The dominant impression at the legislature as transition week drew to a close was total chaos.
Weary movers are still staging furniture-loaded dolly races back and forth down the Speaker’s corridor. No point in complaining about their speeding to the Speaker. There isn’t one.
Cardboard boxes full of personal effects and furniture are stacked here and there. Shredders are finishing the work of either “disposing of non-essential documents” or “destroying the evidence,” depending on your outlook.
The locksmiths were changing locks in the premier’s office Friday morning. Hey, nothing personal, B.C. Liberals. It’s just a precaution.
Forty-one New Democrats held their first government caucus meeting in the government caucus room on Friday. The picture of the late Fred Gingell, a Liberal icon, that has graced the back wall for years was taken down and presumably handed back to the new Opposition caucus. No word yet on what it will be replaced with, but there was a Tommy Douglas sketch in the NDP’s old meeting room on the Opposition side. No doubt it will be moving, too.
Liberal ministers are embracing the downsizing trend, moving from gorgeously appointed cabinet office suites full of helpful staff to a cramped row of cubicles on the west side of the building.
They’ll be able to glance out their windows some days and watch Premier John Horgan conduct news conferences in the rose garden below. Winning an election only to become the “strongest opposition ever” will be small consolation.
At the same time, the NDP caucus is upscaling in a big way. Almost half of them are taking over the cabinet suites. The rest will move to a well-appointed hive in an annex. Greens get an upgrade, too, of course, taking over roomier digs.
Further down the pecking order, scores of political staff are adjusting to new jobs, or adjusting to no job at all.
In the midst of all the changes, tones are beginning to be set by all the reorganized factions:
• A clean launch: The NDP got its first government in 16 years underway in smooth fashion. The new cabinet is overloaded with ministers from Metro Vancouver, but the imbalance was unavoidable. The gaping hole in the NDP lineup — just four MLAS from outside Vancouver and Vancouver Island — was plugged to some extent by slotting three of them into ministries and naming the fourth a parliamentary secretary.
Dozens of staff appointments were made, and the patronage level so far is within acceptable limits. The most important staff changes were in the new deputy-minister lineup, and it looks to be deftly assembled. Nine deputies and one associate deputy were terminated. Four of them had obvious Liberal ties, and their dismissals were routine. All but one of those places were taken by new people promoted from within the ranks.
The only real issue that arose was the creation of a secretariat within the premier’s office devoted to keeping the Green caucus up to speed on developments. That’s a purely political job that is being paid for out of the taxpayer-funded budget. But every premier has some purely political staff on hand, and the line between public and political service is a blurry one.
• Separation anxiety: Most Liberals did their best this week to surrender power gracefully, but it wasn’t universal. Opposition Leader Christy Clark made some appearances at evacuation centres, and former forests minister John Rustad consulted with the new government on firefighting strategies. There was a sincere effort to put political differences aside for the good of the tens of thousands of evacuees in the hot spots around B.C.
But apparently, ex-minister Rich Coleman didn’t get the memo. He sent out four bitter tweets this week about the NDP holding “selfie contests while 40,000 Interior residents are misplaced [sic].”
“The B.C. Liberals will end this stalled waste of time named GreeNDP.”
He said the new government “was not recognized by the majority and will pander to minority interests at the expense of the majority.”
Somebody has to be the bad cop.
• Watching and waiting: The B.C. Green caucus, responsible for all the changes above, lay low. Leader Andrew Weaver congratulated the NDP and left it at that. Responding on social media, he said: “I’ll let the NDP defend themselves.”
