mackenzie MLA Mike Morris's former office when he was solicitor general in Clark's cabinet is none other than Andrew Weaver.
With that comes an amusing story about how Weaver would bring people by to see his new office before Morris and his team had even moved out. The receptionist accommodated each of Weaver's tour visits but the legislative assistant shut her door in Weaver's face.
Guess which staffer kept her job and guess who lost her job once Weaver moved in?
For all of the insider stories like that, there is a massive gap in Shaw and Zussman's book.
After Christy Clark, there's no contest Shirley Bond is the most powerful woman in B.C. politics so far this century. If she was interviewed for the book, she is not thanked in the acknowledgements as Pat Bell and other senior B.C. Liberal lieutenants Rich Coleman and Mike de Jong are. The authors make clear that Gordon Campbell was the one big fish who refused to be interviewed for the book but they make no mention of Bond.
Her role in a 325-page book on B.C. politics is relegated to four mentions. In two of them, she's threatening to quit the B.C. Liberals, in one she's agreeing with Mike de Jong's hard look at the financial case for Site C and in the last mention, she's "bawling" during Clark's resignation speech to the Liberal caucus.
A five-term MLA who spent all of Campbell and Clark's tenures in cabinet and has been deputy premier, justice minister, transportation minister, education minister, advanced education minister and health minister at various points during the 16-year Liberal reign would certainly have some insights and some stories to tell.
Bond's perspective would have been particularly helpful in the Madam Premier chapter, which explores the subtle and blatant sexism Clark faced while in power, as well as the significant backlash from women voters in 2017. As a forceful woman heading powerful provincial ministries, there's no question Bond must have dealt with the same patronizing nonsense Clark struggled with that doesn't touch men like Bell, Coleman and de Jong in similar positions.
The second time Bond threatened to quit the party, according to the book, was at the Penticton caucus retreat after the 2017 election where Clark eventually resigned. Abbotsford South MLA Darryl Plecas had stood up in front of the group and delivered a brutal assessment of Clark and her leadership to her face, which included criticisms of her insincere smile. Bond took the attack "incredibly personally," the authors report.
How personally, other than the threat to quit the party, the reader is left to guess but anyone who has ever talked to Bond for more than five minutes would know why. Loyalty and integrity are everything to her, neither of which Plecas seems to possess, based on his words that day and his defection later that summer to become Speaker of the House.
Bond must have been fit to erupt after hearing Plecas speak and then to have to listen afterwards to the passive-aggressive whining of other Liberal backbenchers who said they disagreed with Plecas but then went on to make the same complaints he did about Clark, just in a nicer way.
The lack of appreciation and respect towards Clark, the leader who brought them back from the grave in 2013, along with the demeaning sexism, would have made Bond's blood boil.
Her feelings, her recollections and her understanding of that day and so many other pivotal moments are sorely missing from A Matter Of Confidence.
Hopefully she sits down and writes a memoir once her political days are over, both to provide a deeper historical insight into the last 16 years but to inspire a new generation of female politicians of what they have to offer in office, in spite of the gender discrimination that still prevails.
-- Editor-in-chief Neil Godbout
