Foghorn Krueger will not leave quietly

Foghorn will not leave quietly.

Last week went from bad to worse for Kevin Krueger. The Kamloops-South Thompson MLA has progressed from being described as “boisterous” to “disruptive” to ”beleaguered” by the Big City media.

One of his NDP opponents offered the opinion that he’s “loud, vindictive, boorish and irrelevant.”

It began toward the end of the previous week when Krueger got in a row with independent Vicki Huntington and NDPer Scott Fraser in the legislature. The meeting chair shushed him for drowning them out when they were trying to speak.

It was barely worthy of mention, for Krueger has a long record of such exchanges.

However, he easily topped that performance by taking on B.C.’s judges, saying “There are many good judges, and there are some real bad apples…. We have some real problem people on the bench.”

And, “Some of those judges have no great drive to get things done, but they want to lecture, and they want to hector the government. I hope this upsets them enough to sit down and talk to each other and say, ‘Well, those things the MLA said today are true. We’ve got to stop having these disgraceful cases of people walking from the courts.’”

Which prompted a demand from the NDP’s Leonard Krog that Premier Christy Clark and Attorney-General Shirley Bond make Krueger withdraw his remarks.

“What Mr. Krueger said was simply, absolutely inappropriate.”

Indeed, Chief Justice of the B.C. Supreme Court Robert Bauman expressed his disappointment “with the tone and the tenor” of what Krueger said, and Bond acknowledged her own views “are different” from Krueger’s.

There were no reprimands or apologies were forthcoming.

All of which made headlines down at the Coast and on the Island. “Kevin Krueger is a boor and a bully,” offered Vancouver Sun columnist Craig McInnes under the headline, “Foghorn MLA Krueger an embarrassment to his profession.”

McInnes continued, “He is … a symbol of why so many Canadians have so little respect for politicians — the lack of respect they show for each other and the voters they represent.”

After which McInnes recited a litany — oft-reported upon in our own pages — of Krueger-career highlights including his about-turn on gambling, his derision of unionists, and his ungracious remarks on election night in 2005, which I well remember, being in the room at the time. (During his victory speech, Krueger said anyone who voted for the NDP “should give their heads a shake.”)

Krueger’s defence for slamming judges is that the state of the judiciary is “a big issue” with his constituents. If it is, they’ve been keeping it a closely guarded secret, at least from the local media who usually hear about it when voters are unhappy.

(On the other hand, Krueger said a couple of weeks ago he’d heard nothing from constituents in the way of complaints about over-crowding at Royal Inland Hospital even though the problem of beds in hallways hit the front pages.)

Some, of course, will be cheering him on for his guts and gusto, while others will suggest he’s hammering hard on the last nail in his political coffin.

Whichever it is, Foghorn is not — to borrow a phrase from Dylan Thomas — about to go gentle into that good night.