Vaughn Palmer: Weaver's party will be hard-pressed to come up with as effective a communicator
Credit to Author: Stephen Snelgrove| Date: Tue, 08 Oct 2019 01:27:29 +0000
VICTORIA — Green party Leader Andrew Weaver says he’d already made up his mind to retire from politics before he ended up in a hospital emergency ward last month.
“No, it was not a factor,” Weaver told reporters Monday, referring to the inner-ear disorder that put him on the sick list for several weeks with persistent nausea and vertigo. “I had made the decision toward the end of the summer. Certainly when that happened, it reaffirmed the decision I made. It was not the cause of the decision.”
His decision being to embark on a long goodbye, lasting two years. He’s asked the Green party to begin selecting a new leader, probably by next summer.
“It’s time to let another generation take the lead,” said Weaver. But he’s not surrendering the reins to the NextGen Greens just yet. Weaver intends to remain as a Green MLA and an active partner with the other two Greens in sharing power with the NDP until the next election, set for Oct. 16, 2021. That part of the announcement had Premier John Horgan beaming. Being able to rely on the Greens when needed is one of the keys to his 27-months-and-counting hold on government.
Both Weaver and Horgan referred to each other as friends, a remarkable development given the hostility that marred their relationship before the 2017 election. Horgan scorned the Greens for trying to keep the B.C. Liberals in power. Weaver accused Horgan of being “bought” by the B.C. Federation of Labour. Weaver said he could have respectful conversations with Premier Christy Clark, while Horgan was given to “explosions of temper.”
But what brought them together was the realization, after the closest election in B.C. history, that they had to work together. Weaver made the right call in going with the New Democrats over the discredited, failing B.C. Liberals — not that the Green party would have stood for any other outcome. He probably could have driven a harder bargain on the power-sharing agreement. But it was uncharted territory and the New Democrats realized, perhaps sooner than Weaver himself, that he really had no other choice.
When talk turned to legacies Monday, Horgan said Weaver will be remembered mainly for “his passion for climate action and for his participation in the Clean B.C. plan.”
Weaver would prefer to be remembered as the scientist who left the lab bench at the University of Victoria, “took a 50 per cent pay cut” and went into politics on principle. He tends to get carried away on that theme and did so again Monday, styling himself as one of the few people who got into politics on principle as opposed to a quest for power.
New Democrats tend to roll their eyes at such pronouncements, knowing the trade-offs he has made to keep them in power and his own agenda on track. Weaver opposed them on Site C. The Greens were let down by the too-complex question on the electoral reform referendum. Weaver denounced the NDP for proceeding with development of an industry based on the export of liquefied natural gas.
But Weaver didn’t bring down the government over any of those things, nor did he give NDP House Leader Mike Farnworth any sleepless nights. The emblematic instance unfolded in the House last February. Weaver delivered a particularly scathing denunciation of the speech from the throne, culminating in a nasty point of comparison with the premier himself for his support of LNG development.
“I feel a little bit like I’m on the Titanic trying to urge our captain to change course so we avoid the icebergs ahead,” blustered Weaver. “The captain turns to me and starts telling me about the dinner specials in the dining room. He offers me a free ticket to tonight’s show. That is not what we want in a throne speech.”
Nevertheless, an hour later, he and the Greens voted with the government on the speech.
On Monday, after hearing Weaver praise Horgan, I asked him to put that “captain of the Titanic” comparison into perspective. He got all huffy and suggested he would have to check the Hansard reference, but it was probably intended as a metaphor.
Of course it was a metaphor. I didn’t think that Weaver was literally suggesting that the premier was captaining a vessel that has been rusting on the bottom of the North Atlantic for 107 years.
Typical Weaver. Indignant at being challenged. Resistant to any disruption in the flow of his chosen narrative. Always needing the last word. But eminently quotable. He will be missed by the media and his party will be hard-pressed to come up with as effective a communicator to replace him.
Weaver will be just short of his 60th birthday by the time the next election rolls around. Were he to seek and win another term he would be nearing 65 by the end of it. This way he can resume his career as a climate scientist or even try something else.
His firmest answer was when a reporter asked about running for federal office.
“The last thing in the world I would ever do is run federally,” he replied, making no secret of his disgust with the current national campaign. “That will never, never happen.”
Apparently, the mere thought of it would be enough to summon up another attack of nausea and vertigo.