What the federal Liberals and NDP can learn from B.C.’s 2017 confidence-and-supply deal

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Andrew Weaver is a climate scientist and professor in the School of Earth and Ocean Sciences at the University of Victoria who was the former BC Green MLA for Oak Bay Gordon Head and the party’s leader from 2015 to 2020.

When I woke on Tuesday to the radio reporting that the federal NDP and Liberals had signed a confidence-and-supply agreement, it brought me back to May, 2017, when BC NDP Leader John Horgan and I signed such a deal of our own.

Both Mr. Horgan and I were exhausted at the time, coming off a relentless provincial election campaign that left the incumbent BC Liberals with 43 seats, the BC NDP with 41 seats and the BC Greens holding the balance of responsibility with a mere three seats, all located on the southern tip of Vancouver Island. There was no clear majority.

I had gotten into politics in 2013 at the peak of my scientific career to refocus the climate-change discourse in B.C., and this provided a unique opportunity to do so. I immediately initiated negotiations with both the BC NDP and the BC Liberals to determine what role our BC Green caucus could play in ensuring stable governance. I did not want a coalition. We wanted to retain our ability to hold government to account during question period and the committee stages of various bills. Our plan was to negotiate an accord similar to the one signed by the Ontario NDP and Ontario Liberals in 1985, which enabled a Liberal minority government to replace the incumbent Progressive Conservatives.

After several face-to-face negotiations directly with Mr. Horgan and his eventual deputy and finance minister, Carole James, it became clear that if we focused on what we agreed upon, rather than what we disagreed upon, the province’s NDP and Greens could accomplish a lot together. Our election platforms shared many of the same goals, including a commitment to introduce a greenhouse-gas reduction strategy to cut B.C.’s emissions to 40 per cent below 2007 levels by 2030 – a goal that the BC Liberals didn’t seem serious about meeting.

Cynical pundits thought we would fail; the opposition BC Liberals wished us to fail; partisan elements in all our parties hoped that we would fail. But failure was not an option. The people of British Columbia had put their trust in us to govern for the province, and not exclusively for our partisan base.

For three and a half years, our minority government was guided by that confidence-and-supply agreement, and particularly the “good faith and no surprises” principle that governed it. My chief of staff and I met with the Premier and his chief of staff every couple of weeks. While initially these meetings were approached cautiously, over time we developed a working relationship grounded in mutual respect and trust. Of course, we had our differences, and at times the discussions were tense, but a relationship grounded in mutual respect allowed us to work through even these most difficult moments.

Still, the first few months of the new BC NDP minority government were difficult. The party had not been in power since the 1990s, and many of their MLAs were new. Likewise, I had become the first Green elected at the provincial level in Canada just four years before that agreement was signed, and in 2017, I was leading the first provincial Green caucus in the country. To say we didn’t have a lot of recent political experience to draw upon would be an understatement.

But as the spring of 2018 approached, our minority government clicked into gear. Most people will never know how collegial our working relationship was, or the influence the BC Greens had, as politics is often painted as a blood sport. Conflict makes the news and lends itself well to catchy headlines; collegial governance doesn’t.

And I was proud of the results. In those three and a half years, we banned big money from B.C. politics, took steps toward the implementation of universal daycare, passed the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) Act, created a $500-million InBC investment fund, cracked down on money laundering, worked to temper speculation in the housing market, made changes to the labour code (unanimously supported by the legislature), brought in no-fault auto insurance, increased minimum wage dramatically and more, including measures to initiate one of North America’s most progressive, sector-wide climate change mitigation and adaption plans. As part of our collaboration, I also had the first three opposition bills in B.C.’s history pass as private member’s bills. None of this would have happened were it not for Mr. Horgan and I, together with our respective chiefs of staff, developing a relationship of trust and mutual respect guided by the agreement we had made.

My only regret is that a referendum on proportional representation, a key plank of the agreement, failed. A successful result would have ensured such co-operative governments for years to come.

Unfortunately, the confidence-and-supply agreement fell apart in the summer of 2020 after I had stepped away from the BC Greens. On July 28, the BC Greens tabled a crippling subamendment to the Economic Stabilization (COVID-19) Act from the floor of the House, blindsiding Ms. James. The subamendment hamstrung government’s ability to respond in a timely fashion to the economic challenges associated with COVID-19.

In response, a surprised Ms. James immediately called for a recess. Upon resumption of the proceedings, she decided to support it; if that last-minute subamendment had gone to a vote and passed without government’s support, it would have sent a clear signal of non-confidence as the economic bill was very much central to confidence and supply issues.

That spelled the end of the agreement, and Mr. Horgan called an election shortly thereafter. I understood and supported his reasons for doing so, since the way that confidence-related subamendment was brought forward – without advance notice or being put on the order papers – certainly seemed in contravention of the principle of “good faith and no surprises.”

So what lessons can the federal parties learn from B.C.’s experience? It’s clear that the federal NDP, like the BC Greens, will be able to achieve a number of their major policy initiatives in areas like affordable housing, pharmacare, child care and their signature promise of dental care for low- and middle- income Canadians. In exchange, the Liberals are granted stability in governance which, assuming all parties abide by the confidence-and-supply agreement, will delay an election until 2025.

But perhaps the most important outcome of Tuesday’s agreement is that the influence of politically appointed, unelected backroom partisan staffers will be greatly diminished. There will now be stakeholders at the decision-making table from another political party. One can hope this will mean less partisan bickering between the federal Liberals and the federal NDP, and a greater focus on shared governance.

My advice to both Justin Trudeau and Jagmeet Singh, as well as their respective chiefs of staff, is that the success of your confidence-and-supply agreement will depend on maintaining a relationship of trust and mutual respect. Meeting quarterly as currently planned, instead of bi-weekly or even monthly, strikes me as inadequate if one wants to build the necessary relationships that are required for the success of this agreement.

Nevertheless, kudos to Mr. Trudeau and Mr. Singh. Thank you for putting Canadians ahead of partisan politics. I am excited to watch what this remarkable agreement will bring during the next three years.

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