Gordon Campbell apparently got his personal problem in order; but what about our social one?

A drunk driver is steering this province. Years later, it still boggles my mind.

I’m not amazed so much by what it says about our Premier as by what it says about the rest of us.

Consider, by comparison, how we’ve driven other BC politicians out of office for morality-related indiscretions.

There were the questionable free home renovations from a casino licence recipient that prompted NDP Premier Glen Clark’s resignation.

Remember “Bingogate”? A former minister had embezzled money from a charity, and NDP Premier Mike Harcourt resigned due to events which had primarily transpired years before his arrival.

Then there was the “Judi Tyabji Affair”, an extra-marital flirtation memorable to me for the endearing sweetness of its leaked emails. The months of lecherous headlines, though, got Liberal leader Gordon Wilson ousted — for Gordon Campbell.

Yet we actually voted Campbell back into power, after he’d been caught driving drunk. Yes, Campbell endured some public slagging, but nothing compared to the cliff those other three leaders got driven off. A mere week after the highly publicized arrest, the Times-Colonist reported (without hint of irony, let alone horror) that Campbell was given three standing ovations from the BC Truck Loggers Association-one before he even spoke. Note, that’s TRUCK Loggers Association, with its many members professionally responsible for massive, precariously loaded vehicles driving around our highways!

“The public has been very generous and certainly incredibly kind to me over the last week and that goes right to my heart,” commented Campbell. By contrast, check TV archives to be reminded of Harcourt and Clark’s ashen, haggard faces at press scrum badgerings weeks into their respective controversies.

“It’s about public perception,” comments Mothers Against Drunk Driving CEO Andrew Murie. “Most Canadians do not see drunk driving as a criminal offense.”

Indeed, does anyone think Campbell could’ve survived as Premier if he’d been busted wearing panty-hose during a convenience store burglary? Gotten handcuffed while hocking leftover painkillers in Centennial Square? Been outed as a cocaine addict? He’d be lucky to be out of jail. And let’s not even speak about if he’d done something comparably dangerous to others, like rape or attempted murder.

Drinking and driving is so common we’re inured to how vile a social crime it is. Yet imagine a man, with senses and reaction times blurred by drugs, firing up a two-ton metal and glass missile and dashing away. Now, soften that image to something less dangerous, like a sober man waving a randomly-firing gun in the street, and you’ll have a sense for how strange and deep is our cultural tolerance for drinking and driving.

Yet, points out Murie, “Drunk driving is the number one criminal cause of death in this country.”

At four deaths per day, drunk driving kills twice as many people as all homicides combined. MADD further calculates impaired drivers injure hundreds of Canadians daily and cause hundreds more property damage incidents.

After reductions in the late 90s, problems have been fluctuating or worsening nationally. The Traffic Injury Research Foundation found 80% of British Columbians are “very” or “extremely” concerned, collectively ranking drinking and driving more worrying than pollution, the economy, crime, health care or climate change. Evidently, though, it’s not more concerning than being inconvenienced driving home. One in five admit to driving after drinking in the previous month. One in ten admit to driving that year while believing they were plastered. This, even though 90% are drinking with others who could influence transportation choices, and one-third of us have had a close friend or relative victimized by a drunk driver.

Still more evidence of our mixed “concern” about drunk driving: our porous restaurant and bar laws.

We’ve heaped most of the responsibilities on servers themselves for cutting off drunken customers and intervening in their attempts to drive off. Yet serving is generally a low-paid, high-turnover sector, with little job security and huge dependence on patron tips, dominated by young people who incidentally happen to have the highest rates of drunk driving. Even our government’s mandatory “Serving It Right” alcohol licence training program describes liability cases exposing businesses that “did not enforce the program at all”.

This program makes many excellent “suggestions” for enforcing the regulations more effectively, most of which are universally ignored. For instance, the program suggests businesses should prominently display policies and rules regarding drinking patrons. Great idea! And who’s ever seen such a thing?

We can’t blame restaurants and bars alone, though-wouldn’t a lot of us find such a sign paternalistic and irritating, as opposed to appealing and reassuring?

Why talk about all this now? Well, Campbell’s pledge to reform drinking-driving laws stalled far short of expert recommendations. And as a symbolic metaphor, this summarizes well the Campbell regime’s eight years of public asset firesales, misguided privatizing, rampant deregulating, critical service cuts and accountability off-loading. Indeed, if you aren’t already familiar with the wide-ranging, wanton disregard this government has consistently shown for the perspectives and lives of anyone other than their friends partying inside the car with them, just review their mean-spirited running-over of even widely-respected critics like the Auditor General, Information and Privacy Commissioner, and child advocate.

So please, if you’re one of the apparent 30-some percent who’ll still be voting for a drunk driver, at least endorse the Single Transferable Vote, too. That way, perhaps the concerns and lives of the other 70% of us will someday also have a measure of value.