Trudeau can take lessons from B.C., say architects of provincial minority government
Credit to Author: Rob Shaw| Date: Tue, 22 Oct 2019 23:38:15 +0000
VICTORIA — Federal party leaders must meet face-to-face to hash out grievances left over from a nasty election campaign before they can find common ground to work together in a minority parliament, say architects of B.C.’s successful political power-sharing deal.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government was reduced to a 157-seat minority in Monday’s federal election. The other parties — the Conservatives with 121 seats, Bloc Quebecois with 32 seats, NDP with 24 seats, Greens with three seats and one independent — could form several different partnerships to reach the 170-seat majority generally required to pass votes in the House of Commons.
Federal parties could learn some lessons from the aftermath of the 2017 B.C. election, when a re-elected minority B.C. Liberal government failed to find support during backroom negotiations and was toppled by a NDP-Green partnership.
The seeds for the NDP government began on election night, May 9, 2017 when, faced with a confusing set of initial voting results, NDP Leader John Horgan picked up the phone and cold-called B.C. Green Leader Andrew Weaver.
It was a difficult move, because Weaver and Horgan had waged a bitter campaign filled with personal attacks.
“I think that really helped and broke the ice,” said Bob Dewar, Horgan’s special adviser who was the B.C. NDP’s 2017 campaign director and lead negotiator with the Greens. “It takes away the awkwardness.”
That call led to face-to-face meetings that ultimately outmanoeuvred Liberal Leader Christy Clark.
“There is a very famous picture, that’s a Canadian Press photograph, and it’s got John and I, who, going into the campaign clearly there was no love between us, and at the end of the negotiations we were sitting there watching Canadian women’s sevens rugby together,” said Weaver.
“That’s what’s important and that’s what my advice would be, get the background people out of the negotiations and make sure the leaders are there so that they can establish a relationship that they can build on.”
Dewar concurred. “You have to have someone in the room to go back and forth and establish that trust,” he said. “Who better than the two leaders.”
In B.C. after the election, the Greens held the balance of power with three votes, compared to 43 Liberals and 41 New Democrats. The Greens signalled they wanted a long-term confidence and supply agreement to provide a stable government and avoid another election.
Ottawa’s current situation is different.
Trudeau’s seat count gives him the ability to govern vote-by-vote, depending on the support of four other parties.
His options include a formal coalition in which partner parties could be given cabinet posts, or confidence agreements where other parties promise to support throne speeches, budgets and confidence votes to avoid a new election but retain freedom to vote against other legislation.
The federal Liberals have the most seats, “so that’s a big difference from the scenario we were in,” said Dewar. “I think they have an opportunity to go for one-off (votes) if they want to.
“The prime minister is going to have to figure out what he wants to do. The math is there for getting the NDP on side.”
What goes unspoken at the negotiating table, said Dewar, are the practical realities that none of the parties want to admit publicly, such as being broke after an expensive election campaign and knowing that a fatigued electorate would react angrily if they had to go back to the polls again quickly.
Deputy premier Carole James, who helped steer the NDP’s 2017 negotiating team, said the next step is finding shared values and election platform items to use as a foundation for talks.
“That’s why it is important to make sure the communication is there and you find what you can agree on,” said James. “If you can start there you can get through the bumps along the way.”
B.C.’s 2017 negotiations also took time. After the May 9 vote, it was another 20 days before an NDP-Green deal was publicly announced. The Clark government fell on June 28, and the NDP assumed power on July 18.
“It will take some time,” said James. “It certainly will require a lot of conversations, a lot of working together, a lot of looking at your commonalities. It will be a long week or couple of weeks, that’s also what I remember as well.
“People often say minority governments have a short shelf life, I think we’ve proven here in British Columbia that when you work together and focus on the people of the province you can get great things done.”