This week in B.C. politics

British Columbia politics gave us an intriguing contrast in styles this past week. The B.C. New Democratic Party nominated ex-MP Nathan Cullen to run in the Stikine riding, replacing incumbent MLA Doug Donaldson. The party has a rule that when a male member retires, he must be replaced by a member of an “equity-seeking group.” As luck would have it, there had been an experienced female Indigenous politician who wanted the nomination: Annita McPhee, a former president of the Tahltan national government.

For all the star power Cullen might bring back to the B.C. New Democrats, the party's rules would seem to be pretty rock-solid — but only to those who lack political imagination. McPhee's nomination form was put under a microscope and found to have two missing signatures. She was notified of the problem on a Sunday night. On Monday, before McPhee could fix the issue, the NDP tweeted a warm welcome to its new white male candidate for Stikine.

Spin followed as surely as autumn follows summer. The party claimed in its defence that it had interviewed 15 of those equity-seekers in an effort to follow the rule, although apparently it hadn't heard of McPhee. The president of the riding association got on the horn to tell reporters that she thought McPhee had left the party and had no further interest in the NDP.

These might be excellent excuses for the NDP to abandon its equity guideline. They're the sort of excuses, in fact, that one can imagine hearing from a corporate board, or a line of business dominated by the old boys' network, or a racquet club, or any other private individual whose associations come under scrutiny from the NDP of the future.

Meanwhile, in the Green Party of Canada (GPC) leadership race that's set to conclude next month, there was a national kerfuffle with its roots in B.C. Meryam Haddad, an immigration lawyer from Montreal, was ejected from the contest and then reinstated in a matter of hours. Haddad was initially told that she had violated the federal GPC's rule against “action that would bring the GPC into disrepute.”

Her sin, according to the letter she received, was in retweeting material critical of the B.C. Green party that had been propagated by the province's Ecosocialist party, a far-left alternative to the B.C. Greens. The B.C. Greens may be verdant in name, but in the view of radicals they have been compromised by their caucus's provision of supply to a New Democratic government that insists on offending the earth with pipelines and other resource-extraction paraphernalia.

There was, however, an obvious problem: the rule suggests that a candidate for leadership can't demean or oppose the federal Greens. Since the Canadian Green movement isn't a single entity like the NDP, and has sprouted among the provinces more or less at random, the B.C. Greens ought to be fair game.

Moreover, as Haddad observed in a response to the party's Leadership Contest Authority, a certain Elizabeth May appeared to defy the rule more directly last year during the federal election, when she explicitly urged Vancouver-Granville voters to pick independent Jody Wilson-Raybould over the Green candidate.

The GPC, confronted with this argument and with the first Green shoots of unfavourable publicity, did what a cynic could scarcely expect: it entertained Haddad's appeal of the decision, found it reasonable and re-admitted Haddad to the race. This certainly helps save face for May. But Haddad had also found support from her rivals in the contest, who agreed that the Leadership Contest Authority had made a mistake and that the party's members ought to decide Haddad's suitability for themselves.

So we have the B.C. New Democrats, who showed little bashfulness in perpetrating what any New Democrat would call racial and sexual discrimination in any other context, and the federal Greens, who are dedicated enough to democratic principles and written rules that they immediately repaired a mistaken application of them. The amusing thing about this difference is that you can argue that both parties screwed up strategically.

The B.C. NDP is heading into an election it will probably win, but it could really use Indigenous votes in the hinterland. Slamming the door on Cullen would have sent a powerful message to the New Democrats' natural base — voters who are eternally tempted by the province's relatively strong Green alternative, and who for that matter may be giving the Ecosocialists a second look.

And what did they gain? The friendly presence and dazzling charisma of Nathan Cullen? No doubt he's well qualified to be a B.C. MLA, and maybe he is more qualified than any woman or visible minority candidate who might conceivably represent Stikine. I for one wouldn't like to be caught saying so. Even implicitly.

On the Green party side, the principle that Green may fire upon unaffiliated Green has been established — but is that a good thing for Green politics? A formal union of Green parties might help the Green movement develop its own talent, assuming Greens have any interest in that sort of thing. Political professionals who are Conservatives, Liberals or New Democrats aren't afraid to circulate between levels of government Cullen-fashion. All recognize a common cause that benefits from cross-fertilization. But because Elizabeth May often forgets which party she is supposed to belong to, it seems the federal Greens cannot even enforce a cross-country truce between nominally Green parties, let alone seek formal association.

SPIN FOLLOWED AS SURELY AS AUTUMN FOLLOWS SUMMER.