Vaughn Palmer
In Victoria
Former New Democratic Party MLA Charlie Wyse was caught by surprise last week when his name surfaced at the top of the list of local organizers for the campaign to recall B.C. Liberals over the harmonized sales tax.
"That is something that should not have happened," said Wyse. "They did not have permission to use my name."
They being the folks at Fight HST, the Bill Vander Zalm-led organization that is targeting a dozen and a half Liberal incumbents for possible recall.
Wyse is up to his neck in the effort to oust Cariboo-Chilcotin MLA Donna Barnett, who defeated him by a mere 88 votes in the 2009 provincial election. But he thought he'd reached an understanding that somebody else would be named to front for the recall drive.
"We've agreed here that we've got a group and we have a spokesperson for it," said Wyse, concerned that his profile as the former MLA could serve as a distraction.
"I'm part of a very large group, a cross-section of people of all political stripes and beliefs here in Cariboo-Chilcotin," he told my Vancouver Sun colleague Jonathan Fowlie.
"I don't see the issue should be clouded (by) where I was," meaning in the legislature from 2005 to 2009.
Clouded?
No siree, wouldn't want to give the impression that an ex-MLA was spearheading an effort to reverse the last provincial election by ousting Barnett and taking her place in the resulting byelection. Especially not when NDP leader Carole James had vowed that her party and her MLAs would stay out of recall campaigns.
Cariboo-Chilcotin was not the only riding where Vander Zalm and his associates provided a window on the political agendas that are coming into play in the fight over the HST.
For instance, there was the decision to put Speaker of the legislature Bill Barisoff on the list of those threatened with recall.
Barisoff is the four-term B.C. Liberal MLA for Penticton. But as Speaker he is expected to minimize his involvement in partisan politics. Indeed, he is the only member of the legislature not to have voted on getting rid of the old provincial sales tax because the Speaker doesn't vote in the house except to break ties. By the same token, he does not attend meetings of the government caucus.
He also won the riding handily in the last provincial election with a 3,000-vote margin.
So why is he targeted? The Speaker himself provided the likely explanation during an interview with broadcaster Bill Good on radio station CKNW last week.
"Well, Mr. Delaney ran in this riding against me and lost in the last election," said Barisoff, referring to Chris Delaney, Vander Zalm's second-in-command. "So I think that's part of it."
Delaney, running as a Conservative, finished fourth with 2,000 votes to Barisoff's 10,000. He has also played a leadership role in other parties and is rumoured to be shopping himself around again. It would not be a surprise to see him running for a seat in the house, should one open up as a result of a recall drive.
A half dozen other also-rans from the last election -- three third-place finishers, two fourths and a fifth -- were named as recall organizers in their respective ridings.
"We are political opportunists," as one of their number, Mike Summers of the Refederation party, conceded in an interview. "All of the parties are making hay when the sun shines."
But in a further embarrassment for Fight HST, one of the six disavowed the connection Monday. Joe Cardoso, who ran third to Liberal John Slater in Boundary-Similkameen in 2009, had been named as the designated hitter to produce a rematch.
Not so, Cardoso telephoned The Sun to say. He's not involved in recall and has asked Delaney to remove his name from the list.
The recallers also betrayed the "Chock Full o'Nuts" aspect of this and other Vander Zalm-led movements with their hand-picked nominee as organizer in Kelowna-Lake Country.
Al Romanchuk is a former Alberta separatist who separated himself from his home province and retired to Kelowna. Also a keen supporter of Holocaust denier Ernst Zundel, as he confirmed in not one but two interviews with The Sun last week.
Fight HST dropped him after his comments were reported, but the usually talkative Vander Zalm declined further comment.
True to form. He's readily available for any and all interviews so long as the coverage is favourable. But when it turns against him, look out.
As things stand today, he and his followers can rightly claim their petition drive forced the B.C. Liberals to give everyone in the province a say on the HST via a provincewide initiative vote, a.k.a. referendum. They've also made a good case for the balloting to be held much earlier than the current schedule of a year from now.
But the petition targeted the tax and only the tax. In firing up recall, they've allowed other agendas to come into play, not least their own, amid emerging suspicions that they are angling to install themselves as the next government of B.C.
vpalmer@vancouversun.com
