Gordon Campbell (Canadian politician)
Premier Campbell with Queen Elizabeth II
Gordon Campbell is the current Premier of British Columbia. He is the leader of the BC Liberal Party, which holds a substantial majority in the Legislative Assembly of British Columbia.
From 1986 to 1993, Campbell served as the Mayor of Vancouver, British Columbia for three terms. He was also a secondary school teacher, basketball and track coach in Yola, Nigeria, working under the auspices of CUSO. He and his family climbed Mount Kilimanjaro as a fundraiser for Alzheimer's, raising $130,000.
Campbell became leader of the British Columbia Liberal Party in 1995. His party failed to be elected to power in the 1996 Provincial election despite winning a plurality of the vote. He remaned opposition leader under NDP Premiers Glen Clark and Ujjal Dosanjh and was an outspoken critic of the various scandals that were dogging the government. In the election of 2001 he beat Premier Dosanjh and the NDP in a massive landslide victory, one of the largest in Canadian History. His party won all but two seats in the legislature.
One of Campbell's pet causes has been political reform. A major change of his administration is that he introduced fixed-term elections for BC, departing from the standard British parliamentary procedure, so that governments fall on schedule, and parties know when the election is, as in the USA. The next election slated for BC is in May 2005, exactly four years after the last one in May 2001.
Campbell also founded a "citizens' assembly" composed of random British Columbians from around the province. The assembly is currently debating how to reform BC's electoral system, and may advise the government to adopt proportional representation voting in future elections.
Another major policy initiative was Campbell's removal of an 8-year long tuition freeze that was placed on the B.C. universities by the NDP government. The tuition freeze had kept B.C. tuition rates at the lowest in Canada and may have been a factor that forced B.C.'s universities to engage is massive cutbacks to its services and quality of education. In 2002 he also introduced the "double the opportunity" initiative, whose goal was to double enrollment in electrical and computer engineering, computer science, and medicine in the next four years.
On January 9, 2003, Campbell became the first premier in Canadian history to be arrested while in office when he was caught by police in Maui, Hawaii speeding while under the influence of alcohol. He later apologized to the people of Maui and British Columbia, and publicly swore off alcohol. Campbell came under attack for not resigning his position since he earlier established a rule that any cabinet minister under criminal investigation must resign.
Controversy and a media frenzy developed over the matter and public protests on the issue soon followed (complete with T-shirts bearing Campbell's mug shots). Mother's Against Drunk Driving, the opposition BC New Democratic Party under its leader Joy MacPhail, and the Green Party of British Columbia under Adrianne Carr, all called on him to resign but supporters of Campbell contend that he is not, nor never has been, a heavy drinker. Campbell's father was an alcoholic who committed suicide when Gordon was 13 years old. Many people criticized Campbell of being hypocritical for not resigning when he was arrested, remembering the fact that whilst he was in Opposition, he constantly called on the Government for resignation when its members were involved in comparatively minor scandals.
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Preceded by: Ujjal Dosanjh 2000-2001 |
Premier of British Columbia since 2001 |
Succeeded by: in office |