SHAW BEHIND THE SCENES
Clark’s decision not to attend negotiations with Greens pushed party toward NDP pact
The bulk of a powersharing deal that will topple Premier Christy Clark’s government was settled between the B.C. Greens and NDP as early as Sunday morning, prompting the Greens to end talks with the Liberals after concluding they just philosophically could not support that party.
The NDP emerged with the deal after five negotiating sessions in which a running list of agreedupon positions (which New Democrats started to write down as early as Day 2 of the talks) grew into an accord that leaders John Horgan and Andrew Weaver signed Tuesday and presented to Lt.-Gov. Judith Guichon’s office Wednesday morning.
Most of the details, with the exception of some final tweaks later, were what the two parties discussed in their final negotiating session Sunday morning at the Coast Harbourside hotel in Victoria. Later that day, Weaver and NDP Leader John Horgan were photographed smiling at a rugby tournament in Langford, where they said the conversation was about women’s rugby and not politics.
The Greens held one last session with the Liberals on Sunday evening, then decided to walk away from last-minute negotiations with the Liberals the next day that Clark was to attend in person. Weaver said he made his mind up that evening to support the NDP. Official word went to the NDP Monday morning.
Weaver has said Clark tried to call him just before a joint NDP- Green press conference Monday afternoon, but the call went to his voicemail because he was arriving to the legislature where he was changing and being briefed on the media event.
Clark then sent Weaver a text message saying she’d tried to call him, but he hadn’t picked up. The two have since exchanged texts to try to organize a call, but by Wednesday had yet to speak on the phone.
Clark’s decision not to attend negotiations directly was a critical mistake, said one senior Green. Instead, she sent Finance Minister Mike de Jong, Education Minister Mike Bernier, adviser Carole Taylor and B.C. Hydro chairman Brad Bennett. Longtime friend Mike McDonald substituted for Taylor in some sessions.
While Horgan patched up his often-rocky relationship with Weaver face-to-face during the talks, Clark wasn’t there to make the same personal appeal that her party was willing to fundamentally shift both its attitude and positions in order to get a deal.
The Liberals were prepared to bend on almost all items that ended up in the eventual GreenNDP accord — except to renege on their support for the Kinder Morgan pipeline expansion and the Site C dam. For Clark, they were non-negotiable.
Ultimately, Weaver said he decided Sunday night to cut a deal with the NDP and had his chief of staff, Liz Lilly, call Bennett the next morning with the news. The Liberals, who had been expecting more talks, felt sandbagged.
The reason, say Greens, was that they’d heard loud and clear from within and outside the party that a Liberal deal would not be tolerated by a majority of party supporters nor were the parties fundamentally compatible on core issues of taxing the wealthy, increasing government spending on services, reviewing Site C and opposing the Kinder Morgan pipeline.
Weaver said his opposition to shipping oil to B.C.’s coast also proved particularly important in the talks.
Green negotiator Norman Spector has said on social media that “ultimately, @BCGreens recoiled (sometimes physically) at the prospect of supporting a Liberal government.”
That position seemed to be personified by Green MLA-elect Sonia Furstenau, whose long fight as a community activist against a B.C. Liberal government’s permit for a toxic soil dump in her hometown of Shawnigan Lake had significantly eroded any goodwill felt toward the governing party. When asked if she physically recoiled or became ill at the prospect of a deal with the Liberals, Furstenau said she was just run down by many long days of work and bargaining this week.
Spector said the Greens also felt the Liberals weren’t specific enough in their offers, characterizing it as “ragging the puck.”
“As we were getting closer to the Wednesday target for an announcement, I think we expected there’d be more detail,” he said in an interview.
It’s not a position shared by all Greens, some of whom thought the Liberals had been fairly clear they were willing to negotiate in detail and move on almost any subject except Site C and Kinder Morgan.
Theoretically, the Liberals had two key advantages: As the incumbent government, they could quickly recall the legislature and enact into law whatever was agreed on with the Greens, without having to rebuild a new government from scratch like the NDP. And a Green-Liberal deal would have produced a 46-seat majority of votes, compared to the NDP and Greens’ bare majority of 44 seats.
But 16 years of Liberal baggage seemed to prove too much to overcome.
The NDP, meanwhile, knew things were going well. Horgan and Weaver had reset their personal relationship and appeared to be getting along. Talks usually went from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the Hotel Grand Pacific, with a halfhour break for lunch.
By Sunday morning, the NDP was in a position to say it had done its best to address everything it could from the Green platform.
What became the party’s final offer landed on the table before another round of talks between the Liberals and Greens later that day.
The final accord contains far more compromises from the Greens than the NDP.
The Greens had to accept a review of the Site C dam rather than outright cancelling it, which had been the party’s position. The increase to the carbon tax is lower than the Greens had campaigned upon. References to the Greens’ free child care plan are nowhere in the accord. A demand to move immediately to proportional representation was watered down to support the NDP’s position that a referendum was required first. The Green argument in favour of keeping tolls on Metro Vancouver bridges was overwhelmed by the NDP desire to eliminate them entirely in its first budget.
Nonetheless, Weaver has said the deal with the NDP was the right move based on the shared values of the parties.
“In the end we had to make a difficult decision,” Weaver told reporters at a news conference in front of the golden gates to the legislative chamber on Monday.
“A decision we felt was in the best interest of British Columbia today and that decision was for the B.C. Greens to work with the B.C. NDP for a stable minority government over the four-year term of this next session.”