Bennett expects to get boot from caucus

Share

Ousted energy minister Bill Bennett, who caused a sensation in B.C. politics this week by accusing Premier Gordon Campbell of being an abusive bully, says he is boycotting a caucus meeting in Vancouver Friday where he expects the "premier's gang" will have him fired from that body too.

The Premier and some in cabinet were suggesting Thursday that the embattled caucus would make the call on the fate of the Kootenay East MLA, an elected Liberal since 2001.

But as he packed up his cabinet office in Victoria, Mr. Bennett said he can see the outcome ahead.

"I rather expect the premier's gang will want to eject me, but I don't think me being there is appropriate under the circumstances. They can have a more honest and open discussion if I am not there," he said.

Mr. Bennett said he remains a loyal Liberal, supportive of the party's re-election in 2013 for a fourth term, but that his fate is in the caucus's hands.

Caucus colleagues, he said, have called to say they want him to remain.

"It would be better if I were in the tent than outside the tent, but the choice is theirs. They have already decided to eject me from one tent and they may decide to eject me from this tent," he said.

Mr. Bennett was fired by cabinet Wednesday because of his comments in the media suggesting Mr. Campbell, who has announced he will leave once a new leader is elected by the party in February, should leave now.

On Thursday, he suggested the cabinet that ousted him could oust Mr. Campbell, calling for his early departure.

"That should have been done some time ago. It's probably too late for this cabinet to do that. They have kind of backed themselves into a corner," he said.

"The fact that they fired me for saying he should leave - I can't imagine they are going to turn around and fire him. Could they? They sure could."

Finance Minister Colin Hansen, speaking for cabinet, said this week that the cabinet backed Mr. Campbell's timetable for his departure.

Some Liberals closed ranks around Mr. Campbell. Solicitor General Rich Coleman was applauded at the beginning of a speech to the Urban Development Institute in Vancouver when he said Mr. Bennett's remarks were an embarrassment to people in public life and defended the Premier.

"What he described is not what I have known for 15 years. I would tell you right now there has never been that type of thing expressed except by this member," Mr. Coleman said in an interview, suggesting caucus will make the call on whether Mr. Bennett should be kicked out.

"What happened yesterday probably put a pall on anybody in public life, and I think anybody in public life would be frustrated with it."

Mr. Campbell had a respite from the political turmoil Thursday night as he was honoured as Builder of the Decade by the B.C. Construction Association. About 800 people attended a gala dinner at the Vancouver Convention Centre, where the Premier was saluted for his record presiding over billions of dollars in schools, hospitals, transit efforts and other projects during his time in power.

"I could be up all night talking about the projects you led and got on the books in B.C.," BC Hydro chair Dan Doyle told the audience, including the premier and his family.

Mr. Campbell, sporting a ceremonial white hardhat, made no direct reference to the questions about his departure, but joked about the hardhat.

"There are days when I think we should use this plastic for a body suit," mused Mr. Campbell, who received three standing ovations during the ceremony.

Among Mr. Bennett's remarks was the suggestion that his former boss was "not a nice man," and suggestions that the Premier once chewed him out so ferociously he was spitting in his face. He also said Mr. Campbell had driven some female members of cabinet and caucus from politics. Mr. Campbell has denied all of it.

But Mr. Bennett said he was standing by everything he said, though he regretted suggesting the government caucus and cabinet suffers from "almost a battered wife syndrome."

"I went to a place that politicians don't normally go. We don't like to share our dirty laundry typically," he said. "Desperate times call for desperate measures and I guess I am the only one prepared to go out and say publicly what a whole bunch of us were thinking."

Former deputy premier Christy Clark, who quit Mr. Campbell's cabinet and politics before the 2005 election, said the Premier was a "very, very tough man to work for," but that those qualities had nothing to do with his resignation.

"He likes control too much, and he is profoundly impatient with people who he thinks are too slow to catch up, but I did not leave politics because of that. I am thick-skinned and I am very used to dealing with difficult people. I am even used to being yelled at sometimes and that's not why I left. I left because my son, at a little over three years old, needed way more of me than he was getting," she said on her talk show on CKNW Radio Thursday.