B.C. legislators are embroiled in a bitter argument about a Speaker crackdown on what names they’re allowed to call each other.
The time-honoured Opposition practice of referring to “the minister of (insert sarcastic reference here)” has been unilaterally banned. B.C. Liberals, who put up with it for 16 years, are whining because now they don’t get to use it.
Coincidentally, there’s a new ruling this week in the Alberta legislature about language. The Speaker doesn’t want to hear any more talk of “war.” Or “knocking some common sense” into people. Ordinarily, that wouldn’t matter to anyone outside of Alberta. What do we care what they yell at each other?
But it’s relevant to B.C. because, frightening as it sounds, they’re talking about us.
The “war” they’re talking about is with B.C., over the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion. The head into which they’re talking about knocking some sense belongs to the mayor of Burnaby, who’s fighting the pipeline just as ardently as the B.C. NDP government is.
It’s clear the drums of something or other are beating on both sides of the mountains. And if it comes to that, it’s going to be a very confusing one, given that the same party holds power in both provinces.
Ever since NDP Premier Rachel Notley took over in 2015 and carried on with Alberta’s ardent support of the pipeline, the NDP as a whole has been trying to paper over the vast gulf between the B.C. and Alberta wings. After the B.C. NDP became government in July, the difference became more obvious. It’s clearly going to get a lot worse.
National NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh’s visit to the B.C. provincial convention on the weekend revealed once again how singularly strange the party’s pipeline stance(s) are. Normally, you’d think a national leader would come up with a way to referee differences between two provincial wings and smooth things over.
But he’s aligned the federal NDP with B.C. against the pipeline. Former leader Tom Mulcair spent a few years skating around a firm position on the line, dwelling instead on criticizing the process that led to the approval.
Last summer, Singh came out much more strongly against the pipeline expansion from Edmonton to Vancouver’s harbour. Now that he’s the leader, as of last month, that stance kills any chance of him mediating. There’s also the fact he’s a rookie leader who doesn’t even have a seat. He doesn’t have the clout to sort this out.
When he’s asked how anyone is supposed to make sense of the NDP’s pipeline stance, all he can answer with is dodgy nonsense.
He said the B.C. and Alberta NDP governments are coming up with “inspirational ideas.” He praised Notley’s moves on all sorts of fronts.
“Alberta and B.C. share so much in common in terms of a principled approach to tackling issues,” he said.
Premier John Horgan is equally determined to pretend everything is hunky-dory.
“I don’t see anything confusing about it,” he told a confused scribbler. But he didn’t do much to clear things up, other than point out: “Rachel is the premier of Alberta, I’m premier of B.C. and Jagmeet Singh is the leader of the federal NDP. The public will look at the three of us and say the NDP is in pretty good hands … There are bright days ahead for social democrats.”
Notley is being pushed by Alberta’s newly united opposition to be even tougher in fighting for the pipeline than she has already been. So on Monday she carried on with the principled approach that Singh admires so much, and delivered some more “inspirational ideas” in the Alberta legislature: “We believe the position of the B.C. NDP is incorrect, is wrong, is bad for Alberta, is bad for B.C., is bad for all Canadians.”
As for Singh, she said: “I have told Mr. Singh that he is wrong. He is dead wrong. But just as important, he is irrelevant. And the reason he is irrelevant is because the decision has already been taken by the federal government.”
Oh, there are bright days ahead for social democrats, all right.
Because eventually the facade is going to collapse and they’ll be lighting each other up with cross-border political gunfire.
