Fall sitting will be fuelled by legislative drama

B.C.’s legislature returns for its fall session today and, in theory, there’s never been a better time for the Greens and Liberals to co-operate and change the governing NDP’s agenda.

The Greens have broken with their NDP power-sharing partners on climate change, threatening to bring the government down over the pollution to be caused by a new liquefied natural gas plant in Kitimat by LNG Canada. And both the Liberals and Greens support demands from local mayors to give communities an opt-out from the NDP’s controversial speculation tax.

There’s wiggle room for partnerships to rewrite, delay or defeat some key pieces of the NDP’s agenda during the sixweek fall session.

Together, a Liberal- Green alliance of 45 votes could easily outvote 41 NDP MLAs.

Still, nobody is sure if the Liberal and Green parties are willing or able to make a partnership work.

The Liberals have no intention of voting against the legislation to finalize the LNG Canada project, which they’ve supported for years. But they could work with the Greens to make life uncomfortable for Premier John Horgan by delaying proceedings in order to heap political scorn on the NDP over LNG.

In opposition, Horgan spent years criticizing the Liberal government for its proposed LNG tax regime, describing it as a cushy giveaway to foreign companies like Shell Canada, the lead player behind the $40-billion LNG Canada project.

“Shell does not need handouts from government, in my view,” Horgan said in 2013.

Then Horgan became premier and not only kept the handouts, but made them even sweeter in March by adding an additional $6 billion in tax breaks for the industry.

The NDP will spin hard to bury that flip-flop with a flurry of statistics outlining job generation and economic benefits. Already, Horgan has begun re-writing history.

“The B.C. Liberals kept piling on costs onto an industry that had not yet even been established in British Columbia and that scared away some investors as international prices came down,” he told reporters last week. No mention that the NDP used to want even higher costs.

Why would the Greens want to make their partners-in-power squirm? Green Leader Andrew Weaver has said the NDP government’s pursuit of a big-polluting LNG industry is a betrayal of its climate promises, which call for a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions of 40 per cent below 2007 levels by 2030.

The Liberals, meanwhile, would desperately like to remind voters they did the heavy lifting to pave the way for an LNG industry — never mind that one plant falls well short of the $1 trillion in economic growth promised for a “debt-free B.C.”

Another area of co-operation between Liberals and Greens this session could be on the legislation to enable the speculation tax, which will add a surcharge to second homes in Metro Vancouver, the Capital Regional District, Kelowna, West Kelowna and Nanaimo that owners refuse to rent out. The tax was announced by press release as part of the February budget and has existed since then as a kind of amorphous policy blob, shifting and contracting as the NDP responded to public anger.

Weaver has said it’s really just a fancy empty homes tax that does little to solve housing affordability. The Liberals have called it a jealousy tax on British Columbians who worked hard to afford vacation properties.

Mayors at the Union of B.C. Municipalities voted last month to demand they be allowed to opt out of the tax, saying it will hurt development and tourism. Weaver and Liberal Leader Andrew Wilkinson both support that demand and together could amend the legislation.

The question remains though, can the Liberals and Greens cooperate long enough to get something done? The betting line in the legislature hallways is no.

Even when the two parties have had aligning interests, they couldn’t stomach working together. They had matching amendments to the NDP’s lobbying bill last year, but invented enough tiny procedural problems to sour a partnership.

For the Greens, most of the pressure comes from the NDP, which lobbies furiously behind the scenes to keep Weaver in check.

For the Liberals, any successful co-operation could be used by advocates of proportional representation as evidence that minority governments work.

The Liberals are campaigning against pro-rep.

There’s also still raw animosity over how Weaver toppled Christy Clark’s government and put Horgan in power. If anything, the relationship has become worse.

One example is a dust-up that occurred in April during the last legislative sitting, when Weaver was three minutes late getting into the chamber and lost his chance to table amendments to a workers’ compensation bill. Weaver blamed the opposition Liberals for not waiting for him and spent an hour unloading on them in a speech.

Afterward, Weaver marched down the hall to MLA Shirley Bond’s office and pounded on her door. Bond wasn’t there, so Weaver took his frustrations out on her staff by yelling at them.

It’s one thing for politicians to get heated when debating each other, but berating unelected staff is a big no-no.

The Liberals filed a complaint with Speaker Darryl Plecas, who after quite a bit of back and forth was able to extract what amounted to a written apology from Weaver and a promise to be on better behaviour.

Many Liberals remain furious with Weaver over the unprofessional outburst.

Just another reason why the odds are stacked against any co-operation between the Liberals and Greens this session, even on topics they should be able to agree upon.