Darryl Plecas says he feels great after breaking the chains of the Liberal party and accepting the dream job he always wanted: Speaker of the B.C. legislature.
"It was the right thing for me and the right thing to do," Plecas told me Saturday, after the Liberals angrily booted him out of the party for taking the post.
Plecas stunned his former Liberal colleagues on Friday by accepting the $150,000-a-year Speaker's job, a shocking move that effectively handed the governing NDP-Green alliance an expanded, three-seat majority in the legislature.
The furious Liberals expelled him from the party ranks on Saturday through a rare "special motion" of the party executive.
"It's like they're saying, 'if you don't think like us, you don't belong with us,' so that's disappointing," Plecas said. "But I've always told myself: Do the right thing. And if that means I have to sit as an independent and not win another election, so be it."
Liberal leader Rich Coleman said Plecas double-crossed the party by taking the Speaker's job after earlier promising not to do it. "It was a total betrayal," Coleman fumed. But Plecas insisted the only reason he earlier said he wouldn't take the job is because that's what the Liberal party brass told him to say.
"That wasn't really from me -- that was from the premier's office," Plecas said, referring to Christy Clark, who resigned in July after the NDP-Green alliance toppled her government on a non-confidence vote.
The Speaker is the non-voting, non-partisan referee of the legislature and Plecas - a second-term MLA and former criminology professor from Abbotsford - said it's a job he always wanted. "The Speaker's job is an incredibly honourable role," he said. "If somebody said to me, 'What is the single best role a person could have as an MLA, especially for somebody from my background?' That would be it."
Plecas worked for eight years as a federally appointed prison judge. "I heard over 5,000 cases, so I have a track record of being impartial in difficult circumstances," he said.
"So when there was an opportunity to be Speaker, I had to choose. Am I going to do this, which I think is suitable for me and the kind of person that I am? Or am I going to continue having to restrain myself for years?
"I made the right choice."
Plecas said he was moved by the good wishes he received on Friday when he took the job.
"Almost everyone from the NDP and the Greens came to see me and wished me well. I was flooded with hundreds of emails from people, saying thank you for doing this for the province."
Plecas said he understands many Liberals are unhappy with his decision, especially after he publicly rejected NDP-Green overtures to take the Speaker's job in June. In an interview, Plecas told me: "I would never be Speaker without the blessing of my colleagues in caucus."
But he said circumstances were different back then, and he changed his mind after soul searching following the collapse of the Liberal government.
"The Liberals were telling us back then that the NDP-Green alliance would be an illegitimate government. They even had a legal opinion saying that. And it wasn't true."
The Liberals are still furious at Plecas because his move gives the NDP-Green team-up a more stable governing majority.
And in Plecas's home riding, his former Liberal supporters are enraged. "We were blindsided," said Ron Gladiuk, president of the Liberal riding association in Abbotsford South. "He told us he wouldn't do this. There are a lot of people here who worked hard to get him elected. He owes them an explanation."
Gladiuk said angry Liberals in the riding are already demanding a recall campaign to kick Plecas out of office, though a recall effort can't be legally launched until November 2018.
That won't stop the Liberals from stewing in their bitter juices about it, while the NDP and Greens celebrate a stunning political power play.
