Bt LORNE ECKERSLEY
Advance staff
If I could go to the polls in a provincial or federal election and check a box beside “Minority Government” I would be sorely tempted to do so. So I’m already reasonably satisfied with the recent election outcome because it forced two of the three represented parties in the legislature to find a way to get along well enough to form a government.
At the time of this writing the NDP and Green parties have agreed to work together without a formal coalition agreement, but it still remains up to Christy Clark to decide whether she wants to form a government and introduce a throne speech that forces the Greens to defeat her. It could be a tool to cast doubt on Weaver’s leadership and the Greens’ future if that speech promised to deliver on a couple of issues that Weaver said are important to his party, like electoral reform and campaign donations.
More likely though, I suspect that Clark is already shopping for corporate positions that she has surely earned as a big business-friendly premier, and that she will resign in a short time after inviting the lieutenant governor to ask the Horgan-Weaver team to form a new government.
Personally, I was surprised that the Liberals could not work out a deal with the Greens (and puzzled that Clark was not part of her party’s negotiating team, particularly because she was so careful not to target Weaver in the campaign). The BC Greens probably have more in common with the Liberals when it comes to finances.
As I scanned through the comments section of the Vancouver Sun’s story about the NDP-Green agreement to work together for four years, I found confirmation that the province is probably just as divided as the United States is, and that what I have described as an America in which 40 per cent of voters will support the Republicans come hell or high water and the same percentage will do the same for the Democrats is almost exactly where we are at in British Columbia.
The stated fears of the Liberal commenters were predictable—job loss, massive debt and the end of the world as we know it are right around the corner, because just look at what happened when the NDP last governed. They don’t acknowledge that the current situation isn’t great, that we are far too dependent on resource prices, that it is creative accounting and not brilliant management that makes it look like we have a healthy government economy and that corporate welfare is costing the province far more than it’s worth.
Voters can probably look to the coming years as a test for electoral reform, because majority governments will be more likely in any kind of proportional voting system than the current first past the post arrangement.
I suspect that the Greens will come out looking good in the short term, because they resisted forming a coalition or taking on cabinet positions, committing only to allow the NDP to govern, but not necessarily supporting it on all legislation introduced. But if they want to maintain their integrity the Greens will have to show it by siding with the Liberals to defeat some bills, if only to prove there is no more to their deal with the NDP than they have announced.
In the end, I suppose there was more to the Green decision than just what the NDP had to offer for support. The simple fact is that 60 per cent of BC voters cast their ballots against the Liberals, a pretty good indication of general dissatisfaction with the status quo. Support for Horgan and the NDP grew in this election and it dropped for Clark and her government.
There are some interesting decisions to be made under an NDP government, and they go far beyond electoral reform and campaign financing. Do they kill pipeline proposals, or do they find a way to make them more palatable to the public? Do they kill the Site C dam project outright or turn it back to the appropriate agencies, which the Liberals bypassed knowing it is an iffy investment at best? Do we go whole hog into a provincial daycare plan or ease it in with some pilot projects?
If you view provincial politics through a Liberal or NDP lens, expect to be very angry or very happy in the short term. Or, if you are like me and don’t have any party affinity, expect to be well entertained. Like them or hate them, minority governments are a political junkie’s dream.