In the Northwest: Protests heating up in a B.C. run by far right

VANCOUVER, B.C. -- Beneath a dark and foreboding sky, the largest demonstration seen in the Northwest since Seattle's WTO fireworks brought traffic to a halt Saturday in Canada's third-largest city.

It is unlikely, however, that the protest will slow the layoffs of public employees, closures of long-term care facilities or shutdowns of hospitals and courts being instituted by the ultraconservative government of B.C. Premier Gordon Campbell.

What Campbell calls "special interest groups" were in the streets -- Indian drummers, anti-poverty activists, burly longshoremen and construction workers, college students, greens and doctors frustrated by a fee dispute with the government.

But the march by up to 30,000 people may have led nowhere. With 77 of 79 seats in the provincial Legislature, Campbell's B.C. Liberal Party -- despite its name, a party of the political right -- can rule as a kind of elected dictatorship.

"I think that's dangerous because when you have legitimate democratic avenues of protest shut down, people get more and more disturbed. I think you'll see more and more unrest," George Heyman, president of the B.C. Government Employees Union, said as he marched.

Already there are signs of anger and unrest.

Campbell's constituency office was recently firebombed, and an incendiary device exploded early this month at a Vancouver school where his wife is vice principal.