Last week, we looked at the challenges facing the B.C. NDP, as it completes the transition from opposition to government. This week, we’ll consider what lies ahead for the B.C. Green Party in 2018 and beyond.
Unless the NDP suffers a string of byelection defeats, it will continue to run a minority government till 2021, but only if the Greens co-operate. Politically speaking, how sustainable is this arrangement?
In the short term, it’s essential. If November’s referendum on electoral reform passes, the Greens will be the major beneficiaries.
Had proportional representation been in place at last year’s election, the Greens would have won 14 seats, instead of three. Therefore the party has no choice but to side with the NDP, at least until November.
But then what? In the longer term, if voters can see no significant difference between these two parties, why bother voting Green?
Something of the sort happened in Britain. At the start of the 20th century, the Conservatives and Liberals were the dominant parties. But the emergence of the Labour Party split the left-wing vote, and gradually, the Liberals all but disappeared.
In effect, a political landscape comprising one right-of-centre party and two left-of-centre parties might not be stable in the long run. One of the left-wing parties goes to the wall.
That needn’t happen here. If the Greens can carve out a niche sufficiently different from the NDP platform, both can survive. But from a Green perspective, how might this be done?
Certainly, the party’s primary focus on environmental issues is a positive. In this respect, Premier John Horgan’s decision to forge ahead with B.C. Hydro’s Site C dam was a gift. Here at least is one area that separates the two parties.
But after that, the distance between them narrows. There is general agreement on social policies such as raising the minimum wage, providing more affordable child care and tackling overpriced housing. What divergences exist here are more matters of degree than anything fundamental.
One option might be to step outside the box. The federal Conservatives won the 2006 national election, in part, by promising to cut the Goods and Services Tax to five per cent from seven. No one saw that coming.
The Greens might achieve a similar surprise, for example, by promising to make post-secondary education free.
Yet if the referendum on electoral reform does pass, and the Greens hold their share of the vote in 2021, a new reality emerges.
With, say, 14 seats and a roughly equal split between the NDP and B.C. Liberals, the Greens would be under considerable pressure to form a coalition government with one of the larger parties. The alternative would be a series of minority administrations, to the frustration of voters.
However, this a vastly different proposition than the current arrangement, in which the Greens have not joined the government and are largely able to chart their own path.
In the past, they were free to make wide-ranging promises, knowing they wouldn’t have to deliver. If they sit at the cabinet table, they must take their share of responsibility for whatever is done.
But as Horgan found out with the Site C decision, it’s one thing to strike a pose in opposition; it’s a different matter to stick to your guns in office.
This, then, is Green Leader Andrew Weaver’s challenge. If his MLA count grows significantly under proportional representation, the constraints of governing await him. Can his party trim its sails accordingly, and still remain viable?
