Steady on under Horgan
John Horgan became premier and the NDP took power in Victoria just over a year ago, thanks to an agreement with Andrew Weaver’s Greens. Despite dire warnings to the contrary, the sun still rises each morning, construction continues on Site C, pipelines continue to move oil and gas across the province and the economy is humming.
Horgan and the NDP want to take credit for all of that, of course. A press release fired out Thursday morning makes that abundantly clear, stressing that B.C. leads Canada in wage growth, GDP growth, credit rating and low unemployment.
No mention, of course, that the NDP inherited that sweet confection from Christy Clark and the B.C. Liberals. That’s how the NDP is no different from any other political party when it seizes power. Regardless of who’s in charge, the good times are because of your great work and the bad times are because of the incompetence of your predecessor.
In the U.S., President Donald Trump is taking full credit for a soaring stock market, low unemployment and a strong dollar, all of which was in full swing during Barack Obama’s final years in the White House.
The economy has always been the Achilles heel of the B.C. NDP, with most of it deserved. Past NDP governments constantly spooked investors and small business owners with minimum wage hikes, more regulations, increased industry oversight and, of course, higher taxes. In his first year, Horgan has been no different from his predecessors on all four of those fronts.
The fact that the provincial economy has absorbed Horgan’s moves to benefit workers and unions at the expense of business is a testament to market confidence, not to confidence in the NDP.
If this government continues to actively pile new costs onto the shoulders of businesses and erect more regulatory hurdles in the path of entrepreneurs and investors, there will be a reckoning, especially once the economy cools, as it inevitably will.
Yet there are signs Horgan’s NDP might be different.
Allowing Site C to continue, even though the NDP will likely be unfairly blamed by the B.C. Liberals for the inevitable cost over-runs, was a possible glimpse that Horgan is not leading “the party of no” as Clark described the NDP under Adrian Dix.
Horgan has gone out of his way to not engage either Alberta Premier Rachel Notley or Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on the TransMountain pipeline spat, despite the temptation to score cheap political points and energize the environmental wing of his party. That suggests that if the court challenges of Trans Mountain are rejected, Horgan will express his disappointment but say that he respects the rule of law and will continue to fight the federal government to oversee world-class spill protection and cleanup protocols on land and sea.
In other words, pretty much the same approach Clark and the B.C. Liberals took with their five conditions for Northern Gateway.
It’s unlikely Horgan or his caucus will stand in the way of TransMountain if (more likely when) they exhaust their legal options.
To do so would erode business confidence in the province, provide ammunition to the B.C. Liberals and prove true all those grave predictions about economic disaster under a Horgan government.
The NDP waited 16 years for another chance at power. Only in power can politicians pursue the agendas that are near and dear to their heart. If that means making some hard compromises and disappointing a few supporters, so be it.
That also is politics, regardless of who’s in charge.
It’s been a year since the NDP took power in B.C.