the ndp government of british columbia: unaided politicians in an unaided cabinet

Canadian Public Policy

The NDP Government of British Columbia: Unaided Politicians in an Unaided CabinetAuthor(s): Paul TennantSource: Canadian Public Policy / Analyse de Politiques, Vol. 3, No. 4 (Autumn, 1977), pp. 489-503Published by: University of Toronto Press on behalf of Canadian Public PolicyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3549569 .

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The NDP Government of British Columbia: Unaided Politicians in an Unaided Cabinet*

PAUL TENNANT/Department of Political Science, University of British Columbia

The New Democratic Party came to power in British Columbia without clear policy priorities. Under the NDP the cabinet, lacking staff agencies and firm leadership, proved unable to effect interdepartmental coordination. The major policy innovations which did occur under the NDP were the product of separate and individual action by the more forceful ministers. Thus, contrary to what might have been expected, the NDP government was characterized by lack of overall planning and coordination. With the defeat of the NDP the new Social Credit government introduced planning and coordination capability at the cabinet level.

Le Nouveau parti democratique est arriv6 au pouvoir en Colombie Britannique sans

priorites d'action bien definies. Sous le NPD, le cabinet, n'ayant pas d'agences de soutien ni de leadership solide, s'est aver6 incapable d'effectuer une coordination entre les ministeres. Les principales innovations qui ont 6te mises en oeuvre sous le NPD ont 6te le resultat d'actions isolkes et individuelles de quelques ministres entre-

prenants. Ainsi, contrairement 'a ce que l'on aurait pu s'attendre, le gouvernement du NPD fut caracterise par un manque de planification et de coordination. Suite 'a la defaite

du NPD, le nouveau gouvernement, le Credit social, a dote le cabinet d'une capacite de

planification et de coordination.

In September 1972 the New Democratic Party came to power in British

* This article is based upon interviews, written responses to questions, and other material provided initially by some thirty-five BC public servants. Nine of these now hold, or held under the NDP, positions at the deputy or associate deputy level; the remainder occupy middle-level managerial or professional positions. All major departments are represented in the group. Subsequently interviews were conducted with three former NDP cabinet ministers (two of these, having read the first draft of this article, requested anonymity - thus it would be inappropriate to name the third) and four NDP activists who were in personal contact with NDP ministers during the NDP period. A number of these persons commented on earlier drafts of this article, as did a number of my colleagues at UBC and the University of Victoria. I am most grateful to each of them, and especially to Meryl Campbell, BC Public Service Commissioner, and to Alan Cairns and Norman Ruff, and to an anonymous referee of this journal. CANADIAN PUBLIC POLICY - ANALYSE DE POLITIQUES, 111:4 autumn/automne 1977 Printed in Canada/Imprime au Canada



490o / Paul Tennant

Columbia. The victory ended four decades of opposition for the Party itself, ended two decades of rule by the Social Credit Party, and made British Columbia the third province in which the NDP has come to power. How, then, did the NDP address itself to the task of governing British Columbia? To provide some answers to this question I shall deal with particular questions concerning the machinery of government at the cabinet level, the policy process, and certain policy outcomes. Since the fact that the NDP did not provide mechanisms and procedures for planning and coordination emerges as a dominant theme, I shall give special attention to the attempts at central planning and coordination that did occur. My aim is to show the broad outlines of the NDP's actual performance in office. I am not here concerned with such important questions as the ideological content of NDP policy (cf. Resnick, 1977; Yandle, 1976) or the reasons for the decisive electoral defeat of the NDP in December 1975.

THE BRITISH COLUMBIA NDP

The NDP/CCF in British Columbia has always been quite different from the NDP/CCF in other provinces. Organized labour has been a major component of the British Columbia Party, providing it with much of its leadership and heavily influencing its outlook and rhetoric. The Party has remained largely aloof from issues not having direct impact in the province and largely isolated from the concerns and activities of the NDP/CCF in other provinces. It has contributed little to the national party in either leaders or policies. Ideologi- cally the Party has been characterized less by a desire to implement a socialist society than by a sense of opposition to the status quo, a sympathy for the 'little man,' and a hostility to large, powerful, and impersonal organizations. Thus the Party is better regarded as populist than as socialist. The main enemies of the little man and of the NDP/CCF in recent decades have been the Social Credit Party, the large corporations, and to some extent the provincial government bureaucracy, which were seen as conspiring to appropriate public resources for private profit and to deny ordinary people the protection and services to which they were entitled. The Party is thus both parochial and populistic.

In the years preceding 1972 the main events within the Party were changes in leadership. Long-time leader Robert Strachan, a carpenter and union man, was replaced, after a bitter struggle, by Thomas Berger, a lawyer and intellectual. In the 1969 election the Party obtained its perennial one-third of the popular vote, but Berger was defeated in his own riding and resigned. Dave Barrett, a social worker who had been fired from the provincial Corrections Branch for political activity, became the new leader. Barrett was identified with neither the unions nor the intellectuals. His electoral strategy was to downplay the role of both unions and intellectual socialists within the Party and to lay renewed stress on the Party's traditional populist concerns. Barrett himself became the personification of both populism and the Party. The 1972 NDP campaign stressed Barrett's personality - depicting him as a friendly fellow of plebian origin whose only concern was for the downtrodden (Hills, I972). Almost no attention was given to party policy. The main fact of the



The NDP government ofBC / 491

TABLE 1

Bac election results 1966-1975: party standings by percent of popular vote (and number of seats won)

1966 1969 1972 1975

Social Credit 45.6 (33) 46.8 (38) 31.2 (10) 49.2 (35) NDP 33.6(16) 33.9 (12) 39.6 (38) 39.2 (18) Liberal 20.2 (6) 19.0 (5) 16.4 (5) 7.2(1) Progressive

Conservative 0.2(-) 0.1 (-) 12.7 (2) 3.9(1)

SOURCE: BC, Chief Electoral Officer, Statement of Votes (1966-1975). The number of persons who voted in the four elections was, respectively: 597,000; 795,000; 921,000; and 1,088,000. The voting turnout was, respectively: 68.3; 68.9; 68.6; and 69.8%. Independent candidates are excluded, thus percentage columns do not total 100%.

campaign, however, was neither Barrett nor the NDP, but rather the disinte- gration of the Social Credit Party into hostile factions whose quarrels became more public and more bitter as the campaign progressed. Table I shows the results of the 1972 election as well as those of 1966 and 1969.

CABINET OPERATION UNDER THE NDP

Under Social Credit the cabinet had remained entirely traditional - that is, simple in structure and uncomplicated in operation, lacking the committees, staff, staff agencies,1 and extensive paper work which provide planning and coordination capability at the cabinet level in the central government and most of the larger provinces. Aside from changes in the complement of portfolios, the British Columbia cabinet had changed scarcely at all since Confederation. A few cabinet committees existed but met rarely and played only a rudimentary role. The Treasury Board was completely dominated by the Premier - both ministers and public servants referred to the Board as 'he.' The Board had no staff of its own while other committees and the cabinet itself had no staff whatever. There was no clerk to the cabinet and no staff official attended cabinet meetings. For policy advice the cabinet ministers relied largely on senior officials. Individual ministers were allowed wide policy latitude providing that major new expenditures were not involved. Over expenditures the Premier personally exerted minutely-detailed control. The Premier's authoritarian control harmonized with both the attitudes and goals of the government. Financial constraint was highly valued; a balanced budget was seen as the chief indicator of good government; and governmental goals were mainly those of economic development, which can be effected on a project basis, rather than those of change in social policy, which require continual and close interdepartmental cooperation. More generally, it would appear that the traditional cabinet is one in which complex planning capability

I Deutsch referred to these as the 'quasi-bureaucracy' (Deutsch, 1973:27).



492 / Paul Tennant

cannot be achieved and in which, at best, coordination may be achieved by an authoritarian leader (Brownstone, 1971:66-67; Cadbury, 1971:52-53).

The NDP came to power without having given much thought to the question of organization and operation of government at the highest level. Once in power the NDP leaders did not see the question as one requiring specific attention by the cabinet itself or by any of the many task forces set up to recommend policy. The NDP was content to leave cabinet-level structure almost identical to what it had previously been. In operation (as it happened) the NDP cabinet departed from that of its predecessor in one major feature: the NDP Premier did not act as an authoritarian leader. Thus the NDP added no planning capability and, while retaining the traditional cabinet form, dis- carded the one feasible means of attaining coordination. In the absence of both staff support and firm leadership the NDP cabinet was 'little more than a bargaining centre [lacking a] collective view of overall government problems.'2

In its decision-making the NDP cabinet illustrates what is presumably true of any traditional cabinet attempting to function at the centre of a large and complex government: that within the cabinet itself in any policy area there can be no reliable and consistent source of information other than the minister in charge of the area. This circumstance will be especially noticeable when, as was the case under the NDP, financial reporting is not well-developed. Neither the Premier nor other ministers can be in any firm position from which to evaluate, to criticize, or make counter proposals. The political entrepreneur- ship of the more forceful ministers becomes the dominant factor in decision- making. Such was the case in the NDP cabinet. The major decisions and innovations made during the NDP period resulted not from any collective and positive decision-making by the cabinet, but rather from initiatives by the dominant ministers. One NDP minister stated that 'the cabinet would go with what the quick had ready, especially if it related in some way to something in the platform - even if the proposal was badly engineered' (Interview, Oct. 1976). Legislation was often put before the Legislature badly drafted and without the benefit of advice from affected departments and interest groups. In consequence a higher than normal proportion of bills were withdrawn, substantially amended, allowed to die, or never proclaimed. The cabinet's reputation for back-tracking, vacillating, and simple bungling caused dismay among party supporters (Yandle, 1976) and gave much ammunition to the Social Credit opposition.

How could such circumstances befall the one party seen by both supporters and opponents as ready and willing to effect comprehensive reform? How is the paradox to be explained? At the crux of the paradox would appear to be the acceptance by the NDP leaders of the traditional form of cabinet. This uncritical acceptance rested on several factors. The Premier chose for his first cabinet only the eleven party stalwarts who had served in the Legislature before 1972 - none of the twenty-six new members was selected. The level of

2 The phrase is used by Cadbury in describing what the CCF in Saskatchewan was seeking to avoid by establishing staff agencies at the cabinet level (Cadbury, 1971:52-53).



The NDP government of BC / 493

parochialism in the cabinet was thus high; for long years in opposition, facing a traditional and secretive government, in an isolated provincial capital, are hardly good training in the working of modern government. Moreover, the new cabinet had spent years of camaraderie, with no staff and in isolation from public servants, in the opposition caucus. The shift to the cabinet room did not bring with it any impulse for new decision-making procedures - nor were there any incumbent advisory staff to give advice. For the first few months the cabinet did not even have agendas for its meetings (Yandle, 1976:14). Cabinet meetings became repetitious and even enervating affairs. On occasion lack of attendance was a problem. It may even be the case that some ministers came to regard the cabinet as better avoided than reformed. In addition there is the matter of leadership. Had Berger or Robert Williams been premier it is highly unlikely that the traditional cabinet would have survived.

The NDP approach to policy-making was also supportive of the traditional cabinet. Some ministers had an explicit faith in what might be termed the unaided politician in the unaided cabinet. In good part this faith rested on failure to see the distinction between line and staff agencies, or between the regular bureaucracy and the 'quasi-bureaucracy,' and thus on a lack of appreciation of the role staff outside the regular bureaucracy can play in adding to the capability of political decision makers. It rested also on the simplistic belief that having the right people in high office is the crucial matter while structures and procedures are inconsequential. In answer to the question why the cabinet did not provide itself with research and support staff, one minister (who would have played a major part in such a decision) stated: 'If you are a strong political person and you wish to set a certain political direction, you want to be able to deal with politicians not bureaucrats. If my highest priority is to get cabinet to go for a program I sure as hell don't want to have to argue with a bunch of social scientists.' He added that to have used advisory staff would have been to 'dull our cutting edge' - that is, to stifle the initiative of politicians - and to inhibit ministerial freedom because ministers would not wish to disagree with one another or be seen to change their minds in the presence of 'outsiders' (Interview, Oct. 1976).

Also important in the NDP approach were the state of the economy and the nature of the NDP's view of financial management. For the first two years the economy remained at record heights and, in the words of one minister, 'money seemed to be coming off the trees' (Interview, Oct. 1976). In such circumstances, when almost all financial demands can be met, the need is less apparent than otherwise to identify and select priorities in a rational way. The NDP attitude to financial management was identical to that of the previous government. A balanced budget was seen as the sine qua non of successful government. Even though the financial system of the previous government was perhaps the 'crudest' in Canada (Stow, I976), it was retained unchanged by the NDP because it appeared sufficient to indicate whether the budget would balance. An economist appointed to a senior position in the Depart- ment of Finance under the NDP later described the NDP's method as:

Stop and go. Revenues in, then revenues out. No financial planning. No financial



494 / Paul Tennant

forecasting. No priorities established. They frowned on economists and would wait until the revenue numbers came in and the expenditure numbers came in and then would draw up their budgets (Stow, 1976).

A final reason for the NDP' s failure to seek an overall planning and coordination capability was the simple belief that it was unnecessary. One party activist stated that 'important members of the cabinet were avowed prag- matists quite willing to take the quiet backdoor approach as long as it yielded the desired long-term results. The working premise was that socialism could be achieved by a series of small developments operating on a variety of levels' (Interview, Oct. 1976). Several ministers and activists interviewed implied that persons seeking to create planning and coordination mechanisms would actually have been seeking to sabotage party goals. One minister stated: 'We simply didn't have the time to develop complex organization around the cabinet. We had so much to do we thought it better to put general things aside until later' (Interview, Nov. 1976). The statement is antithetical to any con- scious attention to overall planning and is at the same time supportive of the unaided politician in the unaided cabinet.

Two years after coming to power the Premier and cabinet did accept an innovation with broad planning and coordinating potential. This was the appointment of a Planning Advisor to the Cabinet (PAC). The position was created not because of any recognition of the worth of general staff support, but rather because the budgetary crisis of 1974 brought the Premier and cabinet to seek some new method of keeping expenditures in line with revenue. Although the PAC, who came from a similar position in Manitoba, had ostensible duties relating to policy research, policy coordination, and federal-provincial relations,3 his preoccupation was financial control (Brand, 1975:63). Even in this area, however, neither individual ministers nor senior public servants viewed the PAC as having the unequivocal understanding and support of the Premier, and so they provided the PAC with neither speedy nor complete information. In one crucial department the deputy minister explicitly told his senior officials to withhold information from the PAC. In the Premier's own Department of Finance no changes were made to facilitate the activities of the PAC. In any case, expenditures for fiscal year 1974-75 ex- ceeded revenues; and, as fiscal year 1975-76 proceeded it became clear that the situation was not improving. It might be supposed that the PAC might have become more influential in planning and coordination had the NDP been returned to power in the 1975 election. It is equally likely that an electoral victory would have confirmed NDP confidence in the unaided politician in the unaided cabinet. It must not be forgotten that the PAC was appointed not because of any new-found commitment to overall planning and coordination, but rather because the NDP, in desperation, sought merely a better method of attaining the traditional Social Credit/NDP goal of a balanced budget.

3 BC Public Service Commission (1975-76) Organization of the Public Service. See under 'De- partment of the Provincial Secretary.'




THE POLICY PROCESS

There was within the NDP cabinet a general consensus that government activities should be increased, that there should be greater citizen participation in policy-making, and that the autonomy and profiteering of large corporations should be reduced. Among cabinet members there was also a general agreement that the regular bureaucracy could not be relied upon to provide the new government with policy proposals. Yet only a few of the new ministers had developed notions of policy innovations for their departments. (Dur- ing the first session of the Legislature, in October 1972, neither the Premier nor any other minister presented programs for action or spoke in general terms of what they wished to accomplish.) In consequence the ministers turned to task forces, consultants, and commissions of inquiry to recommend policy. The proliferation of policy groups at the departmental level provided a striking contrast to the scarcity of such groups at the inter-departmental or cabinet level.

The policy groups, many of which held public hearings in major centres, provided a ready channel, quite outside the regular bureaucracy, for new proposals from the public and from relevant professions and interest groups. Understandably, many of those appointed to the policy groups, or hired by the groups, were chosen because of their general support for the NDP. The party organization, however, played no evident part in the process; nor was the formal party program a factor of importance. In most cases the decision as to accepting proposals from the policy groups was left entirely to individual ministers. Just as there had been no planning or coordination in the selection of, and in prescribing terms of reference for, the policy groups, so there was none in the evaluation and implementation of proposals. As a result ministers tended to favour proposals that gave promise of increasing ministerial control over departments, of increasing the activities of departments, and increasing ministerial bargaining power within the cabinet. Proposals that required the cooperation of two or more departments fared badly - only a very few were implemented. One major proposal (which I shall discuss subsequently) calling for an increase in staff and capability for the Treasury Board was rejected by the minister concerned.

The proposals of many policy groups called for the creation of new agencies with policy-making and implementation responsibilities. Most ministers accepted these proposals. In all the NDP established some twenty-five new agencies outside the regular departments and completely restructured some half-dozen existing agencies. Among the more notable of the new agencies were the Labour Relations Board, the Development Corporation, the Energy Commission, the Petroleum Corporation, the Police Commission, the Justice Development Commission, the Insurance Corporation, the Rentalsman, the Human Rights Commission, the Land Commission, the Institute for Economic Policy Analysis, and the Environment and Land Use Committee Secretariat. By creating and restructuring agencies the government met a number of needs and demands. First, in keeping with the Party's outlook, the policy-making activities and regulatory capacity of government were greatly



496 / Paul Tennant

expanded. Second, the individual ministers increased their own powers, for in most cases the new agencies were placed under ministerial direction. Third, the mere act of creating an agency provided a public show of action. Fourth, the agencies provided an extensive range of appointment opportunities for persons generally in support of the Party and the goals of the ministers. Finally, and above all, the creation of the new agencies allowed the government to bypass the regular bureaucracy. However, in creating the new agencies the government made no attempt to coordinate their multitudinous activities; nor, in most cases, was there any assurance that the agencies would in the long run remain amenable to ministerial direction. Even while the NDP

remained in office there were signs of growing autonomy among agencies, and problems of coordination, especially between departments and related agencies, were becoming apparent.

Within their departments a majority of the NDP ministers had little confidence in the senior officials appointed by the previous government. As a result a majority of the deputy ministers were replaced. Only one DM, a confidant of the former Premier, was actually dismissed, and then only after he declined to resign. A few retired or resigned conveniently. Seven (in Municipal Affairs, Education, Highways, Water Resources, Corrections Branch, Commercial Transport, and Department of the Attorney General) were demoted to the position of associate deputy minister. Two (in Lands and in Health) were given the position of 'special consultant.' Yet another, in a large resource department, was officially retained as DM but was ignored by the minister and was denied certain salary increases. On some organization charts his position was listed as ADM. However, he obtained his revenge. He agreed to resign at the end of 1975 and so received his salary increases. Then came the December election, allowing him to keep both his new salary and his old position.

The first wave of personnel changes at the senior level came in the spring of 1973 after many of the policy groups had made their reports. The reports often recommended new appointments and, as circumstance would have it, persons from the policy groups were often available for appointment. In her extensive study of senior appointments by the NDP, Cynthia Brand found that the NDP increased the number of DM and ADM positions from thirty-five to sixty and made a total of forty-eight appointments at this level. Of the appointees, twenty-two were outside the public service when the NDP took office. She concluded that most of the twenty-two were highly qualified professionals with considerable experience and that party patronage was not a major factor in these senior appointments (Brand, 1975:37-40). Among the outside appointees at this senior level only one or two could be considered to have been chosen on the basis of patronage while lacking qualifications. (At lower levels party patronage was almost certainly greater, although perhaps impossible to measure. Each of the six public servants interviewed who had personnel responsibilities under the NDP stated that party patronage under the NDP was equal to or greater than that under Social Credit.)

Within the regular bureaucracy in the middle levels where officials were not in frequent contact with ministers the defeat of Social Credit and the coming to power of the NDP induced a general atmosphere of freedom and innovation in policy-making and implementation. The middle-level officials took their




cues from the symbolic implications of the defeat of the old regime, from the public statements of ministers, and from such internal changes as the reduc- tion of restraints on travel and expense allowances and the removal of curbs on hiring. Many of these officials now felt free, as they had not under the penury and calvinism of the former government, to develop and apply their personal and professional values. Most of the new ministers explicitly en- couraged middle and low-level officials to bypass the senior officials in criticizing past policies and in recommending new ones. That senior officials appointed by the former government were not supported by the new ministers gave further impetus to reform at lower levels. A number of NDP ministers brought extraordinary energy to their task. As a result of their energy and the climate which they engendered the number and scope of innovations made under the NDP was undoubtedly greater than in any other forty-month period in British Columbia history.

Among the major departments, five stand out as having achieved comprehensive policy innovation under the NDP: Human Resources (social welfare), Health, Labour, Attorney General's (including the Corrections Branch), and the Department of Lands, Forests, and Water Resources. (The department standing out as having undertaken perhaps the fewest policy innovations was the Premier's Department of Finance.) The factor common to the five departments was a forceful minister sympathetic to the needs of client groups and supportive of progressive professional values at the middle levels of the departments. The Departments of Human Resources, Health, and the Attorney General exhibited several additional common features. The regular bureaucracies in all three departments embody established professions with well-developed values and goals. It was precisely in these three departments that professional values had been most suppressed by the previous government. The Premier's past dismissal from the Corrections Branch, for publicly seeking to remedy internal deficiencies, was a reminder of this fact. Moreover, the progressive professional values in these three departments were in harmony with the NDP view that government should serve and protect the weak and defenceless. The client groups of the departments are unorganized and largely voiceless, leaving government attitude rather than group pressure as a major determinant of policy. Reforms made in the three departments centered upon geographic decentralization, greatly increased citizen participation (including publicly-elected boards to administer social welfare), and procedural reforms allowing for hearing and redress of citizen complaints.

In contrast to these three departments, the Department of Education, the other major department concerned with social policy, had a weak minister and entrenched clientele groups (the teachers and the trustees). It faltered badly under the NDP and produced no major innovations. Even though abso- lute expenditures increased in Education, as they did in every other department, the proportion of gross expenditure devoted to Education declined from thirty per cent under Social Credit to twenty-three per cent during the last full fiscal year under the NDP.

The implementation of collective bargaining with public servants illustrates the major elements of the NDP policy process. Moreover, it was the only NDP



498 / Paul Tennant

policy to affect all departments of government in a substantial way. The responsibility for implementing collective bargaining was assumed by Pro- vincial Secretary Ernest Hall, the minister in charge of the Civil Service Commission. A commission of inquiry recommended that the Treasury Board be given the staff and responsibility for bargaining on behalf of the government. The csc would be replaced by a 'Public Service Employment Commission' and, independent of ministerial control, a 'Public Service Ad- judication Board' to adjudicate matters arising from collective agreements. The Provincial Secretary rejected these recommendations.4 The eventual legislation changed the name of the csc to 'Public Service Commission' and gave it, rather than Treasury Board, the task of bargaining for the government. Although the legislation did state that the psc, in its bargaining role, was to be acting on behalf of and under the direction of the Treasury Board, the Provincial Secretary was a member of the Board and had made it clear that no staff was to be given to the Board. The legislation also provided for an independent grievance board but it was never brought into existence by the NDP. All in all collective bargaining was set up in such a way that the power of the minister in charge of implementation was considerably enhanced. He, rather than the Treasury Board, was in fact given charge of collective bargaining, for he retained control of the Psc. Furthermore, no independent grievance board was established and the minister remained the main channel of com- munication between the expanded Pse and both the Treasury Board and the Cabinet.

Quite different from the reform of the Psc, but still illustrative of the latitude allowed the more forceful ministers, were the creation of the Institute for Economic Policy Analysis (IEPA) and the development of the Environment and Land Use Committee (ELUC) of Cabinet along with the ELUC Secretariat. In both cases the minister responsible was Robert Williams, Minister of Lands, Forests and Water Resources. IEPA and ELUC mark the only attempts under the NDP (aside from establishing the position of Planning Advisor to the Cabinet) to plan and coordinate policy beyond the level of individual departments. IEPA was to be a 'think tank' in which academics and public servants would conduct policy research. It was established, with a $5 million endow- ment, as part of the University of Victoria. Walter Young, the most prominent academic supporter of the NDP in the province, was appointed chairman of the board, and Mason Gaffney, an American economist whose views were osten- sibly similar to those of the minister, was appointed director. IEPA did not have any observable effect on government policy, however, for departments did not seek to use the Institute and, more importantly, relations between the director and the minister became strained. As a research institute, on the other hand, IEPA accomplished a great deal in a very short time and showed high potential for academic public policy research.

ELUC and its secretariat effected or facilitated major changes in structure, operation, and policy within the natural resource departments. Although ELUC and the secretariat were the most notable institutions of planning and coordination developed under the NDP, their actual origin rested not with the

4 He explained his reasons for doing so in Hansard (25 October 1973:973).




NDP but, ironically, with the previous government's Environment and Land Use Act of 1971. The Act established ELUC and gave the cabinet, when acting upon recommendations of ELUC, extremely broad powers to protect the environment. In spite of these powers, or perhaps because of them, the Social Credit government made little use of the committee. It was Williams who recognized its potential. Under his chairmanship it came to have eight other ministers and a secretariat of more than a hundred. The senior staff came from outside the public service, were selected by the minister, and worked under his direction. In the various governmental manuals and organization charts the secretariat was always shown as directly responsible to the minister - usually as part of his department and as co-equal with the other three branches.5 The secretariat was not linked with the cabinet and was not regarded as an agency of cabinet.

ELUC and the secretariat were 'responsible for broad environmental and land use policy,' for directing 'major land and resource allocation studies throughout the province on an interdepartmental basis,' and for attaining solutions in 'cases related to resource use and development where problems cannot be handled simply and directly, where frustration levels are too high, where areas are too complex, or too many departmental interests are affected.'6 The secretariat served greatly to increase the influence of the minister in cabinet just as it served as an information and control mechanism allowing him to bypass senior public servants in his department. The secretariat became the major organizer, consumer, and disseminator of policy research within the government; in so doing it took over the role presumably intended for IEPA. The secretariat stimulated such major policy innovations as the reservation of agricultural land and impelled major reforms in the resource departments - the most important of these being the restructuring of each of the departments into seven geographic 'resource management re- gions,' each with an interdepartmental resource management committee. ELUC and the secretariat were agencies having major effect even while the NDP was in office. Even though they stand as the major exception to the NDP' s lack of concern over inter-departmental planning and coordination, they at the same time exemplify that lack of concern, for they were developed not by the cabinet but by one minister and they operated within one group of departments under the direction of the one minister.

POLICY OUTCOMES: PUBLIC OWNERSHIP AND ECONOMIC CONTROL

Although I have already indicated a number of policy outcomes under the NDP government, it is appropriate to examine the specific areas of public ownership and economic control, for it is in these areas that the NDP might be expected to make important changes. The former Social Credit government, despite its rhetorical defence of free enterprise, had made substantial steps into the field of public ownership, through both expropriation and purchase, in the areas of transportation and electric power generation and distribution.

5 Bc Public Service Commission (1975-76) Organization of the Public Service. See under 'Depart- ment of Lands, Forests, and Water Resources.'

6 Ibid.



500 / Paul Tennant

The NDP government took only a few tentative steps into the field of public ownership (expropriating not a single private enterprise) but did take some substantial steps, as the previous government had not, into the neighbouring field of economic controls.

The NDP government purchased control of a dozen ailing pulp and paper mills and acquired control of a half-dozen food-processing plants in financial difficulty. The mills became profitable under public ownership (and Williams' direction) while the food processing plants remained in difficulty. To implement specific policies in the fields of housing and transportation the government purchased one housing development company, one cruise ship, and three small bus companies. In addition the government purchased shares in some corporations, including the British Columbia Telephone Company, the only large private utility company remaining in the province. In sum, however, the NDP actions in the field of public ownership were inconsequential.

Perhaps the clearest expression of the NDP desire to limit the influence and profit-taking of private corporations came in four major actions imposing economic controls. The government imposed stringent development controls on mining companies and imposed a flat-rate production tax rather than a tax on mining profits. Through the Petroleum Corporation the government assumed complete control of natural gas pricing and marketing. Through the Insurance Corporation the government assumed complete control of automobile insurance and removed private insurance companies from the automobile insurance field. Through the Land Commission the government clas- sified all land in the province and imposed rigid control over the use of agricultural land. These four actions undoubtedly provoked more intense and sustained opposition to the NDP than did any other actions of the government.7

THE 1975 ELECTION AND RETURN OF SOCIAL CREDIT

By the summer of 1975 unease permeated the cabinet. Major strikes were crippling the provincial economy. Inflation was eroding the province's inter- national trading position. In the autumn the government called a special session of the Legislature to force the strikers back to work. Subsequently a three-month price-freeze was imposed. It was by this time clear that the March 1976 budget would show a pronounced deficit. This last point was the most distressing to the Premier.8 Not long after announcing the price-freeze, and without consulting the cabinet (several leading ministers were absent from Victoria at the time) the Premier called an election for I I December. The NDP campaign again stressed Barrett's personality, ignored policy, and used the slogan 'Don't let them take it away.' The Social Credit campaign stressed the NDP's inefficiency and waste, but attacked only the economic control policies of the NDP. As the table above shows, the NDP was defeated - not through loss of popular support, which remained at almost exactly the same

7 Rent control and the price-freeze of late 1975 might be added to the list, although they were not directed at large corporations.

8 The former ministers and the party activists interviewed are unanimous in agreeing on this point.




level as in 1972 (and in fact increased in actual numbers of votes from 448,000 in 1972 to 5o5,ooo in 1975) but through the success of Social Credit in gaining support.

The new Social Credit government, like the NDP, came to power with various predilections but with commitments to only a few specific policies. Chief among these were proposals to remove the mining controls, change the mineral tax, and remove the government monopoly in automobile insurance. These commitments were met in 1976. In addition the new government removed the major elements of local citizen influence in the Human Re- sources and Health Departments. It also made attempts to sell the unprofit- able food processing plants and it abolished IEPA. Aside from making these symbolically important but limited changes, the new government accepted the policy outcomes of the NDP. The Land Commission and Petroleum Corporation were continued, as indeed was every one of the policy-making and regulatory agencies established by the NDP. In a sense even the NDP'S senior personnel policy was continued, for the new government, like the NDP, replaced a majority of officials at the deputy minister and associate deputy minister level. In sum, the two parties appear to differ remarkably little in terms of preferred policy outcomes - iconoclastic though this conclu- sion may be in the context of the public rhetoric of British Columbia politics.

It is in terms of the policy process that the new Social Credit government differs sharply from the NDP. The new government proceeded immediately to develop planning and control agencies at the cabinet level. In general the innovations were copied from other Canadian governments. New cabinet committees, including a Committee on Planning and Priorities, chaired by the Premier, and subsequently a Committee on Legislation, were established. Guidelines were established requiring that all submissions to cabinet go first to a committee and procedures were imposed to ensure that all affected departments and agencies would evaluate proposals at the committee level. ELUC was now made a functioning committee of cabinet while the secretariat' s role was reduced. The office of Planning Advisor to the Cabinet was abolished but a new agency, the Office of Intergovernmental Relations, was established within the Premier's Office to coordinate inter-governmental affairs, to provide staff support for the Premier, and to provide staff for the cabinet committees. At the impetus of the Premier a substantial Treasury Board Staff was established and given responsibility for program analysis and financial coordination, as well as for collective bargaining with the public service. All appointees to senior positions in the Office of Intergovernmental Relations and in the Treasury Board staff were chosen from outside the public service. By the end of the new government's first year it was evident that the new cabinet level structures were having substantial effect upon the policy process although it was still too early to assess their full consequences.

SUMMARY

Although many innovations were made by NDP ministers at the level of their own departments, the NDP government's overall policy process was marked by absence of planning and absence of coordination and control. Like its



502 / Paul Tennant

predecessor the NDP cabinet sought to function without staff or staff agencies and even without extensive use of committees. Yet, because of the particular nature of its goals, the Social Credit government has been able to plan and attain coordination even in the absence of explicit structures. The Social Credit goals were those of economic development; the consequent demands were for railways, ferries, ports, highways, bridges, dams, power lines, and pipelines. Massive though some of them were, the individual projects required technical rather than social planning. Similarly, coordination among projects was a straightforward technical matter. Individual projects could often be contracted out to private enterprise. One man and one cabinet, guided by a consistent and comprehensive vision of the province's future, could set priorities, authorize construction, and evaluate progress.

NDP goals and demands were quite different. In the first place the goals were not reducible to a single phrase; much less were they elements in a grand holistic vision. There are many ways to change the status quo, to help the little man, and to curb the corporations. Thus, in the first place the NDP required some means of identifying its own major goals. The government brought no deliberate means to this task. As a result there was at the time, just as there is now in retrospect, no consensus on what major goals the NDP was pursuing. The de facto goals were those appropriated and propelled by the more forceful ministers. Many of these de facto goals sought social change and individual betterment. The consequent demands were for complex, long- term, and inter-related programs whose implementation, quite unlike the projects of the previous government, required the setting of program priorities, the ensuring of detailed inter-departmental cooperation, the evaluation of continuing performance, and the overall control of program expenditures. Unaided politicians in an unaided cabinet proved able to meet these requirements in only a rudimentary way.

REFERENCES

Brand, Cynthia (1975) 'The Recruitment of Deputy and Associate Deputy Ministers by the New Democratic Party in British Columbia,' M.A. Thesis, Department of Political Studies, Queen's University.

British Columbia, Institute for Economic Policy Analysis (1976) Report. Mimeo (IEPA, University of Victoria)

British Columbia, Public Service Commission (annual) Organization of the Public Service Of British Columbia, Mimeo (Psc Staff Training Division)

Brownstone, Meyer (1971) 'The Douglas-Lloyd Governments: Innovation and Bureaucratic Response,' in Essays on the Left, ed. by L. La Pierre et al (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart)

Cadbury, George (1971) 'Planning in Saskatchewan,' in Ibid. Crook, R.L. (1976) 'Towards a Land Use Management Philosophy in British Colum-

bia,' Mimeo., distributed by ELUC Secretariat, Victoria. Deutsch, John J. (I973) 'Governments and their Advisors,' Canadian Public Ad-

ministration, xvi, Spring, 25-34. Fowke, D.V. (1976) 'New Structures of Policy Coordination,' paper presented at the

annual meeting of the Institute of Public Administration of Canada, Halifax.



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Hills, Nick (1972) article in Vancouver Daily Province, 26 August. Morley, J. Terence (1976) 'The Justice Development Commission: Overcoming

Bureaucratic Resistance to Innovative Policy-Making,' Canadian Public Adminis- tration, xix, Spring, I2I-139.

Resnick, Phillip (1977) 'Social Democracy in Power,' B.C. Studies (forthcoming) Sidor, Nick (i977) 'The Structure of Policy Planning and Financial Management in

British Columbia, 1972-1977: A Province in Transition,' Graduating Essay, De-

partment of Political Science, University of Victoria, April. Stow, William (I976) interview in Vancouver Sun, 6 December. Yandle, Sharon (1976) 'Defeat by Attitude?' Priorities [Magazine of the Women's

Caucus of the BC NDP] IV, January.



the ndp government of british columbia: unaided politicians in an unaided cabinet

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