NDP acting quickly, but perhaps too quickly
B.C.’s new NDP government launched itself out of the gate with remarkable speed, using its first 30 days in power to enact and announce a flurry of policies it had promised during the election campaign.
A hike to the minimum wage. B.C.’s new human rights commission. Welfare and disability rate increases. The return of free adult basic education. A review of the Site C dam. Legal challenges against the Kinder Morgan pipeline. A ban on grizzly bear trophy hunting. All since July 18, the day Premier John Horgan and his cabinet were sworn in to office.
It’s an aggressive pace for Horgan and the NDP administration. But peel back a few layers, and some of those high-profile announcements show a distinct lack of substance, as well as clumsy execution.
Last week’s minimum wage announcement was a good example.
Labour Minister Harry Bains convened a teleconference for journalists, with only three hours’ notice, to announce the NDP government would raise the minimum wage 50 cents in September, to $11.35 per hour.
Problem was, the previous Liberal government had already announced that increase on Feb. 27.
The NDP also reaffirmed an election promise that it would, eventually, create a Fair Wages Commission to get the minimum wage to $15 an hour. There was no budget or details on how that would work. The ministry admitted the commission hadn’t even been approved by the Treasury Board yet.
Green Leader Andrew Weaver was also displeased that the NDP pinned the commission to a path for a $15 minimum wage by 2021. The NDP had campaigned on that timeline. But it later signed a power-sharing deal with the Greens that didn’t contain such a date. Weaver felt the NDP reverting to that timeline prejudiced and pre-determined the entire Fair Wage Commission.
Take also the example of the NDP’s earlier announcement to ban grizzly bear trophy hunting.
Forests Minister Doug Donaldson stumbled when asked by reporters to break down how many bears were killed as trophies, how many for meat, and what the NDP would do to ensure hunters couldn’t simply get around the ban by pretending to hunt for meat and then leaving the bear carcass in the woods. How will the rules be enforced? Donaldson, who has otherwise appeared quite competent as minister in his early days, couldn’t say.
It left the distinct impression that, rather than a decision based upon sound evidence, science and reasoning, the NDP was just charging ahead with decisions first, facts later.
Perhaps the new government should consider slowing down its speeding trainload of announcements, to allow it to research and present its policies in a less haphazard, panicked, way. But that would be contentious, too. You already hear grumbling in some NDP corners that the government is moving too slowly on big-ticket items, like campaign finance reform and Metro Vancouver housing affordability.
Deputy premier and Finance Minister Carole James said the NDP has been under a compressed timeline between the swearing-in and September budget dates.
“We wanted to make sure people saw some key commitments early, so yes we’ve been talking about what could be implemented in the first 30 days,” she said in an interview. “I think we’re all pretty proud about the fact we’re able to move on commitments and live up to the commitments we made to people in the province in the first month in government.”
When asked if the NDP was rushing, James said some policies, like adult basic education, needed to be enacted quickly, before the start of school in September. Others, like minimum wage and the grizzly bear hunt, require public consultation that needs to begin immediately, too, she said.
Fair enough. But for the Opposition Liberals, it looks as if the NDP is using the broad powers of cabinet to ram through as many decisions as possible before the new government even tests the confidence of the legislature.
“I had no illusions they’d be a group of people who would try to govern by OIC (order in council) rather than through legislation,” said interim Liberal Opposition leader Rich Coleman. “Because they are going to have difficulty with legislation in the house.”
Then again, the NDP has done a fairly good job on some of its other early announcements. Its pledge to back First Nations rights against Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain pipeline appeared a comprehensive and well-reasoned first step. The referral of the Site C dam to the B.C. Utilities Commission was clear in its review mandate.
When Social Development Minister Shane Simpson announced a $100 monthly increase on the disability and welfare rates on July 20, he showed in a subsequent interview that he was fully on top of the file. He knew the budget implications ($180 million a year) and the intricacies of how and why he’d made his decision. And he’d been on the job only two days.
Expect the NDP announcements to keep landing fast and furious in coming weeks. Horgan’s cabinet is meeting on average twice a week to set policies.
Eliminating tolls for the Port Mann and Golden Ears bridges is likely to appear next week, as well as funding for a new Pattullo Bridge by the end of the month.
Those are hot-topic items for Metro Vancouver residents, as well as key election promises. The NDP will get peppered with detailed, specific questions about the costs and rationale around its decisions. Let’s hope the new government takes the time to provide some steady, reasoned, answers.