Ask a question in the halls of the B.C. legislature these days, and chances are, no matter the minister or the topic, you are going to get this answer: Sorry, but the issue is under consultation.
Many of Premier John Horgan's big ticket election promises are caught up and delayed in some form of vague public review now that he's in government.
The referendum on proportional representation. Moving to a $15-an-hour minimum wage. Cutting B.C. Ferries fares. Implementing the $10-a-day child care plan. Solving Metro Vancouver housing affordability crisis. Instituting a $400 annual renters' rebate. Eliminating Medical Services Plan premiums. Reforming Freedom of Information rules. Building the Site C dam. Indexing disability rates to inflation. Legislating poverty reduction targets. Replacing the Massey tunnel. Taxing and legalizing marijuana. And so on.
Those 13 items are just some of the major promises from the NDP's election campaign that various cabinet ministers have said can't proceed until they incorporate comment from the public, community groups, experts and the government's political friends in the B.C. Green party.
For most of the items, there's no real time frame on the reviews, or sense of how the public will be consulted.
"Yes, there's a lot of work to do, there's a lot of issues that need to be talked about and need to be discussed and we need to get the implementation right," Carole James, the finance minister and deputy premier, said in an interview. "What you are seeing is really the results of 16 years of a government that didn't provide the input for the public to have their say.
If you are one of the 795,106 voters who cast their ballot for the NDP in the May 9 provincial election you might be forgiven for asking: Hey, I thought the NDP had these promises all figured out? After all, they produced a 118-page election platform, along with a 12-page fiscal plan, and over a 28-day campaign spelled out in detail what the party would do if it won government, in what time frame, at what cost. Why consult now, after they won and can just enact what they promised?
Unfortunately for the NDP, its platform assumed the party would win the 2017 election. It did not. Instead, with 41 New Democrats, 41 Liberals, three Greens, one independent MLA and one vacant seat, the NDP is only nominally in charge of governing with the agenda it promised voters.
The party needs Green support to stay in power. Green Leader Andrew Weaver boldly announced last week that "what the NDP promised in their election campaign is not really relevant to the situation today." Behind-the-scenes, the Greens have used their objections to either delay or alter the $10-a-day child care plan, $400 renters' rebate, the bill to ban corporate and union donations and the 2021 timeline for a $15 minimum wage.
Stuck without an easy path forward with their Green partners, the NDP have resorted to the sideways step of consultation.
That's assuming the public doesn't get consultation fatigue with the many surveys, town halls, forums and questionnaires the new government will soon begin lobbing their way on a variety of weighty issues.
Ultimately, we're all going to have to wait several months to know the government's true motivations for all the reviews.
But if the NDP spends months consulting on an issue, only to return next year with the identical policy promise it had first made in its May election platform, you'll know all of this was just one big partisan exercise to try and get around their stubborn "friends" in the Green party.
-- Rob Shaw, Vancouver Sun
