Weaver holding ‘relationship building’ talks while putting together his list of demands
Deep in the basement of B.C.’s legislature, around a corner and down a hallway that looks like a dead end, sits what is quickly becoming the most powerful office in provincial politics.
Inside, B.C. Green Leader Andrew Weaver is building a team that he hopes will allow him to go toe-to-toe with the political heavyweights inside the Liberals and NDP.
They will be his emissaries, his negotiators and, at times, his pit bulls, as he seeks to flex the muscle of the three-seat Green caucus elected Tuesday.
The Greens currently control the balance of power in the new legislature, with neither the Liberals (43) nor the NDP (41) holding enough seats to form a majority government without his help. That could change, depending on the outcome of recounts in several ridings, the tabulation of 179,380 additional absentee ballots May 22-24 and the very likely prospect of judicial recounts after that.
But in the meantime, Weaver is charging ahead.
In the days since the election, the prevailing theory has been that the Liberals, NDP and Greens would wait until after the May 24 final count by Elections B.C. to really hammer out details, once they know the final seat count. Not so, says Weaver.
The Liberals are pinning their hopes on a change in the riding of Courtenay-Comox (which the NDP won by nine votes), thereby giving them back a 44-seat majority. Weaver said he doesn’t think that’s going to happen. So he’s starting negotiations early.
“I suspect what we’re looking at is 43, 41 or we might even be at 42-42,” he told Postmedia News on Friday. “So we need to have negotiations done and ready up front. The premier will have first crack at forming government, those are the rules of the game. The question is can she? That would be something that would require our support.”
Weaver hired two senior staff Friday. Liz Lilly, the party’s platform director, was named his chief of staff. Taylor Hartrick, the election campaign director, will serve as her deputy.
Lilly is a veteran of more than 25 years inside the civil service, before retiring as executive director of the province’s climate action office.
Perhaps just as importantly, she’s worked under both Liberal and NDP governments.
“I promised (this) week, once we have a chief of staff in place and a couple other chief advisers, we’ll have some staff meet with both parties to see if we can come to some kind of agreement on how we can support a minority government moving forward,” Weaver said.
But what items are truly dealbreakers for Green support?
“The two things that are totally non-negotiable is banning big money and party status.”
Technically, a party needs four elected MLAs to be officially recognized in the legislature.
With that title, comes extra research staff, and more questions in question period.
There’s also a not-insignificant salary bump of $26,470 for Weaver, on top of his base salary of $105,881.83, and another $10,588 for his two MLAs.
Granting the Greens official party status will require a change to the B.C. Constitution Act.
But the Liberals and NDP are willing to do it. And Weaver knows that too.
In the past few days, he’s had at least two “relationship building ” phone conversations with Premier Christy Clark and NDP Leader John Horgan. “They are amicable,” Weaver said of the chats. “I’ve never seen people be so nice to B.C. Greens of late.”
The mechanics of how all of this political horse-trading would actually function are still in flux. But the most likely scenario emerging is that a Liberal or NDP minority government would include key Green party ideas in its throne speech and budget. In exchange, they get the votes needed to keep that government alive for a set period of time.
The Liberals and NDP both need the Greens, but these will still be tough negotiations. The Liberals have more than half a dozen high-level political staffers in the premier’s office alone, and many of them are veterans of a kind of vicious political game the Greens have never played. And the Greens will also need to keep an eye on the temperament of their voters, to whom they promised to do politics differently.
If Weaver’s worried about that, he’s not letting on.
“I feel no pressure from anyone,” he said. “I know we are focused 100 per cent on doing what’s right for British Columbians, what’s right to ensure we get good public policy going forward. We’ll do what’s right, in our view.”