Bill Bennett - Premier of British Columbia

Premier of British Columbia

He became premier of the province in the 1975 election when his party defeated the New Democratic Party of Premier David Barrett. In the election of December 11, 1979, the Social Credit Party was re-elected with a reduced majority, followed by another one in the 1983 election. He served until August 6, 1986.

His cabinet included a vast array of politicians new to the provincial scene who would soon become some of BC's most prominent political players. These included Grace McCarthy, Bill Vander Zalm, Garde Gardom and Rafe Mair.

Inspired by conservative economist Milton Friedman, his government passed a series of laws, known as the "Restraint" program, which slashed social services and gutted labour laws in response to economic woes in 1983, provoking a general strike which further crippled the economy. To justify massive education cuts, Bennett blamed many of the province's difficulties squarely on the shoulders of public school teachers, an argument that deeply split the electorate. In several television interviews, he labeled those who disagreed with his policies as "Bad British Columbians."

On the other hand, his ostensibly anti-socialist government ironically spent hundreds of millions of dollars to bring the 1986 World Exposition to Vancouver, distributed free shares to British Columbians for the British Columbia Resources Investment Corporation or BCRIC, and spent hundreds of millions of dollars constructing the Coquihalla Highway with the controversial, non-union Kerkhoff Construction Company as the main contractor. His government also spent over $1 billion on the Northeast coal project to create jobs. Critics noted that by creating only 1,000 jobs, each job cost taxpayers $1 million. The coal project was a very successful venture after it was reviewed in 2000 by the press: Northeast Coal returned twice the revenues than were expended over its lifetime. The mass media acknowledged this point in its review of the project in 2000 - check the news reports from Global BC.