History was made in the BC Legislature on May 29th when the government forced an end to debate and called the vote on 8 bills, including the carbon tax and controversial changes to election legislation. The government's spin is that there was a legislative logjam caused by the Opposition taking too long to debate its bills. Anyone who is familiar with how the BC Legislature has worked for the past twenty or thirty years knows that the Campbell government is not telling the truth about closure.

In its ten years in power, the NDP used closure just once, on the Nisga'a Treaty after it received a record number of hours of debate. (After opposing that treaty then, Campbell now says he made a mistake.) Under both Social Credit and NDP governments, the tradition was to allow the legislature to sit as long as necessary to pass the business before it. If the government wanted to close the session early, it had to abandon some legislation. What usually happened was that the legislature sat until late June, or sometimes into July when the lure of the barbecues outweighed interest in debating.

The importance of allowing legislation to be fully debated is not just to satisfy the Opposition. It frequently takes some time for those affected by legislation to fully understand it, and exercise their right to lobby politicians and rally public opinion. By cutting off debate, the government is not just shutting-up and shutting-down the Opposition, it is cutting the public off from the right to participate in the democratic process.

Instead of using closure to end debate and force a vote, the Campbell government had two options. First, it could have amended the standing order which calls for adjournment on May 29th, and simply allow the legislature to continue sitting as it did prior to 2001. Second, it could have focused on its tax bill, which it needs before July 1st, so as to have it passed, and then put any outstanding legislation over to the fall legislative session, scheduled to come to order on October 6th (most observers doubt whether Campbell will allow a fall legislative session). Rather than go for either of those acceptable options, the Campbell government used its majority to shutdown the legislature and force the passage of legislation without full scrutiny and debate. At least one piece of that legislation, the gag-law, will soon be in the courts because the government's attempt to silence citizens the same way it silenced the legislature is not likely to withstand a constitutional challenge.

You have to wonder why the Campbell Liberals with their consistent, and substantial lead in the public opinion polls, would behave in such an undemocratic manner that it could lose support. One possibility is that they aren't really confident, and that they feel they have to resort to dirty tricks to hang onto power. A more likely scenario is that after 7 years in power they've grown too arrogant for their own good, and far too arrogant for the public's good. The only way the public can deal with an arrogant government is to cut it down to size on Election Day, May 12, 2009.