Horgan is bushed — and proud of his record
It’s been an exhausting year and not without mistakes, but the premier vows to work harder
Last year at this time, John Horgan was telling reporters how fired up and excited he was to be the new premier of British Columbia. This year, he’s not afraid to admit the job can be pretty gruelling.
“I’m not going to B.S. you,” Horgan told me in a year-end interview in his office at the legislature. “I’m tired. I could use a couple of days off.”
It’s hard to blame him as a jam-packed 2018 draws to a close. Horgan’s NDP government had a busy year.
Asked to name highlights, he rhymed off a long list, including: Balancing the budget; introducing a promised child-care program; housing affordability measures; a new climate-change plan; landing the $40-billion LNG Canada megaproject, the biggest private-sector investment in B.C. history.
It was all done with a minority government propped up by the B.C. Green party in a legislature where the governing alliance now has a razor-thin one-seat edge over the opposition Liberals.
“We’ve had stable minority government,” Horgan said, insisting the Green partnership and his narrow margin of power has forced him to govern strategically.
“I have to work harder,” he said. “I have to be more sensitive to the wishes of more people to get more co-operation and more consensus.”
The Liberals, of course, don’t see it that way.
Liberal leader Andrew Wilkinson used his traditional year-end interviews to slam Horgan as an old-fashioned left-wing radical.
“We have a tax-and-spend government doing favours for their friends,” Wilkinson said, pointing to the union-only labour rules on the new Pattullo Bridge as proof of oldschool NDP pork-barrelling.
But Horgan suddenly doesn’t seem tired when confronted with Wilkinson’s attacks, insisting his government has chosen a more moderate path.
“I don’t see people with pitchforks out there,” he said. “A lot of people have come up to me and said, ‘I didn’t vote for you, but you’re doing OK.’ It gives me confidence that we’re on the right track.”
You can tell what Horgan is thinking. By keeping the budget balanced, and not veering too far left in his governing style, he’s looking toward another election and figuring he can beat Wilkinson.
“We’ve been quite balanced,” Horgan said. “Rather than being reactionary and leftist, we’re trying to be pragmatic and focused on outcomes that work for everybody.”
And as for Wilkinson’s shot that he’s nothing but a “taxand-spend” socialist, Horgan said the New Democrats are just filling the gaps left from 16 years of Liberal rule.
“We’ve been addressing the problems created by their ‘don’t-spend, don’t-build’ government,” he said.
But his spending has a limit, including in Surrey, where the NDP squeaked into power by winning several closely contested seats.
Doug McCallum, the newly elected mayor of Surrey, wants to build a new SkyTrain line in the city instead of a now-scrapped light-rail transit project.
Horgan’s message to McCallum: Don’t come crawling to me asking for more cash to build the bigger, fancier system.
“We’re not giving you any more money,” Horgan said flatly. “We can’t. We’ve got to build schools in Prince George and we’ve got to build roads in Kamloops. We’ve only got so much capital.”
Doesn’t this leave an opening for Wilkinson to roll into town and promise to spend the money to build SkyTrain?
Horgan is already rehearsing his comeback lines.
“If Mr. Wilkinson comes in and says, ‘We’ll build it’ then we’ll say, ‘We took the tolls off the bridges that you put on. We built schools that you ignored. We’re planning for another Surrey hospital.
“I’ll put that up against him saying, ‘We’ll build you another SkyTrain station’ any day of the week.”
As for 2018 lowlights, Horgan listed the bitter fight over the Kinder Morgan pipeline (set to flare up again in 2019) and the shocking suspensions of the clerk and sergeant-atarms at the legislature.
The two officials, under investigation by the RCMP over possible financial issues, were marched out of the legislature under police escort in November.
“There’s a lot of do-overs I would do in my life, and that would be one of them,” Horgan said, adding he would have preferred a less sensational process. “I hope it’s addressed quickly.”
Looking ahead to 2019, Horgan said he hopes the province will finally have ride-hailing services by the fall, even though Uber is threatening to abandon B.C. because the NDP’s operating rules are so restrictive.
“What Uber does is up to them,” Horgan said. “They’re a big, massive company and they will make their own choices.”
Horgan will make his own choices, too. With the legislature standings so close, he will have to choose carefully. Any wrong move could trigger a snap election in a province where the politics is never dull.
A lot of people have come up to me and said, ‘I didn’t vote for you, but you’re doing OK.’” John Horgan