WEAVER BLOWS HIS COOL, ERUPTS IN LEGISLATURE

Green leader goes on a rant against Liberals for his own procedural error

The B.C. legislature was getting down to business one afternoon this week when there was a sudden, violent eruption from Andrew Weaver of the Greens.

“I rise with a great deal of dismay,” he began, then delivered chapter and verse for a full hour, with stops along the way to lash out at various enemies, real and otherwise.

Mainly he blamed the B.C. Liberals, at one point urging them to resign, at another suggesting the province needs another election. As the Green leader ratcheted up the rhetoric, the common reaction around the legislature was disbelief, mixed with more than a little laughter at his expense.

The immediate cause of Weaver’s ire was a procedural foul-up.

The legislature was debating government legislation to expedite compensation for police officers, firefighters, paramedics and other emergency workers suffering from job-related mental stress. The Greens had introduced amendments to extend the same coverage to teachers, nurses, construction workers and others.

But with Weaver absent from the House at the outset of proceedings Tuesday afternoon — and no other members rising to speak — the bill passed through committee stage of debate, the last procedural opportunity for moving amendments.

For which Weaver blamed not himself or his House leader for being asleep at the switch. Nor did he much fault his partners-in-powersharing, the New Democrats, for failing to endorse his amendments or at least hold up proceedings until he could get into the chamber.

Rather, he blamed the Liberal Opposition, which had, he claimed, promised before lunch to carry over committee stage debate into the afternoon, but then let the matter drop and the bill proceed with no warning to the Greens.

“Now, I get that the B.C. Liberals are playing games,” he fumed. “I get the fact that they say one thing and do an absolute other . ... This is a very sad day in politics in British Columbia, when once again the B.C. Liberals put their political interests, their desire not to have debate because of their quest for power, ahead of the interests and their responsibility to the rights of British Columbians.”

At one point he called on the Liberal critic on the bill, Chilliwack MLA John Martin, to resign. At another he tried to enlist the Speaker, former Liberal MLA turned independent Darryl Plecas, to make the case against his former party.

“Honourable Speaker, I must say, I use the word ‘honourable’ and I mean that dearly and sincerely when I say honourable Speaker here, because I see a man of honour in the Speaker’s chair, and I don’t know how he ever could have sat on that side of the House with those members opposite.”

On and on he went, building to a climax whose righteous fervour the Hansard transcript could not begin to capture.

“For heaven’s sake,” he hailed the Liberals. “Why don’t half of you guys quit? Let’s have an election. Let’s get some more B.C. Greens down here, and we’ll do their job for them if they’re not willing to do it themselves — to actually hold government to account, not to ask stupid questions about stuff to try to score political gain.”

Watching bemused while Weaver unloaded on the Liberals were the New Democrats. But privately they acknowledged that had Weaver actually been able to move his amendments, most would have been ruled out of order on procedural grounds.

Mount Weaver having ceased its eruption at least temporarily, it fell to Opposition house leader Mary Polak to reply for her side.

She began with a nod to the obvious about the Weaverauthored amendments: “There is one requirement for those amendments to be moved, and that is that the member needs to be present.”

If Weaver could not be present (he was meeting with a delegation in his office) he could have asked one of the other Greens to move them for him or buttonholed the New Democrats for a brief recess.

But in any event, it was not the job of the B.C. Liberals to run interference for the Greens.

“I do believe that the member is sincere,” said Polak with a measure of restraint nowhere evident in Weaver’s fulminations, “but I am actually quite troubled that the member is so willing to insult the work of other members of this House.”

Partway through Polak’s measured comments, Weaver erupted in a fury of heckling, drawing a warning from the chair that another member had the floor.

Such admonitions have been an almost daily occurrence for Weaver of late. Last week, the Speaker had to order him to retract an abusive accusation against the Liberals. Monday Plecas was at him again, this time for name-calling the Opposition “the Liberals from Alberta.”

Wednesday the Speaker reined him in for disregarding the rule that question period is for putting government ministers on the spot, not the Opposition. This after Weaver blasted the Liberals “for their alternate facts, hysterical rhetoric and revisionist history.”

The legislature can be a frustrating place at the most placid times and these are highly charged. The New Democrats, bogged down in their own workload, may be shortchanging the Greens in terms of time, resources and the spotlight.

But Weaver promised to usher in a new way of doing politics — more dignified, more respectful.

Instead, with his recent bad-tempered and overbearing outbursts, he risks becoming the latest example of the bad old way of doing things.

As the Green leader ratcheted up the rhetoric, the common reaction around the legislature was disbelief, mixed with more than a little laughter.