The Journal spoke with veteran political correspondent Keith Baldrey, legislative bureau chief for Global BC News, on September 14 about what has been happening in B.C. politics over the last few weeks. This is the second of two parts; the first part appeared in The Journal on September 21.
The Journal: We did talk, right after the Liberals’ throne speech, about how they could just hand it to the NDP and say “Just read this when it’s your turn.” If you put the two speeches together in a Venn diagram, how much of an overlap would there be?
Keith Baldrey: Oh, I think a significant overlap. In fact, I think the Liberal throne speech actually went farther than the NDP throne speech, in terms of the number of items in it. Increasing legal aid (in the Liberal throne speech) came out of the blue, and was not in the NDP throne speech.
The NDP throne speech was much more of a traditional one: very short on detail and long on rhetoric, whereas the Liberal one was long on detail. And the NDP are already showing signs that they’re going to take a modest approach to reinventing the wheel here. They’re not going to have a revolutionary approach to government. They’re going slow. The first budget had some notable spending increases, but not across the board.
I think there are going to be a number of people already probably a little disappointed in what they’re getting from the NDP, based on the expectations they had going into this thing. The NDP had promised that lavish daycare promise; no sign at all that that’s going forward in any shape. There’s no new money for daycare in this budget over that the Liberals had promised. There’s no new money for child protection over what the Liberals had promised. There’s any number of budget items that were in the February Liberal budget that have not been touched by the NDP. They only touched a few things. Now of course this is the first year. The next budget I think is going to have a lot more dynamism to it than this one had, which is basically an update of the Liberal budget.
One of the few things that probably would have helped rural B.C. as much as it did the Lower Mainland was the campaign promise to have a $15 minimum wage by 2021, and then we saw some quick backtracking on that one. Was that because they’re looking at the coffers, or looking at other places like Seattle that have moved to a $15 minimum wage, and studies have come out saying it’s harmful?
The minimum wage is a classic one. I think the NDP sort of overreached in its campaign promises on a number of fronts, and is realizing that the reality when you get into government is far different than the no-holds-barred approach in opposition. There are no consequences to what you say in opposition, and there are consequences to what you do in government.
I’m sure they’re getting advice and information in government that they’re looking at differently to when they were in opposition. The minimum wage and daycare costs are two classic examples of that, where it looked like both of them were imminent when they were in opposition. Then they get into government, and the harsh reality sets in, and these promises become more watered-down and more stretched out over a longer period of time.
The minimum wage one is going to be an interesting one to look at, because it’s going to a commission to study. The NDP loves to study things, and send things to task forces and this type of thing. But all that guarantees is that concrete changes are further down the road than they appeared to be in the election campaign.
We saw Carole James’s response to a lot of criticisms where she was asked why wasn’t this or that in the budget, and her standard response—and you’re going to hear this a lot from NDP cabinet ministers—was “Well, you can’t fix everything after 16 years of being broken.” That’s going to be the standard response for a few months, where the NDP—if they haven’t got a better defence—will say “Well, we can’t fix the Liberals’ problems of 16 years in one week or one month; it’s going to take some time.” But come the spring, I don’t think that response will be adequate for a lot of people.
I always ask you how long this government is going to last. Since Darryl Plecas’s decision—a very surprising one, I gather—to take the Speaker position (Plecas, a Liberal MLA, stunned his party by assuming the role of Speaker; he has since been removed from the party and now sits as an Independent), how does that affect the longevity of this government?
Oh, it gives them a lot of breathing room. You get the sense around the legislature already that the Liberals know there’s not going to be an election anytime soon. They know that they’re going to be in opposition for a while. The NDP knows they’re going to be in government for a while.
Now, how long is a while? I think they key date is the fall of 2018, when that referendum on proportional representation is set to occur. That’s where the Greens—depending on how that referendum goes—will start to reassess their support for the NDP. I don’t think they’re going to vote the NDP out, because I think the Greens are doing quite well in terms of the influence and profile they have, being the junior partner in this alliance to keep the NDP in power. But that’s the benchmark date, I think, when things might be reassessed.
We’ll see what happens after that; but I think the prospect of the NDP staying in power are much firmer and much brighter now than they were a month ago. They’ve got a three-seat cushion when they combine their seats with the Greens, and the NDP was in power for five years in the 1990s—from 1996 to 2001—with a three-seat cushion. So they did it before with a narrow margin, and one assumes they can do it again, as long as the Greens stay there with their support, and I see no reason why they would take away their support, at least until the fall of 2018.
And that would presumably be if the referendum did not pass, and B.C. voters decided to stay with the status quo: That might impel, or encourage, the Greens to reassess?
If the referendum doesn’t pass, and we stay with first past the post, I think a lot of the wind will be taken out of the sails of the Green Party, because their prospects for long-term growth would be diminished significantly. If there was proportional representation, the Greens might feel emboldened and empowered to force an election early, because they know—under a proportional representation vote—they would do quite well.
So they might have an impetus to force an election if that referendum passes. If it doesn’t: I don’t see the Greens doing much of anything in terms of forcing an election.