Canadian DUers: Worst Premier in Modern Canadian History...

[Sephirstein]

I call it a toss up between Quebec's Maurice Duplessis and B.C's Bill Vander Zalm.

(Dis)honurable mentions to Jacques Parizeau, Bernard Landry, and Ralph Klein (Klein's even worse than you'd think. He had a tax-and-spend ideology until he tried to outdo the original Common Sense Revolution, put forth by the Alberta Liberal Party. He's now back to his old ways. Thus, he's a bigot, a liar, and has no clearly defined economic vision.)

As for Mike Harris or Ernie Eves, there's a different between moralistic, corrupt bigots and people who are wrong about economic policy. (although some may argue that having John Snobelen in your cabinet makes you as bad as most of the others I listed.)

I'm tempted to put Mike Harcourt and Glen Clark in the (dis)honourable mentions section of this list...But I don't feel comfy doing that on a left-of-centre site.

[glarius]

1. I loathe and despise Mike Harris and his so-called "common sense"

revolution....He did a lot of harm to this province...the bastard!

[Lisa]

2. feel free to put Glen Clark's name up there!

I think most NDPers would agree with you. (Which isn't to say that I agree with the way the press trumpeted the stuff about the cedar deck .... I laughed out loud when the judge said that it was hard to call such a botched job a bribe!)

Harcourt, though -- he did win the election fair and square. And he did do the honourable thing about the Bingogate scandal (more so than most other politicians would have). If you include Mike, you've also got to include most of the BC premiers over the past 3 decades, who were either worse or did nothing at all ...

[Sephirstein]

5. I guess you're right...

Much of what I've read about Harcourt seems to have been written by Fantasy Gardens Bible Thumping Socred morans.


BTW, is it true the Socreds had a more progressive faction?

[Spazito]

6. The Socreds were a mix of disaffected right leaning voters...

very much the same ones that are the "Liberal" party in B.C. They are not liberals in any of the traditional senses.

[Minstrel Boy]

3. Grant Devine of Saskatchewan

seemed to be an incompotent, corrupt and ideological disaster.

The worst I lived under was Mike Harris. What an arrogant horror show that was.

[Sephirstein]

4. People wanted a dictator...:(

For whatever reason, a lot of people got fed up with having a policy wonk consensus fanatic like Bob Rae.

Oh well...lol...That guy really pissed me off when he wrote a recent editorial suggesting that the NDP move to the centre.

But what should we expect? The man's become a fat cat in a corporate ivy tower, so unlike what I'd expect from a New Democrat. (I bet Hampton or Layton would never go in that direction, anyways. Layton's playing it smart to play nice with the separatists. The Péquistes do have the odd progressive, and the NDP needs all the help it can get in a province where the marijuana party routinely trounces it...lol...(Note...I'd vote Marijuana Party if I lived in P.C.))

Care to tell me more about Grant Devine? Is he the guy who disgraced the PC Party of Saskatchewan? I heard former PC cronies are running the Sask party...Lorne Calvert better have a damn strong campaign.

[RBHam]

7. Grant Devine almost destroyed Saskatchewan

His PC Government was a den of thieves and liars.

[Sephirstein]

8. How bad was it?

Worse than Vander Zalm's or Duplessis'?

On Edit:

Well, it probably is: They may have been corrupt bigots (particularly the latter), but they never came anywhere near destroying their provinces.