Vaughn Palmer: B.C. NDP set sights on a majority government in 2021
Credit to Author: Stephen Snelgrove| Date: Sun, 24 Nov 2019 23:26:04 +0000
VICTORIA — The New Democrats opened their convention in the provincial capital Friday on a note of triumph, with President Craig Keating boasting how the party had swiftly adapted to the new era of fundraising in B.C.
“For the first time in the living memory of most New Democrats we are no longer carrying a debt,” reported Keating.
But the financial statements tabled at the convention disclosed a telling detail. The reported $2 million cash surplus for the first full year of the new fundraising regime almost precisely equalled the annual allowance from the province of B.C.
Without the taxpayer bailout — which John Horgan disavowed before the election and implemented afterward — the NDP’s cash on hand would have dwindled to a mere $353.
The weekend convention saw delegates approve a makeover of the party structure. Individual constituency associations were deregistered and their funds consolidated into the central apparatus.
It was the kind of centralizing that the fractious party might have protested in the past. But the only squawking from delegates was over how the party brass used the restructuring to also get rid of term limits for themselves.
Another sign of deference was the convention’s handling of the protest from the B.C. Teachers’ Federation.
Angry BCTF representatives leafleted delegates going in and out of the hall as part of a campaign to shame the New Democrats into putting more money on the table in current contract talks.
“Our low wages and labour shortage must be addressed. That’s going to take more funding than the government has put on the table,” declared BCTF president Teri Mooring in a speech to a union assembly that reporters were invited to attend.
“It’s a political choice. So I say to the NDP ministers here in Victoria today: make that choice.”
The reply to the BCTF came from Premier John Horgan himself during his keynote address to delegates. He noted how NDP supported teachers during its days in Opposition, before acknowledging the current “challenge at the bargaining table.”
Premier John Horgan delivers his speech during the BC NDP Convention at the Victoria Convention Centre in Victoria, Saturday, Nov. 23, 2019.
Then he closed that brief passage in his speech with a variation on the same “get thee to the bargaining table” message he has delivered during the transit dispute in Metro Vancouver.
With the New Democrats having reduced their convention schedule to once every two years, the weekend gathering was the last such get together before the scheduled Oct. 16, 2021 date for the next provincial election.
This being the last chance for delegates to directly buttonhole the government, the convention approved some significant resolutions on the spending side.
There was support for dental care, a school lunch program, free parking for patients and families at hospitals, $10-a-day child care and a call for the government to explore “the feasibility of free post secondary education for all students.”
The party provided no costing on any of those. But I think some of them have about as much chance of surviving the scrutiny of Finance Minister Carole James as the expectations of the BCTF.
The delegates did turn back a resolution calling on the government to proceed with a not-kept election promise to provide a $400 annual rebate to renters.
“It was bad when it was included in the platform two and a half years ago and it hasn’t aged well,” said one delegate who helped defeat the resolution. Another swayed the “no” vote by arguing that the $400 would only “put more money into the pockets of landlords.”
The premier said later that he did not agree that the money would have gone to landlords. But neither did he seem disappointed that the convention had taken him off the hook for a promise that has been opposed by his Green party partners in power sharing.
Horgan did thank the Greens for their support during his 45 minute speech to delegates, while mocking B.C. Liberal leader Andrew Wilkinson’s efforts to cast himself as “just a regular guy.”
But delegates also approved a motion from the NDP’s governing council and provincial executive vowing that: “The B.C. NDP will campaign to elect a majority B.C. NDP government in the next election.”
Pointedly, the convention did not call debate on a resolution, which would have committed the NDP to work with the Green party “to develop a strategy to prevent vote splitting on the progressive left prior to the next election.”
Message to the Greens: When the election is called, the NDP is coming for you as well as for the B.C. Liberals.
For Horgan, the only down in a generally upbeat convention came when he joined national leader Jagmeet Singh on the platform at the end of his speech.
Singh persuaded the premier to join him in jumping along to his infectious campaign song, Differentology (“we gonna party all night, we ready, we ready”) by singer Bunji Garlin.
The 60-year old premier then discovered the risks of joining an energetic 40-year old in such a vigorous display, and soon had to leave the convention hall to nurse an injured Achilles tendon.
Not all of the challenges ahead for the New Democrats can be addressed as readily as that one was, by an application of ice and a change of shoes.
But with the NDP officially setting its sights on winning a majority government two years hence, the party and its leader appear reasonably confident at this point that the goal is within reach.