Going flat out
Premier John Horgan has an ambitious and aggressive 100-day plan
Premier John Horgan heads to Ottawa and Washington, D.C., this week to make B.C.’s case on the softwood lumber dispute with the Americans while pressing our federal government for money and assistance at home.
It’s part of an aggressive agenda for the new NDP government that will unfold in the coming days and weeks in a busy 100-day plan for the province.
“We want to let the decision-makers in Washington know there’s a new government up and running in British Columbia,” Horgan told me in an interview. “We want to highlight the mutually beneficial relations that have existed between B.C. and the United States for a long time.”
Horgan hopes to get a meeting with Wilbur Ross, the U.S. commerce secretary. David MacNaughton, the Canadian ambassador to the U.S., is in the loop and David Emerson, B.C.’s softwood envoy, will also make the trip.
Part of Horgan’s plan to deal with the protectionist Donald Trump administration: Back away from ex-premier Christy Clark’s call for retaliatory trade action against U.S. coal.
“That was just more of an election stunt,” he said. “The Americans didn’t blink.”
Horgan will instead lobby for a negotiated settlement that protects B.C. interests.
“There are rumours of a pending deal,” he said.
While in Ottawa, the first stop on the trip, Horgan said he will press Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his key cabinet ministers on multiple urgent issues: wildfires, the opioid overdose crisis, child care funding and money to replace the aging Pattullo Bridge.
Replacing the 80-year-old bridge suddenly looms as a top priority to secure federal funding, Horgan said.
“It’s a critical piece of infrastructure at the end of its life cycle,” he said. “It’s ‘literally’ falling into the river.”
If the Pattullo is now at the top of Horgan’s infrastructure to-do list, where does that leave the $3.5-billion bridge to replace the congested Massey tunnel? Probably cancelled.
Other moves from the new government you can expect this summer and fall:
SITE C DAM: Watch for the government to quickly refer the $8.8-billion megaproject to the B.C. Utilities Commission for a promised review, possibly as early as this week.
The fate of the project — under construction and employing 2,000 people — looms as the most costly and controversial early decision of the Horgan government.
I used to think Horgan didn’t have the nerve to cancel the dam, but now I’m not so sure. He named George Heyman — a fierce Site C critic — as his environment minister, and there is intense internal pressure to kill the project, no matter how many people get fired.
KINDER MORGAN PIPELINE: Horgan has vowed to “employ every tool available” to stop expansion of the Alberta-to-Burnaby oil pipeline, even though it’s already been approved by Ottawa.
That has Kinder Morgan president Ian Anderson seeking a meeting with Horgan to talk things over.
But Horgan is in no rush to meet the pipeline boss.
“There’s a whole bunch of people who want meetings,” he said, adding he has asked for options on how to stop the pipeline through the courts or by refusing to issue permits.
“I’ll get my briefings and then I’ll be happy to sit down with Mr. Anderson at that point,” he said.
BRIDGE TOLLS: Horgan promised to scrap tolls on the Port Mann and Golden Ears bridges, but that probably won’t happen until the fall.
Why not sooner? Because the government is consumed with the forest-fire crisis, he said, and scrapping the tolls will require co-ordinated steps among different government branches.
“One of the key commitments we made was to make life more affordable and removing the tolls is a good way to get going on that,” Horgan said, adding final details will be included in the September budget.
Other things at the top of the to-do list in the 100-day agenda: Banning corporate and union donations to political parties, new lobbying restrictions, a “fair-wage commission” leading to a $15-an-hour minimum wage, public consultations on a proportional-representation voting system and a crucial first budget that will increase taxes on high-wage earners and corporations and increase the carbon tax.
It’s all a very tall order, especially for an NDP-Green alliance that has a tenuous oneseat majority in the legislature over the vanquished Liberals.
“People didn’t vote for an NDP government,” said Liberal MLA Rich Coleman, who has emerged as the sharpest critic on the opposition side of the legislature.
But there’s nothing the Liberals can do unless the numbers change. Until then, Horgan said he’s enjoying himself.
“My face still hurts from smiling so much,” he said, adding another urgent “problem” is figuring out where his RCMP security detail will sit when he attends lacrosse games.
“I’ve got season tickets to the Victoria Shamrocks. I’ve been sitting next to the same people for a few years now. That was their first concern: ‘Where are the cops going to sit? There’s no space here.”
They’ll work something out. In the meantime, the nastier game of B.C. politics is about to produce plenty of its own action.