B.C.’s had enough political theatre
Dropping writ may prove best solution
To the charge that she has stolen her opponents’ policies in a transparent effort to pander to public opinion, Christy Clark responds that she has stolen her opponents’ policies and is transparently pandering to public opinion.
“What I’m trying to do,” the premier of British Columbia told Global News Wednesday, the day before a speech from the throne containing no fewer than 3o proposals that were nowhere part of the platform she ran on six weeks ago, “is craft an agenda for government that takes the best ideas from all the parties.” It was, she ventured to hope, “a throne speech everybody can agree with.”
Faced with this kind of Olympic- level shamelessness — Q. What do you stand for? A. What do you want me to stand for? — what’s an opposition party to do?
A $100 - a - month increase in welfare benefits, $ 1 billion for new child care spaces, a ban on corporate and union political contributions, even a referendum on electoral reform: if BC Liberals were in favour of any of these, it was a closely held secret until now.
But the more the NDP and the Greens protest that these were lifted more or less directly from their respective platforms, the more that voters may be inclined to ask: then why are you planning to vote against them?
It won’t save her government; the opposition parties are committed to bringing it down at the first opportunity. But the premier is looking past the immediate controversy to the next election — the one she professes not to want; the one that is almost certain to follow before long.
She will go, but on her own terms: not meekly resigning, as the opposition had demanded, but insisting they defeat her in the broad light of day. The throne speech is designed to make it as uncomfortable for them as possible.
Is it all for show? A bit of theatre over matters that have already been decided? Yes, of course. All of politics is a show. Most of what goes on in the legislature has “already been decided.” But the theatre of it matters, and the spectators will judge the players on their performances, as they usually do. The players, for their part, are entitled to j ostle for power as best they can. It is an adversarial system, and it is silly to expect them to do otherwise.
So, for example, the opposition parties had every right to pretend, via last month’s “confidence and supply” agreement, they could govern the province together, without having worked out such basic elements as where they would find a Speaker, or how they would still command a majority if they did, with a margin of but one seat over the Liberals. While the Speaker votes to break ties, he or she is bound by convention to vote in certain ways: to continue debate, or to preserve the status quo. If a bill is to pass, convention holds it must have the votes to do so without the Speaker.
For their part, the Liberals are under no obligation to make it easy for them by pro- viding a Speaker themselves. The notion being put about, that the premier is obliged not merely to accept defeat, but to help the opposition replace her — that the Liberals are not only obliged to supply a Speaker while in government, but also in opposition — is simply ludicrous: perhaps she should also arrange rides to the legislature for their members, to ensure they do not miss any important votes.
Both sides, in short, have a right to “play politics,” since it is politics, in the end, that will decide this. If one side or the other is adjudged to have overplayed its hand, it will pay the corresponding price. Were Clark, for example, to re- spond to her impending defeat by advising the province’s lieutenant- governor to dissolve the legislature rather than call upon NDP leader John Horgan to form a government, the public’s reaction would likely be harsh.
But if the opposition is too extravagant in its demands, or cuts too many corners in pursuit of power, it risks the same fate. And more besides: there are larger stakes here than merely who will govern. Amid all the partisan roughhousing, all sides must take care not to do lasting damage to the constitutional furniture.
I am thinking, in particular, of the suggestion that the NDP could get around its Speaker dilemma by ignoring convention and instructing the Speaker to vote at all times with the government.
It has been argued that, while the Speaker’s impartiality may be the convention at most times, it should not be the convention now; that what is intolerable as the exception, for a bill’s fate to be decided by the vote of the Speaker, should be tolerated as the rule; in short, that convention should be respected so long as it is not inconvenient.
This will appeal to that enduring Canadian constituency for having things both ways. But it would do immense harm to the way we are governed. It is a hard enough job keeping order in the unruly cockpit of partisanship that is a legislature, even with a Speaker who is universally respected for his fairness and impartiality. To expect order to prevail with an unabashedly partisan Speaker, under the government whip, is foolish in the extreme.
No. Political games are all well and good. Everyone should play the cards they have, if only to assure the public that all the cards have i ndeed been f airly played.
But if, after all that — after Clark has been defeated, after Horgan has tried to govern in her place — if it becomes evident, as I suspect it will, that no one can command the confidence of the legislature, let no one shrink then from the obvious and inescapable solution: another election.