It looks pretty obvious that one of B.C. Green Party Leader Andrew Weaver’s main priorities in supporting the NDP government is to get the voting system changed to a proportional-representation model.
Better for everyone, says Weaver. But others dwell on the fact it’s better for the Greens.
They got three seats in the May election with 17 per cent of the popular vote. Proportional representation in some form would give them something close to that share of the seats (15). Who wouldn’t want to change the rules, when it could quintuple your clout?
Everything on the record since the May election and before suggests how critically important that was. But there’s one Green insider who disputes that interpretation. That is Weaver himself.
In an interview this week with several reporters, he went to some strange lengths to downplay retro-actively how important changing the voting system is to his party.
They held the balance of power after the election and started dickering with the Liberals and the NDP about how to use it. PR was always one of the top three priorities he listed, along with party status and campaign finance reform.
It was so important that their campaign promise was to put it in place even without a referendum. They wanted to try it out for an election or two, then hold a vote on whether to retain it.
This week, after again pointing out all the benefits that would flow, he changed gears in mid-interview and started creating some distance — in his mind, at least — between the Greens and the urgent push for a new voting system. He said proportional representation “has never been a driver for me,” or for his colleagues Sonia Furstenau and Adam Olsen.
“I haven’t gone all in on proportional representation,” he said. “We didn’t even campaign on it. We just said we’d do it. But we didn’t go door-knocking saying we want to bring in proportional representation.”
He doesn’t think it’s all that important to voters, either. It’s “inside baseball” policy stuff, not what people are talking about at Saturday soccer.
He’s right to the extent that it wasn’t a hot-button issue that he advocated at every stop. But he had to acknowledge in the media session it’s one of the five guiding principles for the party. He often says simply: “It’s who we are.”
After the election, PR became critically important, and Weaver repeatedly cited it as a deal-breaker. Negotiations with the NDP eventually produced the minority-government agreement. It included PR, with a referendum to come first, not later, in line with the NDP promise. Both parties are obligated to campaign for it.
That left jealous interests from elsewhere on the spectrum on the sidelines. They are suspicious of how much the Greens stand to gain. Whatever the benefits of proportional representation to the province as a whole, the runaway winners in terms of political advantage are the Greens.
Suspicion about the purity of his motives seems to be what has Weaver downgrading the priority he puts on it.
He said: “If one looks cynically upon this, one could develop a narrative that the Greens will do whatever the NDP say, because all they’re thinking about is … 2021 and getting re-elected, and in order to do that they need PR, etc.
“That is the last thing in the world — I would be co-opted for some outcome.”
Weaver gave an entirely hypothetical example of the NDP dropping some multibillion-dollar new program without consultation. That would kill the deal, and PR.
It’s going to be a tricky position to maintain from now until the referendum forms are mailed out next fall. He’s getting exactly what he wants. But he doesn’t want to dwell on how badly he wants it, in order to preserve some manoeuvring room if something comes up.
Just So You Know: Premier John Horgan delivered one tidbit about the referendum in a separate media scrum recently. It’s likely going to have at least two questions. The first one will ask if voters want to change the system. If yes, a second question or questions will present options.
