October 15, 2005

Rafe's Hard Talk

For many years I've thought that it was a great tragedy that Grace McCarthy didn't become Leader of the Social Credit Party. If Mike de Jong hadn't defeated her by just 42 votes in the February 17, 1994 by-election in Masqui, she might have become Premier. She might have defeated the NDP in 1996, helping the NDP avoid a bad five years. That also would have deprived Gordon Campbell of the opportunity to hijack Gordon Wilson's Liberals and parlay it into the "New Era". History is made of "what-might-have-beens".

As events did unfold, I resigned as a senior advisor from the Premier's Office in early January 2001. Within weeks Rafe Mair asked me to appear on his morning talk show on CKNW. That soon became a regular weekly appearance in the format of "cross-talk", a partisan political debate between me and a representative from the BC Liberals. Within two months of Rafe moving to 600 AM in 2003, I followed and joined him, continuing our weekly debates with Erin Airton acting as the apologist for the Campbell government. Despite our heated exchanges on-air, we always got along, and the three of us shared mutual respect, off-air.

The announcement that Rafe Mair will no longer be broadcasting on 600 AM is a loss for British Columbia. He described his show as BC's "only hard talk". Most guests would have to admit that Rafe pulled no punches; he knows what he is talking about and doesn't need a script to form an intelligent supplementary question.

Mair caused me enormous grief when I was MLA. We were on opposite sides of many issues, not the least of which was the Charlottetown Accord. He won, and I lost a third of my constituency membership over that issue. Now, over ten years later, I find myself very disappointed that he will be deprived of a microphone.

Don't miss Rafe's regular columns on The Tyee.ca.