The first session of B.C.’s new legislature is over, and it appears that Premier John Horgan’s government is less precarious than when it took office.
When the election results left the B.C. Liberals with 43 seats, the NDP with 41 and the Green Party with three, voters watched in bewilderment as the politicians postured and struggled to hammer together a workable majority. Christy Clark and the Liberals couldn’t do it, Lt.-Gov. Judith Guichon refused to call another election and Horgan found himself governing with the narrowest of margins thanks to an agreement with Green Leader Andrew Weaver.
Liberal MLA Darryl Plecas, who has no doubt been crossed off many Christmas-card lists this season, enraged his colleagues by agreeing to stand for Speaker. Since Clark quit, that left the Liberals with 41 seats to the 44 held by the NDP/Green alliance.
As long as all the NDP and Green members show up for important votes, and as long as Horgan doesn’t propose any legislation that Weaver can’t stomach, the government will go on. While this might depress many Liberal supporters, most voters are no doubt relieved that they don’t have to endure another election until the fall of 2021.
Horgan, who said last week he is surprised by how much he enjoys his new role, has quickly turned B.C. on a new course.
He has put the brakes on some signature Liberal projects, such as the Site C dam, the Massey Tunnel replacement and a study of commuter rail on the Island’s E&N line. Options that had been studied will be studied again, certainly through new glasses.
Will different eyes come to different conclusions? Not necessarily, but a lot hangs on those decisions.
The NDP did bring a new approach to the province’s finances. Finance Minister Carole James has cast aside the Liberal tradition of low-balling the budget surplus at the beginning of the year and then crowing about a huge piggy bank at the end of the year.
Instead, James wants to align expenditures more closely with revenues. That means smaller surpluses with less room for unexpected demands on the treasury. It probably also means the NDP plans to spend more money.
That’s not surprising, as the party promised a lot during the election, and believes the Liberals failed to spend money to solve important problems, such as the shortage of affordable housing.
The government has kept some of its promises, quickly changing the rules on political donations to get union and corporate money out of election campaigns. But others are still sitting in the job jar, as the Liberals have been keen to point out.
Those include $10-a-day daycare and a $400 renters’ rebate, which are big-ticket items that will require long hours of preparatory work by the public-service experts.
Perhaps the most far-reaching promise is already under way: Asking British Columbians if they want to dump the first-past-the-post voting system and adopt some form of proportional representation.
On Thursday, the legislature passed legislation to hold a mail-in referendum before the end of November 2018. A website is already available where voters can give their opinions on how the referendum should work.
The government has said that this time, 50 per cent plus one will determine the outcome, a much lower bar than in the last referendum in 2009, which required 60 per cent approval overall and 50 per cent in 51 of 85 ridings. The lower threshold this time greatly improves the chances that Horgan and Weaver will achieve their dream of changing the voting system.
The referendum campaign alone guarantees that B.C. is in for a wild ride over the next 12 months.
