ONE YEAR IN, NDP HAS REASON TO BE PLEASED
Affordable housing one of the few fumbles among many positives for new government
When the new cabinet was sworn in at government house a year ago, some New Democrats were pinching themselves over having made it into government after 16 years in the political wilderness.
Others had their fingers crossed over how long the hold on power would last, given the unusual way the party made it into office: the closest election in B.C. history, followed by the power-sharing deal with the Greens.
Today, New Democrats can marvel over how well things have gone. “Better than you expected?” I asked Premier John Horgan recently. “Yes,” he replied.
Much credit goes to Horgan himself. He’s the 10th premier I’ve covered and the one most improved in the transition from opposition to government.
Through three years as leader of the opposition, Horgan was all too often an angry, frustrated man. Not just critical in the way opposition members have to be, but over-the-top negative to the point where he sometimes picked fights with reporters in scrums to the dismay of his own staff.
As premier, he is the government’s best communicator, advancing the NDP agenda in positive fashion and seldom displaying the quarrelsome side that marred many days in opposition.
Credit for government progress to date belongs as well to the cabinet, and particularly the party veterans.
Opposition can be a thankless task, but the New Democrats put those years to good use. The result is a cabinet front bench that from Day 1 knew the issues at least as well and sometimes better than its now-critics among the B.C. Liberals.
The public service has provided another positive for the new government.
Horgan chose wisely in appointing the widely respected Don Wright as head of the public service and in taking his advice to avoid a large-scale purge.
The Horgan New Democrats were able to hit the ground running on an ambitious agenda in part because they did not have to rely on a bunch of imports from NDP governments in other provinces, as did the Mike Harcourt NDP.
Part of the job of consolidating power is discrediting your predecessors and there’s no faulting the New Democrats on that score. They’ve drawn attention to B.C. Liberal incompetence and neglect on a number of files, from housing to ICBC finances to money laundering.
Nor has the current government lacked for a helping hand from the Liberals themselves. Their preposterous and ineffectual responses on the casino moneylaundering report did more to discredit themselves than anything the New Democrats could or did say.
The New Democrats also owe a debt to ex-B.C. Liberal, now independent MLA Darryl Plecas, for agreeing to become Speaker of the legislature. Though the move betrayed his party interest, it served the larger public interest in reducing the risk of an early election and allowing the new government to show what it could do.
Another test of government is being willing to take actions that disappoint, even anger one’s own supporters. The premier and his cabinet surely passed that test with the decision to proceed with construction of Site C, risky as it was — and risky as it remains, judging from the latest quarterly filing on the project from B.C. Hydro.
Nor has Horgan flinched in the face of threats from his partner in power sharing, Green Leader Andrew Weaver, to bring down the government over support for the development of liquefied natural gas.
There’s been no moratorium on fracking. Instead the New Democrats dared to amend the LNG tax regime inherited from the Liberals to offer sizable relief — about $150 million a year — in hopes of securing the $40-million LNG Canada project and an estimated revenue stream of $550 million a year.
But in exchange for angering environmentalists on Site C and LNG, Horgan would appear to be hoping the party base will be placated by his hefty investment in rhetoric and legal bills against the twinning of the Trans Mountain Pipeline.
On the fiscal front, often a weakness for past NDP governments, Horgan has drawn some good notices. The big three of the New York-based credit rating agencies, Moody’s, Standard & Poor’s and Fitch, have all reaffirmed the high-end credit ratings the NDP inherited from the Liberals.
At the same time the new government has played some cards badly and others not at all.
The New Democrats have been craven in failing to take on the powerful taxi industry on ridehailing. The deck-stacking on electoral reform has been too clever by half.
This week’s move to forcibly unionize the workforce on public construction is the kind of thing New Democrats would have denounced as corrupt if done by B.C. Liberals to reward their supporters in the business community.
The premier and his ministers are still a long way from making significant progress on housing affordability, one of the key promises that brought them to power.
They’ve made some moves to discourage demand, little to increase supply, the other half of the affordability equation. The speculation tax remains a halfbaked misnomer.
But the New Democrats have been at their jobs for only a year and no one should expect a new government to get everything right.
At this point, I don’t see any failings that would necessarily spell defeat for Premier Horgan in an election that could still be, Andrew Weaver willing, more than three years away.
For now, so far so good.
On the fiscal front ... Horgan has drawn some good notices.