–Walt McGinnis citizen reporter
It appears Premier Horgan’s China visit to promote Liquefied Natural Gas investment and the Green party’s leader threats to bring down the NDP government over LNG production is a set up that will justify Weavers withdrawal of support for the NDP and bring down the government which will in turn take the referendum on PR off the table.
This is all fresh after Justin Trudeau’s betrayal of the Canadian people over the same issue. Will BCers buy it and just take another hit to their wishes of a better democracy?
Weaver and Horgan are singing and dancing and tweeting their way into the confused minds of the public, much to the delight of Petroleum Industry and their advisors that are uncomfortably close to the men.
In a Jan 23 Globe and Mail article by Justine Hunter reports Andrew Weaver, the leader of the BC Green Party as saying: “You can’t have LNG and meet (greenhouse gas reduction )targets. … This is that sword I would die on.”
In the article the Green Leader acknowledged that a snap election would derail his party’s efforts to seek changes to the province’s electoral system – which was a key demand in its negotiations with the NDP to support a minority government. Weaver said, “I didn’t get into politics to change the voting system,” I got into politics because I saw innovative, leading climate policies being dismantled and I believed the BC NDP were serious about climate action.”
The problem with those statements is voters are hardly interested about why Weaver got into politics. What the voters are concerned about is will he keep the promises he made to support PR that got him elected. These are two separate things. Weaver got elected because the main thing he campaigned for was to change the first past the post voting system to a Proportional Representation system. But now Weaver is putting all that in jeopardy. The question is why?
In the deal to prop up the NDP government the NDP have pledged to hold PR referendum and to campaign for PR. So Weavers job is to keep the NDP minority government going until the referendum is held and a regular election is scheduled. That is what the majority of Greens want and that is what this province needs; an end to the dictatorship of false majority governments where the party with 40% of the vote has 100%of the power while 60% of the voters have no voice.
I can live with one LNG port (Woodfibre makes the most sense to me) but I think Weaver is getting a bit delusional if he thinks he has support to trigger another election.
Stop the fish farms, and pipeline expansion but support PR reform. The Greens need to stay focussed! We will be lucky if we have another 25 years of democracy. By then Amazon or Google or ? will be telling us how to run our schools and how to elect their nominees for perk positions.