The NDP won’t have to count on accountability until 2019

Toward the end of a VICTORIA weekend convention in the provincial capital, New Democrats fielded a constitutional change to reduce the NDP government’s accountability sessions with the party itself.

The party constitution has long obliged the NDP, when in power, to stage annual conventions, the better to allow members to hold cabinet and caucus to account for things done and not done.

It’s an opening that members of the famously activist and fractious party have made memorable use of over the years.

The province’s first NDP government in the mid-1970s faced a major showdown at a convention over foot-dragging on women’s rights. The NDP of the 1990s went through two ordeals on the convention floor, one over nofault auto insurance, the other a proposal to remove a tract of agricultural land for resort development near Kamloops.

All three controversies were contained by backroom manoeuvring and skilful management on the convention floor. They nevertheless generated unfavourable publicity and strained the relationship between the politicians who needed to get re-elected and the members they counted on to help them do so.

Sunday’s motion did not propose to eliminate all opportunities for members to call the government to account.

It did cut them in half, reducing the obligation to hold conventions to every two years, and dedicating the off years to training party activists in the latest campaign techniques.

The trade-off got some backs up on the convention floor because it seemed to represent a cultural shift in a party that sees itself as different from the rest.

“We are not just a political machine, we are a political movement,” protested past president Ron Johnson, invoking the view that the party comprises citizen activists who join to make policies to elect governments and then hold those governments to account.

Party conventions being the main policy-making body in the NDP, they are mandated annually for a reason when the party is in power — “to ensure the party and our provincial government are in sync,” said Johnson, quickly adding that they are fully in sync after the recent election result.

That could change, and change in relatively short order, as Johnson could have added from long experience. But he left it at that and sat down.

Next up was Carole James, deputy premier and minister of finance. She made a case for those once-every-two-years campaign sessions to train activists and improve the electoral chances of a party that was still in a minority position in the legislative seat count.

Sure, accountability was important — “for all of us,” she conceded. But her pitch left no doubt about the collective view of the NDP cabinet and caucus, which minded not in the least the prospect of one fewer potential showdown on the convention floor every two years.

Nor did it go overlooked in the room that the cabinet had brought out one of its biggest guns early in the debate, James being one of the most able NDP ministers as well as the most admired.

The only person the delegates were less likely to say no to was Premier John Horgan himself, and he did not speak, nor did he need to.

When the vote was called, it passed with 71 per cent support, comfortably above the necessary two-thirds to amend the party constitution amendment.

The actual count of those voting for the change was low. The convention drew a lower turnout than many of those held in Vancouver, there being a larger pool of New Democrats to draw upon in the Metro region who can more easily commute to the convention site.

Among 770 registered delegates, more than 200 did not vote at all, leaving 345 to vote in favour, 141 against. With that, the Horgan cabinet was off the hook for a convention accountability session until fall of 2019.

I doubt such a motion would have passed so handily at many of the cranky, contentious New Democrat conventions I have covered in the past, but the weekend outcome was understandable given the euphoria over the party’s return to power after 16 long years, coupled with Horgan’s exemplary show of leadership in his first few months in office.

The mood will dissipate as the government begins making tough decisions, starting with the pending one on whether to continue or halt Site C. By the time New Democrats re-convene in 2019, the ranks of the disappointed may well include some of those who voted the cabinet a get-out-of-convention card Sunday.

But in any event, the party culture is changing.

The crowd on the weekend seemed younger and more diverse than past NDP conventions — like the government itself, with its eight MLAs under the age of 40.

On the weekend, two of those up-and-comers — Bowinn Ma, 31, from North Vancouver-Lonsdale and Ravi Kahlon, 37, from Delta North — gave inspirational presentations on the campaigns that brought them to the floor of the legislature and the centre of power.

Watching them in action, I was struck by how now it is the B.C. Liberals that look like the Antiques Road Show, needing fresh blood and an organizational makeover, in and out of the legislature.