RATTLING THE SENATE

The Ex-Mountie And Coroner Who Shook Up The City Is Doing The Same In
The Sober Upper Chamber

Larry Campbell, the provocative former Vancouver mayor and ex-coroner,
is shaking up Canada's sleepy Senate much like the no-nonsense,
straight-talking character he inspired in the TV series Da Vinci's
Inquest and its successor, Da Vinci's City Hall.

It starts with the Liberal appointee's rather immodest official
biography, which stands out even in an ego-jammed institution
populated by former cabinet ministers, well-connected fundraisers, and
a smattering of celebrated Canadians like ex-NHL star Frank Mahovlich,
musician Tommy Banks, peacekeeper Romeo Dallaire and heart surgeon Dr.
Wilbert Keon.

"One of Vancouver's best known and most admired citizens, Larry W.
Campbell has served as mayor since 2002 after a distinguished and
high-profile career primarily in law enforcement and death
investigation," begins the official description provided to the Senate
by Campbell's office last year while he was still serving out his term
as mayor.

The biography goes on to describe the ex-Mountie-turned-coroner as the
inspiration and occasional screenwriter for the Gemini-award-winning
TV series Da Vinci's Inquest, and one of the participants in the
creation of the so-called "four pillar" approach to drug abuse that
includes a safe injection site for heroin addicts, a first for Canada,
in Vancouver's drug- and poverty-stained Downtown Eastside.

Campbell, asked if the biography is a little too self-promoting within
the stuffy gentlemen's club confines of Canada's reviled and unelected
upper chamber, counters that the sparkling adjectives are "fair
comment" and accurately reflect his reputation in his home city.

"I think I'm certainly one of the best-known," a half-grinning
Campbell tells The Vancouver Sun, while seated in a large Parliament
Hill office decorated with memorabilia ranging from the framed photo
of him as a young goaltender on the RCMP hockey team to the 2002
Vancouver Sun front page declaring his "landslide" victory in that
year's municipal election.

"I walk around here and people are coming up and wanting a picture
with me, and whenever I'm in Vancouver and I'm walking the streets,
they know me, they come and talk to me, [saying] 'How are things
going?' and 'What's going on?'

"The majority tell me they wish I was still mayor."

Campbell, renowned for his locker-room language, concludes: "What
would you like? Vancouver's biggest dickhead?"

Campbell, 58, has been similarly blunt in his interventions at Senate
proceedings, especially at committee hearings where he has rattled
several witnesses and irritated some of his upper chamber colleagues.

In one intense exchange earlier this month, Campbell lit into Treasury
Board Minister John Baird, who was pitching Prime Minister Stephen
Harper's Accountability Act now being studied by a Senate committee.

Campbell accused Baird of selling a "big lie" about alleged corrupt
behaviour by the former Liberal government, added that the minister
had delivered "another typical right-wing crappy blow," and declared:
"I'm not interested in talking to you, quite frankly" if Baird
continued to "throw crap around here."

"The kind of language you are using," Baird finally replied near the
end of their exchange over the legislation, "is beneath the dignity of
this place."

A rattled Tory Senator Anne Cools, speaking next, felt the need to
tell Baird there were "some very good senators" around the table,
adding that she "found the last few minutes quite disturbing" and
"quite bitter."

B.C. Conservative Senator Gerry St. Germain, who considers Campbell a
friend, doesn't have an unkind word for his political rival -- though
he says Campbell's considerable ego isn't a secret.

"Humility is not a part of his character," St. Germain said, before
remarking on Campbell's trademark fedora. "The way he walks around
with that hat on, I think he wants to be a movie star."

Marjory LeBreton, the government's leader in the Senate and a member
of the Harper cabinet, sounded almost charmed by Campbell in a June
interview.

"He's sort of larger than life, and he gets caught up in that euphoric
air in the Senate once in a while, but I think he's a genuine
character, there's no doubt about it. And I think he's actually quite
a nice person," LeBreton said.

"He kind of comes in, he fills the space. You know he's there."

But that was before Campbell berated Alain Jolicoeur, the
monotone-voiced head of the Canada Border Services Agency, for
allegedly taking a lax approach to Canada-U.S. border security.

Campbell accused Jolicoeur of "copping out" on major security issues,
even though many of the controversies related to Canada's allegedly
porous border relate to underfunding by the previous Liberal government.

Campbell also took an indirect shot during question period at
LeBreton, who was appointed to the Senate by Brian Mulroney and
remains one of the former prime minister's closest friends and admirers.

While asking a question on aboriginal rights, Campbell cited
Mulroney's controversial relationship with Karlheinz Schreiber, who is
still fighting extradition to Germany, where he faces charges of tax
evasion, fraud and breach of trust involving the sale of aircraft and
arms.

"While my comments to you earlier about him taking up a lot of space
and [being] generally charming and friendly [still stand], he has an
aggressive cheap-shot side to him that only emphasizes the fact that
the Liberals are having difficulty coming to terms with the fact that
they are no longer in government," LeBreton wrote in an e-mail to The
Sun.

"As an example of his aggressiveness, look no further than his
treatment of [Jolicoeur]. I saw it on TV and it came across as being
mean-spirited and unnecessarily hostile."

Campbell, who was still serving as mayor at the time, was a surprise
selection by then-prime minister Paul Martin last year.

It was viewed as a reward for Campbell's strong support of the Liberal
cities initiative, as well as his famous warning before the 2004
election that Stephen Harper's Conservatives were "barbarians at the
gate."

But the Liberals also saw Campbell as a political asset because of his
immense local popularity. An early 2005 poll of 491 Vancouver voters
showed two-thirds thought he was doing a good job as mayor and
deserved to be re-elected.

It was a recognition in part for his charismatic personality -- he
once said "the people have loved me and I've loved them back" -- as
well as his accomplishments. Those included campaigning on, and
successfully helping implement, the safe-injection site in the
Downtown Eastside.

Despite the public's "love affair" with "the most popular mayor in the
country," as one media report put it, Campbell announced on June 30 he
would leave politics when his term expired later that year.

He said he hated long nights on council and the petty battles within
his Coalition of Progressive Electors party, which was split between
left-wing Campbell critics who called themselves COPE Classics, and
his supporters, dubbed COPE Lites.

He was also diagnosed with heart-related health issues, though he
played that down as a major factor.

"Simply put, I'm not a politician," he said just a month before Martin
announced his appointment to so-called "patronage heaven."

Born in Brantford, Ont., Campbell began his career as an RCMP officer
in Vancouver in 1969. He later joined the force's drug squad, then
went to work for the B.C. government as a coroner in 1981. By 1996, he
was named chief coroner, investigating hundreds of unexpected or
suspicious deaths each year.

During his time as coroner, he loudly raised public awareness of the
"epidemic" of people dying on the street of drug overdoses.

He often sounded more like a politician than a public servant.

"If we're a caring society, we can't allow this to continue," he told
one interviewer in 1993.

Soaring public concern in the 1990s led to widespread public support
for the four-pillar approach of enforcement, treatment, prevention and
harm reduction. The latter spoke to the need for a safe-injection site
to reduce overdoses and HIV infections caused by shared needles.

It wasn't long before TV viewers across Canada, and in many countries
around the world, began seeing a somewhat sanitized version of what
goes on in Vancouver's mean streets.

Two years after being named chief coroner, Campbell was approached by
Vancouver screenwriter Chris Haddock, the brother of a Campbell friend
in Langley, looking for input on his plan to create a Vancouver-based
TV series on "something forensic."

"So we started meeting and from that came Da Vinci," Campbell
said.

He wrote or co-wrote 11 scripts, many dealing with some of the gritty
social issues facing public officials in the Downtown Eastside, and
regularly reviewed other scripts to ensure authenticity.

Haddock said Campbell was a guiding force in Da Vinci's Inquest from
the get-go.

"I would ask him stuff like, 'If this happened, what would you do?'
'What does the place look like?' He got me a pass to look at the
morgue, for example," Haddock recalled in an interview.

Haddock remains a big admirer, calling Campbell "a fascinating guy,
endlessly reinventing his interests" up to and including his new
Senate career.

Campbell now earns $123,000 -- roughly the same salary he earned as
mayor -- in a job guaranteed until he turns 75.

He insists he is making a contribution and enjoying himself -- though
he frequently grumbles about a perceived shortage of Starbucks
franchises -- there are two within a 10-minute walk of his office --
and the Ottawa weather.

"Do you EVER get good weather in Ottawa? Sheeeit," Campbell said at
the start of a phone conversation on a particularly humid summer afternoon.

"Oh, god, it's brutal."

His short walk from Parliament Hill and his Byward Market apartment,
despite the heat, has its benefits.

"My blood pressure's down and my weight's down," he said, looking
toward a midsection that has been somewhat streamlined by the loss of
6.8 kilograms (15 pounds), due to the walks and better eating.

He says he's championing municipal issues -- from drug policy to
infrastructure demands -- while acting as a liaison between Parliament
and the Federation of Canadian Municipalities. He sits on three
committees -- aboriginal peoples, national security and defence, and
fisheries and oceans.

Campbell, who says Senate committees produce important reports on
major issues facing Canada, recently used his previous experience on
the drug squad to smoke out answers from one witness who was touting
the government's mechanisms to fight money-laundering.

"Sir, I am a drug trafficker. If I am smuggling hundreds of tonnes of
marijuana, I think I can take a suitcase full of money to
Switzerland," Campbell said.

"Yes, the scenario you painted is possible," replied Nick Burbidge of
the office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions. "You are
right."

Campbell has also spoken out against Harper's plan to have senators
elected and face an eight-year term limit. He indicated he wouldn't
likely consider resigning to seek a democratic mandate if Senate
elections were held in B.C.

He said he sacrificed more lucrative opportunities so he could "make a
difference" in Canada after leaving municipal politics.

"I have a master's in business administration. I've had lots of
offers," he said.

"People think $120,000 is a lot of money, and it is a lot of money,
but I'm not home four nights out of seven every week," he said.

"I could be making double that in [the] private sector, without having
to fly from Vancouver to Ottawa and back again every week, without
having to leave my wife and nice home and nice garden, without being
able to go over to Galiano [Island] when I wanted to."

Liberal Senator Jack Austin said it is a good thing Campbell is
getting under the government's skin.

"He can be alternatively charming, he can be direct, he can be
aggressive, he can be critical, but he's an advocate for what he's
committed to," said Austin, the Senate government leader during the
Paul Martin era, who will retire in early 2007.

"He's going to press the buttons when he feels they need to be
pressed. I think he's going to eventually play quite a strong
leadership role in the Senate.

But another Senate colleague questions how long Campbell can survive
in an environment where there is limited real power and even less
media attention.

"I don't know whether he'll be able to tolerate the pace here in
Ottawa," said St. Germain, like Campbell a former police officer.

"He's always been a guy at the forefront. He was the focus."

Former New Democratic Party MP Ian Waddell said he still wishes
Campbell had stayed in "real politics" rather than joining an
institution where, according to Waddell, only a tiny handful work hard
and make a difference.

Campbell, if he focuses more on big-city issues and especially matters
important to Vancouver, could be a real player in Parliament.

The city, he said, faces a leadership void because of Austin's pending
retirement and the floor-crossing controversy that has left Trade
Minister David Emerson "incapacitated."

"I think there's a need for a strong voice from Vancouver, and there's
an opportunity there with a Conservative, more rural-oriented
government," Waddell said.

But Waddell said Campbell's prickly approach could impede his progress
within the Senate's collegial confines.

"There were two sides to him at city hall. There was the side of him
being an effective guy, but there was that other side of him where
he'd be almost a bullying type, and the other councillors would
complain about him

"I just think he's got to hold back some of his aggressive instincts
that come from a career on the street, really, and use them to his
advantage and not his disadvantage."