Gordon Campbell said Friday he's enjoying life outside the Canadian political fishbowl as he advances Canada's interests while basking in the stimulating intellectual environment of one of the world's great cities.

The former British Columbia premier, and since last autumn, Canada's high commissioner to the United Kingdom, is a noted policy wonk and a voracious reader whose highlights so far, include illuminating visits to the British Parliament, Westminster Abbey and a famous London bookstore where he has discovered obscure eastern European novelists.

Campbell, who resigned as premier last March due to his government's controversial adoption of the harmonized sales tax after the 2009 election, gingerly avoids any discussion of federal or B.C. politics.

"My name is Gordon Campbell, I'm the high commissioner to the United Kingdom," the premier-turned-diplomat deadpans when asked a particularly political question in his office overlooking historic Grosvenor Square in London's exclusive Mayfair district.

But Campbell doesn't hesitate to return to his West Coast political roots to find arguments to defend Prime Minister Stephen Harper's trade agenda in Europe.

One of the main criticisms of the proposed Canada-European Union free-trade deal is that Europe's demands would drive up Canadian prescription drug prices by extending patent protection for the so-called Big Pharma sector.

A report for the Ontario government this week by economist Don Drummond on that province's desperate fiscal condition said the Canada-EU trade deal, if it expands EU-style patent protection to Canada, could drive up prescription drug costs to Ontario taxpayers by $1.2 billion annually.

If true, provinces such as Alberta and B.C. presumably would take similar hits if drug manufacturers received extended protection from competition from generic firms.

And almost 40 resolutions have been passed across Canada, including 11 in B.C. and two in Alberta, expressing concern about how the proposed deal could bar municipalities, school boards, hospitals and other public-sector institutions from favouring local suppliers when awarding contracts for goods and services.

Campbell said this isn't the first time municipal politicians have complained about trade deals. He cited sky-is-falling warnings after B.C. and Alberta signed the 2006 Trade, Investment and Labour Mobility Agreement (TILMA), which has since been expanded to include Saskatchewan.

"It is not a threat to municipalities," he said. "And I should tell you that I think municipalities have almost traditionally reacted against open trade agreements."

Municipal politicians across Canada need to be aware of the big picture on trade, he said.

"If we weren't a trading country we would have one sawmill in British Columbia. That'd be it. No more," he said.

"We are a trading economy. We are the largest softwood lumber trader in the world. Without trade, we don't have a mining industry in Canada. Without international trade, RIM (BlackBerry manufacturer Research In Motion) would be a small-tech company in Waterloo, Ont.

"International trade is what makes our quality of life. We heard the same thing with (TILMA), and it benefited everyone in Alberta and everyone in B.C."

He tackles somewhat more indirectly the fears of Big Pharma possessing new clout under the trade deal.

Campbell pointed out the economic benefits of attracting drug manufacturers to Canada, and he also noted the difficulty provincial governments have had in uniting to buy drugs in bulk to keep prices down.

"There's a whole series of issues with regard to how we deal with pharmaceuticals. They drive literally thousands of jobs and millions of dollars of investment across the country. And every province is trying to deal with that," he said.

"When I was premier, we used to talk about, 'What about looking at a national procurement strategy for that?' And provinces are very jealous about how that works."

He said the federal government, which has given the provinces a role in talks because many issues fall under provincial jurisdiction, will not act against Canada's self-interest.

"Our negotiators are not going (into Canada-EU talks) saying, 'How do we benefit necessarily the EU?' You have to find mutual benefit."

In a wide-ranging interview within sight of U.S. Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower's Second World War headquarters on the other corner of Grosvenor Square, Campbell touched on a variety of questions relating to his first few months as a senior diplomat.

- On the challenges facing western industrialized nations and especially those in debt-crippled Europe:

"In open democratic societies, we're going to have to learn really tough — quotes — 'political decisions for long-term benefit,'" he said.

"When you talk to people, it doesn't matter where you are in an open, democratic society, they will tell you they want their politicians to make long-term choices, to think beyond the election and all those sorts of things.

"But you know, the question is, do they really let you do that? And I think that's the question that a lot of the leaders are wrestling with."

He predicted the next two years in Europe will be better than the past 12 months, which have been dominated by dramatic negotiations that have failed to quell expectations that Greece and perhaps others will default on their massive debts.

He praised British Prime Minister David Cameron's coalition government for being single-minded in insisting there will be no wavering in his austerity measures.

"That creates the kind of confidence and I think certainty you need to actually move your way through it."

- On the quality of public debate in the British Parliament:

"The (parliamentary) committee system here is much more productive than the one we have in British Columbia; not necessarily the one we have in Canada," he said.

"There is much more engagement in real policy. I'm impressed with the number of members of Parliament who have written a book. It's not that they're best-sellers, but they've taken the time and put in the discipline of writing a book. That's impressive.

"They have a culture of public life. People decide to run for Parliament much earlier in their lives."

But Campbell was quick to deflect any suggestion of British superiority. "There is not a jurisdiction that can't learn something from anther jurisdiction. We should learn from them and they should learn from us."

- On whether Londoners planning for the 2012 Olympic Games here seek his advice on Canada's successful hosting of the 2010 Winter Games in Vancouver and Whistler.

"Is London asking me for advice on how to run their Olympics? The honest answer is no, they haven't," he said.

"But they wouldn't ask me," he added, noting that there are roughly 200 Canadians who worked with the Vancouver Organizing Committee (Vanoc) who are now working here with Locog (the London Organizing Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games).

He said Canada has helped both advise and set an example in areas such as sustainability and the importance of getting sites up and running early. But he acknowledged that the scale of London's challenge is dramatically larger.

On security matters, Vancouver is far more remote and naturally protected from potential troublemakers than London, he noted.

And he pointed out that there will be 16,000 athletes, 20,000 media people and more than 120 heads of state and government in London this summer, compared with 2,700 athletes, 10,000 media people and 10 heads of state and government in B.C. in 2010.

"So the order of magnitude between a Summer and Winter Olympics is huge."

- On whether the Mulroney government was wrong not to follow Europe's footsteps and blend sales taxes, which are generally tolerated here, into the final price of goods and services when the GST was introduced in 1991.

"It's not a question of wrong. They decided not to do it."

- On the voracious reader's current reading list:

"I'm reading about six books right now," he replied, citing historian Niall Ferguson's Civilization as one that feeds his interest in big-picture influences on society's evolution.

Campbell said his favourite bookstore is Daunt Books, a spectacular, skylight-lit setting with massive oak bookshelves that has led him to unfamiliar novelists from areas such as eastern Europe.

But the one book that shook him up was British author Chris Cleave's Little Bee, about the experiences of a young Nigerian asylum-seeker in the United Kingdom.

"It was a kind of an eye-opener book for what people go through who are not me. I've always been a white Anglo-Saxon male Protestant living in Canada, and I think it's always good to see things through others' eyes."

- On the ubiquitous but often-overlooked presence of Canada in British life, including a memorial at Westminster Abbey commemorating Gen. James Wolfe, the British general who died in the victorious battle over the French on the Plains of Abraham in 1759:

"The cultural ties to Westminster Abbey are pretty incredible," he said.

"All of us saw (artistic images of Wolfe) when we went through school, and it's in Westminster Abbey. There are two chairs there where Her Majesty and His Highness sit, and they're Canadian chairs. There is a special alcove which is a Canadian alcove."

He said "tens of thousands" of British jobs are supported by direct Canadian investment, yet the British vision of Canada is often Toronto-centric.

"In Vancouver and Calgary you don't think Canada stops in Toronto," he said. "So part of what I have to do here is, we have to make sure they understand the full breadth of Canada, the opportunities of Canada."

Poneil@postmedia.com

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