When all else fails, revert to sports analogies. Picture a game where you’re forced by desperate circumstances to recruit from another team to fill out your roster for an entire season.
You pick up three strangers and bring them on board, even though there were a few scraps with them in the pre-season. They demand access to all coaches’ meetings, but they want a separate dressing room and the right to call their own plays.
Plus, they agree to play only in certain key contests. And in post-game interviews, they feel free to criticize the team’s play and the calls from behind the bench.
Premier John Horgan and Green Leader Andrew Weaver both used to be jocks, so they would both appreciate how unusual their lineup is. But it’s still holding after five months in office. It’s got something to do with the cold-war nuclear doctrine of mutually assured destruction.
The endlessly fascinating confidence and supply agreement between the NDP government and the Green caucus will get even more complex after the decision to proceed with the Site C dam. Weaver has started an end-run that could throw another load of stress on the relationship.
This week, he endorsed a future recall campaign against Energy Minister Michelle Mungall in her Nelson-Creston riding. Going back to sports, that’s like sitting on the bench and sucker-punching one of your own new teammates.
Briefed by one of Mungall’s upset constituents about plans to unseat her in retaliation for the decision, he promptly endorsed the idea publicly. He tweeted that a recall campaign against her would be in order. Mungall had committed to voters that she wanted to stop the project, then wound up with direct authority over it and was part of the decision to continue it.
“When somebody tells you one thing and does another ...” Weaver fumed after the decision.
Recall is a long-shot effort that would be a year away. But just raising the topic raises the stakes considerably. Weaver also included Agriculture Minister Lana Popham in the discussion, on the same grounds. Those two ministers and others made strong promises about the project in front of large audiences that are now invalid.
They have to be held accountable for them, he said. Coincidentally or otherwise, Greens edged out the B.C. Liberals and came second in Nelson-Creston in the May election. And the party launched a mass outreach campaign Wednesday to people “who feel betrayed.”
Weaver is perfectly within his rights to take the shots, according to the agreement. It specified only that the NDP and Greens agreed to refer Site C to the utilities commission. After that, the two sides were free to disengage and plot their own courses.
But the overriding principle of the deal is the “no surprises” rule, meaning they agree not to blindside each other.
Suggesting recall counts as a surprise.
In a year-end interview this week, Horgan said the agreement is still holding. Asked if Weaver was testing its boundaries, he chuckled, then said: “Every day I get up excited to come here and start a new adventure.”
Asked again later about Weaver’s recall move, which Weaver broadcast even before the actual dam decision was announced, Horgan went a bit further.
“CASA [the confidence and supply agreement] was all about surprises. I was surprised, I have to say. … Mr. Weaver has tested the bounds of our relationship but not the agreement. CASA is solid.”
It’s a measure of how badly he needs those three crucial Green votes in the legislature that he is willing to accept this.
It’s that grey area between the edges of the formal agreement and the start of day-to-day policy arguments between opposing parties that the two will be exploring.
Just So You Know: Sitting in the premier’s office and still taking time to marvel at how he got there, Horgan explained the unofficial terms he and Weaver reached while doing the deal.
“He [Weaver] said right at the start: ‘I’m going to come at you, I’m an opposition member.’
“I said: ‘Fair enough, but I as a leader of a government need to be able to whack you every now and again, as well.’ I haven’t availed myself of that yet, but we’ll see.”
