It was his first full day off in two months (“I’m trying to decompress”); but one day last week, The Journal was able to speak with veteran political correspondent Keith Baldrey, legislative bureau chief for Global BC News, about the current state of B.C. politics (current as of the time of writing, at least). This is the first of two parts.
The Journal: Are you surprised that the Greens threw their support behind the NDP and not the Liberals?
Keith Baldrey: No, because they share much more policies in common. There are obviously some parallels between those two parties that don’t exist between the Greens and the Liberals; although as talks progressed with the Liberals, the Liberals clearly put on the table just as many, if not more, Green-friendly policies as the NDP put on.
But the big stumbling block for the Greens, at the end of the day, was that Weaver could not deliver his caucus to the Liberals. I could see Andrew Weaver going there, but his MLA from Cowichan Valley, Sonia Furstenau; there was no way she could go to the Liberals. Norman Spector, who was negotiating for the Greens, said one member of the Greens “physically recoiled” at the prospect of going to the Liberals, and that was obviously Sonia Furstenau. If he couldn’t deliver his caucus to one party, he had to go to the other party.
What happens if no party puts forward a candidate as speaker?
[MLAs] have to get a letter to the clerk saying they will not stand as speaker. If everybody basically says “I’m not standing for speaker,” I think the clerk will tell everyone “No one has stood for speaker, and I invite you to try again” and give them another chance. It’s basically a game of chicken. If they still can’t appoint or elect a speaker, the parliament will adjourn, and the Lieutenant Governor will be informed that parliament can’t function. She will either dissolve the house and call an election, or she might take it upon herself to turn to Horgan right there and invite him to form a government.
The speaker will be on the Liberals’ watch, because they will still be in power when the legislature convenes. Christy Clark is still the premier. A lot of people think that everything’s changed. In fact, nothing’s technically changed at all in terms of who holds power. Right now Christy Clark and the Liberals are the government.
Speaking with the Liberals, they’re not totally opposed, I think, to appointing one of their own as speaker for the Clark government’s throne speech. The throne speech will be read, then a vote on it will be held: either immediately, or after a week-long debate, which would seem rather pointless. It would be voted on, and if it was voted down the Clark government would fall, and the person who had been speaker would resign. Then the Horgan-Weaver alliance would be called on to form government, and they would have to find a speaker. So it is a bit of a stumbling block to figure out the speaker problem, but it is solvable.
Does the speaker have to be a member of the house? Can it be an outside person?
Under the B.C. Constitutional Act, it has to be a person who is an MLA within that parliament; unless they were to amend the Constitutional Act, and they can’t even do that, because to get to that point you need to have a speaker.
If the Lieutenant Governor at some point turns to Horgan and Weaver and says “Okay, you guys give it a go,” are we right back to square one with the speaker if everyone writes a letter saying no, I don’t want to do it?
When the Clark government falls, that parliament is adjourned. The next session would open under the new government, under Horgan and Weaver, and that parliament would have to elect a speaker. It’s conceivable that a Liberal would possibly do it, but that’s a very remote possibility. The speaker will have to come from the Greens or NDP, and this is where it gets interesting.
If the Greens and the NDP refuse, at that point, to appoint a speaker—which I think would be suicide—then the Lieutenant Governor would dissolve the house and we’re off to another election, and I don’t think anybody wants that; including the Greens and the NDP, who are broke.
They can’t afford to fight another election, so they’ll have to swallow their pride and their strategy and appoint a speaker from their own side, which means the two sides will be tied at 43 seats, and the speaker only votes to break a tie.
Now where it gets interesting—even more interesting than that interesting scenario—is that most of the legislature’s time is spent in committee, and that’s the stage at which MLAs debate and amend legislation and pass it up to the next level, which is third reading and passage into law.
In committee, the speaker leaves the chamber, and the governing party has to appoint a chair of the committee, who does not vote unless there’s a tie. But here’s some interesting math. When that happens, suddenly it tips to be 43 Liberals, 42 NDP and Green, so the Liberals will have a majority in the legislature during the all-important committee stage of legislation, which means that the Liberals can control the house.
That’s how crazy this is. The speaker’s not in the room, and it’s just the chair, so let’s say the NDP brings in a bill to formally oppose Kinder Morgan. Well, the Liberals will control the house at that point, and they will not allow that bill to pass. They’ll just amend it to make it preferable to their terms. Now what’s being discussed—Andrew Weaver let this slip the other day—is changing the standing orders, or the rules, to allow the speaker to remain in committee. That’s probably what’s going to have to happen to make it barely more functional than what it is about to be.
Fraser-Nicola is rural; not quite as rural as some ridings, but the NDP and Greens doing everything they can to block Kinder Morgan and possibly killing Site C is really going to hurt rural workers in this riding and elsewhere who were looking forward to these good-paying jobs. Horgan has come out and said these are short-term, five-year jobs and he’s looking for good-paying, sustainable, family-supporting jobs; but how do you sell that to people who right now are minimum wage or have no jobs, and were looking at these short-term jobs which could be gone?
If you look at the electoral map of B.C., it’s pretty much Liberal red outside of Metro Vancouver, up through the Interior and the North, and it’s pretty well NDP orange in the suburbs. It’s a real divide that has got much starker and deeply entrenched.
I think that’s very much a result, in the election campaign, of the Liberals being all about jobs and the economy and resources, and the NDP was all about public services, public sector, and suburban issues such as bridge tolls.
That’s why John Horgan never travelled, really, outside Metro Vancouver for any specific period of time.
His election strategy was purely based on winning the suburban vote, and there is a real disconnect. The suburbs of Metro Vancouver don’t realize that their economy is still fuelled in large part by the industries that operate outside Metro Vancouver.
It’s quite a worrisome situation for B.C., because the two parties represent two diverse interests based on geography. Horgan’s group is very much an urban/suburban party, with Green support, and the Liberals are very much more the regional party. They speak different languages.
I think there will be job losses. And there is a shake in investor confidence when the NDP forms government; rightly or wrongly, fairly or unfairly, the business community suddenly gets very nervous when the New Democrats come to power, and they don’t make the investment they’d normally make with a free enterprise coalition running the show.
Horgan said we’re going to create these long-term, family-sustaining jobs in rural B.C., and my first thought was “If these sorts of jobs were out there, wouldn’t someone have come up with them by now?”
He’s not provided any evidence of how he’s going to do that; no evidence whatsoever. Government, I think, takes far too much credit when jobs are created, and probably gets too much blame when jobs aren’t created.
Both Horgan and Weaver saying there will be jobs is no more credible a claim than Christy Clark’s claim in 2013 that LNG would solve all our economic problems forever. They’re political statements from politicians that are based more on careful messaging than on any evidence or reality.
The NDP has three seats north and east of Hope. Looking at the policies that were announced by the NDP and the Greens, the compromises between the two parties to form this partnership, there’s stuff there like affordable housing and transit and tolls that are great for the Lower Mainland, but not really applicable in Fraser-Nicola. Then they say they’re going to extend carbon emission taxes to people who burn slash piles, which isn’t really applicable in Surrey but is in rural B.C.
It’s an example again of the thorny problem this alliance is going to have in trying to shape policies that don’t hurt the North and the Interior. It’s a real challenge, and extends even to the make-up of Horgan’s cabinet. It’s going to be very hard for much of the Interior and the North to have any meaningful representation in that cabinet. He has so many MLAs in Metro Vancouver and the Island, so they’re going to get by far the lion’s share of the cabinet and the most important posts.
I think that there might be a couple of token cabinet posts given to a couple of the up-country MLAs, so therefore the political heft will not be north of Hope; it’s all going to be in Surrey and Vancouver.
There are a number of Vancouver MLAs that he will have to put in cabinet, and they’ll be in there at the expense of other regions. Policies that affect people outside of Hope I think are going to be much more in the negative than in the positive.
Part two follows next week.
