BC Green Party Leader Andrew Weaver spoke to Business in Vancouver on Friday, January 26 to discuss the BC NDP’s first six months in office, his party’s Confidence and Supply Agreement (CASA) with the NDP, and his recent statement that he would push government to a vote of non-confidence should Premier John Horgan continue to promote B.C. liquefied natural gas (LNG) during his trade mission in Asia.
Mr. Weaver spoke to BIV’s Kirk LaPointe and Hayley Woodin for BIV on Roundhouse Radio. The full interview will air Monday, January 29 at 6 p.m. The following excerpt has been condensed and edited.
BIV: The last time we had you on was during the election campaign. Do you still feel like you’re campaigning on certain issues?
Weaver: It’s been a bit of a blur for quite some time. It’s not so much campaigning, but our role during the campaign is to inform British Columbians of what we believe the issues are. There’s no difference when you’re in opposition. You identify problems and you propose solutions. It’s a little more complex now because we are in a minority government situation, but we’re in opposition – we’re not in government. So we are not at the cabinet decision-making table, for example, because we’re not a coalition. It’s different. It’s not so much campaigning as trying to propose solutions and build public support for those solutions, and use the public’s support to nudge government in directions that we think they should go.
BIV: It is a curious position though, isn’t it? Because the public probably perceives that you are in fact an aligned party with the government by virtue of the support that you’re providing in the legislature and the covenant that you’ve got in terms of confidence and supply.
And yet I have to say that almost every couple of days you’re issuing a press release that’s knocking them all around. Help me understand how you’re determining as the party leader where the line in the sand is drawn.
Weaver: You’re right. The subtleties of being in opposition but also in a confidence and supply agreement is not well understood. We went into negotiations after the election with both BC NDP and the BC Liberals. We had to come to an agreement with which to offer stability. I like to give signals and give market a sense of the direction we’re heading. So we came up with the Confidence and Supply Agreement that we signed with the NDP.
Within that agreement are a number of things, much of which is high-level, value-based – things like we’re going to take steps to deal with affordability. But there’s a couple of things that are a little more specific, and one of them is to develop a climate plan to meet our legislative reduction targets, one of which will be 40% by 2030, and the other, 80% by 2050.
The Confidence and Supply Agreement forms the basis of our support of the BC NDP. But our job is to say what we stand for and push government in a direction and hold them accountable if they said they’d do something.
With the issue of LNG, it’s an important one and the reason why it’s critical is that we have very clear language in the Confidence and Supply Agreement. I came out of a very, very personal and nasty election campaign where NDP partisan support made up an awful lot of stuff, personal attacks… I understand that, but it leaves a bad taste in your mouth. But when I sat there across from John [Horgan] who I have a lot of respect for and frankly I quite like as an individual, it was clear to me that both he and I wanted the same thing. And he clearly wanted to meet emissions targets and show leadership on this file.
The problem there is that somebody advising him is clearly not putting it on the table, and I could not – and our party could not, my colleagues could not – stand by and say that one of the fundamental reasons why we’ve agreed to work with [the NDP] is going to not actually continue forward.
I’ve spent 25 years as a climate scientist. I could not look my wife, my kids, my colleagues, my students, people who supported me, in the face and say the reason why I personally got into the field of politics was because I couldn’t stand by and watch the dismantling of Gordon Campbell’s policies on climate change, which led to innovation in the new economy. I would be morally bankrupt. We’re very serious about this.
I feel reassured though, because I have talked with Mr. Horgan. I just think there’s some bad advice there. People don’t understand that you cannot have your cake and eat it too. And people believe the impossible because there’s a lot of competing interests out there telling [them] they can do it.
BIV: What does John Horgan have to say in order to assuage you, in order to keep you in his camp?
Weaver: I’m a very firm believer that we need to signal in a minority government to the market what we support and don’t support. Which is why for example with Site C, before a decision was made, we let British Columbians know that government will not fall over this specific decision. That gives certainty.
What will convince me, is show me – as in CASA – a climate strategy that will lead to our legislative reduction targets. You can’t add 10 megatonnes of emissions and reduce to 12.8 megatonnes all B.C. emissions without literally saying: ‘We’re going to have Woodfibre [LNG], we’re going to have LNG Canada, and Rio Tinto Alcan you must shut down because we can’t have your emissions. Every single individual in British Columbia must stop using gasoline in their cars. We have to shut down every landfill in British Columbia because we can’t have methane emissions.’ That’s essentially what you have to say if you want to have [add] the LNG Canada and Woodfibre plants and still meet your targets. So you can’t have your cake and eat it too.
BIV: You sound like a sceptic that John Horgan can thread the needle on this one.
Weaver: The thing that I like about John, and honestly I think he’s a bit like me, you know where you stand with him because he’ll tell you. And I trust when he says he will do something to my face. We had a good conversation, we’ve agreed to meet when he gets back. And I do believe he is serious when he says they want to develop a plan to meet the climate targets. So I’m willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.
We’re not talking about shutting down natural gas in northern British Columbia. There’s a very important role for that. We’re talking about the creation of an industry that doesn’t exist, that’s actually highly greenhouse gas emitting, on top of what already is present.
BIV: But it sounds as though you’re saying there isn’t a realistic, sustainable climate change plan that would allow B.C. to meet its targets in a way that the province could also support a new LNG industry.
Weaver: It’s impossible. It’s true, it is impossible. And I think the public needs to be levelled with.
Here’s the scientific reality: the world is warming by about 1-1.5 degrees already. We know that if we do no more than keep existing greenhouse gas levels fixed at present values, we’ve got another 0.6, 0.7 degree warming in store. So what Paris really said, is effective immediately there can be no new investment in new fossil fuel technology that will increase emissions. Paris said we must begin decarbonisation immediately. And literally that’s what’s happening around the world. And B.C., rather than being viewed now as a leader, is viewed as a laggard.
It is folly to think that somehow our prosperity lies in being the last one to move forward in the new economy.
BIV: Your party has been striving for proportional representation. If you don’t hear what you need to hear from John Horgan, you would lose that opportunity, would you not? Are you prepared to make that the hill to die on?
Weaver: Yes, and again coming back to it, I recognize pundits here and there are profoundly cynical at times about political statements. Why did I leave a very well-paying job at the peak of my career, in the area of climate science, where I was right at the top of the field, I took a substantial salary cut literally to take abuse on issues that I wanted to make a difference.
I did this because of the matter of principle. I could not stand by and watch the dismantling of our leadership on this file that I spent my life in. And if I were to actually at this stage then say, ‘Okay I got into this, but what I really care is about politics,’ I’d be morally bankrupt. And I could not look my kids in the face. This is why this is an important issue.
We need the decision-makers in the BC NDP to recognize that you can’t have your cake and eat it too. You can either meet your climate targets, or you can build an LNG industry. Take your pick. Which do you want. If you want the LNG industry, well you’re going to have to go to the public and get their support from that because you weren’t elected to do that. You were elected based on your affordability and your climate strategy and all that kind of stuff.
I don’t think we’re going to come to this. Because I think Mr. Horgan recognizes that it’s important to meet the climate targets that they themselves have said they would do.
BIV: Why didn’t the line in the sand come after Site C?
Weaver: I pivot back to the CASA agreement. We could pick up our bat and ball and say government’s coming down, or we could say: ‘This is what we agreed to.’ We agreed to send it to the BCUC (BC Utilities Commission) report, and it did. However with LNG, it is very specific there that we must develop a strategy to meet our climate targets. So there is a difference. I personally don’t think it’s too late for the government to recognize that Site C is not fiscally responsible.
BIV: What kind of statements are you looking for out of this party in the run-up to the budget and in the budget itself that will give you confidence that affordability issues are being tackled in a way that your party can support?
Weaver: We will be formally announcing what we hope to see next Wednesday, the 31st of January. To give some specifics, the BC NDP clearly campaigned on affordability and did very well in Metro Vancouver because of their commitments there. We haven’t seen much yet. We’ve had many meetings with the NDP on this issue articulating what we think is important. One of the things we clearly believe is important is dealing with the offshore capital that’s flowing into British Columbia. Right now we need to stop it. We’d love to see the introduction of speculative taxes which could be implemented on existing capital that’s been invested here in real estate. We’d like to see the ability of municipalities perhaps to have vacancy taxes, if they so wish to see the foreign buyers’ tax, which could be distributed across the province.
We’ve communicated what we’d like to the BC NDP, clearly, and we will make that public next week. The reality is, not everything we want will be in the budget, but coming back to CASA, we have a commitment that they will take steps to deal with affordability. And that’s what adults do in the room, is they put their positions forward and they recognize that you don’t always get what you want. There are some things that are non-negotiable.
For the full interview with BC Green Party Leader Andrew Weaver, tune into BIV on Roundhouse Radio 98.3FM Monday, January 29 at 6 p.m.
