The Journal was scheduled to speak with veteran political correspondent Keith Baldrey, legislative bureau chief for Global BC News, on the afternoon of Friday, July 7. Since then there have been very interesting times in British Columbia; and on September 14 we were able to speak with Baldrey about what has been happening in B.C. politics. This is the first of two parts.
The Journal: There seems to be a little bit of a rift developing between the Greens and the NDP on a few things. The Greens weren’t happy about the trophy hunt announcement, the tolls being removed: is this a sign of things to come?
Keith Baldrey: I wouldn’t call it a rift so much as an agreement to disagree. They’re still very much working together. They’re meeting, working out a path to go forward, acknowledging they will have disagreements on some significant issues from time to time, but that does not mean their alliance will fall apart.
In the budget we saw the non-inclusion of a couple of key NDP campaign promises: one was the $400 renters’ rebate, and the other was a move toward $10 daycare. The Greens opposed both of those initiatives: they think the renters’ rebate is just silly, ineffectual policy, and they think the $10 daycare was basically drawn on the back of an envelope with no real planning. The Greens opposed them, and they weren’t in the budget.
Now, it happens to be the case that [finance minister] Carole James probably couldn’t afford to put those in the budget anyway, because they’re very expensive campaign promises, but the fact the Greens opposed them gave James some cover to explain why they weren’t in her budget, why campaign promises were not being filled, and they gave [BC Green Party leader Andrew] Weaver the opportunity to boast that he was having an impact and an influence on the budget.
But even though there was a disagreement on a couple of those key points, it doesn’t mean that things are falling apart. I think they’re going to be quite viable for at least a year or so, because the Greens’ top priority is getting that referendum in the fall of 2018 on proportional representation in front of the voters, and they don’t want to mess any chance that that’s going to falter.
On the subject of tolls: up here in the Interior we paid for the Coquihalla, for every penny of that highway. How upset should people outside the Port Mann/Golden Ears area be, that we’re now paying for those bridges?
You can look at it in a couple of different ways. Governments build infrastructure all the time, and that means building roads, hospitals, schools. It’s usually paid for out of a global pot of money, which is money that comes from all taxpayers.
The voters en masse of B.C. built the Sea to Sky Highway, and they built the Port Mann Bridge, but they also paid for big improvements to Kicking Horse Canyon, which is one of the most expensive highway improvement projects on a square-kilometre basis in history; and they paid for schools around the province.
So Port Mann and Golden Ears were unique; aside from the Coquihalla, two of the few projects paid for by users. We don’t see a lot of that in B.C., so they were more of an anomaly, really, rather than a regular thing. The fact that users don’t have to pay for that basically puts the Port Mann and Golden Ears in the same category as pretty much every other bridge built by the province, whether it’s in Metro Vancouver or in Kamloops or in the Interior.
So I don’t think it’s a fair comparison to compare Port Mann to the Coquihalla. The Coquihalla was the only tolled highway in the entire province for years, and Port Mann and Golden Ears were the only tolled bridges around the province. It’s almost a false equivalence to compare the Coquihalla to Port Mann and Golden Ears, when they’re more abnormalities than regular features of the infrastructure landscape.
Speaking of infrastructure: in the run-up to the writ drop in April, the Liberals made a number of funding commitments around the province, and announced all sorts of projects. I’m thinking of two in particular in Fraser-Nicola: one was a promise to four-lane Highway 97 north of Cache Creek—something Cache Creek has been advocating for for years—and they also promised $2.9 million for a seniors’ living facility in Clinton. What happens to these promises?
A lot of things are up in the air now with the change in government. I would think a $2.9 million project is no big deal to a government that has a $50 billion budget. There’s no reason to assume that project is going to die on the vine.
Highway improvements are another category. There are different priorities now, with a new government in place, and it will be interesting to see how this plays out. As we’ve talked about before, the BC NDP is very much urban- and suburban-oriented and focused. That’s where their power base is. They have very little representation outside of Metro Vancouver and Vancouver Island. The challenge for them is to try to make some political capital in these regions where they don’t have representation, in the hope that they do better in the next election.
But it’s quite possible that they just decide to abandon a lot of the political interests outside of Metro Vancouver, and worry about consolidating their power in Metro and suburban Vancouver. So I’d say that highway improvement projects outside Metro may not be quite as much of a priority as they were under a BC Liberal government. That’s not saying they’re not going to happen. We’re still early days with this government, and they’re still trying to sort themselves out. I’ve had talks with cabinet ministers who are just like “Wow, I have a big portfolio.” They’re still trying to get their heads around the fact that they are in government, and they’re getting briefed all the time on things they have to do.
And some things just get done because that’s the life of government. It doesn’t matter which party is in power; things just work their way through the bureaucracy. That may very well be the case with Highway 97; I don’t know. But I would say it’s going to take a couple of months for everyone to get the lay of the land in terms of which projects are going to go forward and which aren’t.
Correct me if I’m wrong; but I’m still not seeing a lot of love for rural B.C. from the NDP/Green not-coalition, as they keep reminding people. A lot of their policies are, as you say, very urban, very Metro Vancouver. Do you see anything positive here for rural B.C. in what they’ve announced so far?
Not yet. (laughs) No, it’s a very urban-focused party in power, but I think they’ve got a chance to show they’re interested in consolidating and building support outside of Metro. But they have to come up with some policies that show that. Agriculture minister Lana Popham is one person who seems to have an ear on the ground when it comes to people outside of Metro Vancouver. Of course the ALR [Agricultural Land Reserve] is a big chunk of the province outside of Metro, and she wants to make some big changes to the ALR, which will undoubtedly impact people all through the Interior and the North and the Kootenays, in a way that may not impact people in Surrey or Vancouver.
I know the NDP want to tighten up the rules, saying that new agricultural techniques allow farmers and ranchers to use land about which they might have said in the past “Hey, can we get this land out of the ALR because it’s no good and use it for something else.” So this sounds like it might have a negative impact in some ways.
It depends on what you want to do with your ALR land. People who really favour farming, and consider farm land to be sacrosanct, will be happy with this new regime coming in; others, who were behind the push to open up ALR land to more uses than just farming—particularly land that wasn’t well-suited for farming—to open it up to potential housing, or small industrial use, are not going to be happy. I’m not sure it’s a 50/50 split, but anytime you start messing with the rules of the ALR you’re bound to alienate and infuriate one-half of the population.
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