The Written Word: Rafe Mair July 11

By Rafe Mair

Bruce Strachan has offered to match his legislative record against mine. Fair enough.

My Deputy Minister of Consumer and Corporate Affairs, Tex Enemark, a highly regarded expert in public policy who has been chair of a number of government commissions and many privately sponsored policy papers, a man highly regarded across the country for his knowledge of government, reminded me a few years ago that "you sponsored 22 bills in the Legislature in two sessions, a record never equaled by anyone before or since. Your administrative changes were equally substantial. You re-wrote the fundamentals of the province’s liquor and licensing laws."  

I can add that this liquor policy included huge changes in wine policy and Tex and I can take credit for creating the government rules which spawned the hugely successful wine industry in the Okanagan and elsewhere in the province. Other changes resulted in the Hotel Pub which got rid of the appalling Beer Parlours.

We forced Canada’s banks to obey BC laws - they had hitherto taken the view that as federally incorporated companies they need only obey federal law. This resulted in a total revamping by banks of lending policy in British Columbia. One of the pieces of legislation included in Tex’s 22 was the Motor Dealers Licensing Act done with 6 car dealers, much opposed, in caucus, two of them in Cabinet.

We protected people, often elderly, who were stranded abroad because the tour company defaulted.

When I was Environment Minister I negotiated the deal with Seattle Light and Power that stopped them raising the Ross Dam and making the beautiful Skagit River into a tree filled lake.

For over three years I was the Minister responsible for Constitutional Affairs at the time Pierre Trudeau was patriating the BNA Act.

As Minister of Health I brought in the Palliative Care Program and Home Care. For much of this time I was a director of ICBC. 

Permit me to recite the last paragraph of Mr. Enemark’s letter.

"It is quite a record, Rafe ... it is a record you should be proud of because a great many people will benefit for a very long time because these were things you believed in and saw through to implementation. There were no Commonwealth Trust type of scandals when you were minister (Remember Abacus Cities? [Tex refers to my refusal to allow a land developing company to issue highly questionable securities.]) and every time a tough decision came up, you made the right decision. You didn’t flinch or waver, and you never procrastinated. You always had your eye on the ball. Your departure from the public life of the province was a sad loss ... I think that if you were to have stood the pain of your teeth biting your tongue, you could have been premier. It would have been a better province and a better country had you been able to stand the discomfort."

I might have done more but I was too damned busy.

Rafe Mair

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