When the B.C. legislature resumes sitting this week, there is a minor alignment of the assembly’s seating plan.
This carries with it potentially major implications.
Former Green Party leader Andrew Weaver’s desk is being moved to a different location away from his former Green MLA colleagues Adam Olsen and Sonia Furstenau.
Weaver will now sit as an independent MLA. He will not attend the spring legislative session that often, as his top priority is dealing with a serious illness that has befallen a member of his family.
Weaver tells me he will be there during any vote of confidence facing the NDP government. There is usually only one or two a year – the main budget bill, and perhaps the Throne Speech if it is put to a vote.
However, his shift to independent status is more a problem for the B.C. Greens. Weaver is a genuine historical B.C. political figure and the party owes its very existence in the legislature to his legacy.
Weaver’s breakthrough as a winning Green Party candidate in the 2013 election put the party on the map and bestowed a legitimacy that was lacking before his victory.
His departure from the caucus – he is keeping his party membership card for now – robs it of its strongest asset.
Weaver previously announced he won’t seek re-election in the 2021 election, which will likely mean the Greens will be considered an underdog in his riding of Oak Bay-Gordon Head. Until Weaver took the seat in 2013, it had been a BC Liberal stronghold for more than a dozen years and an NDP seat for a dozen years before that.
It will be interesting to watch how the two remaining Green MLAs interact with the NDP government. Since they agreed to a power arrangement that allowed the NDP to form government in the aftermath of the 2017 election, Weaver and Premier John Horgan have developed a strong personal relationship.
But Horgan and his caucus don’t seem to have the same kind of relationship with either Olsen or Furstenau.
I doubt Horgan is appreciative of Olsen’s public backing of a few hereditary chiefs of the Wet’suwet’en First Nations, who are leading an attempt to kill a natural gas pipeline through their traditional territory (even though their nation supports it).
Olsen has flown north to meet with them and then declared his support of their efforts. Horgan and the NDP strongly back construction of that pipeline (as does every First Nation along the pipeline route).
While there is no suggestion the Greens will withdraw their support from the NDP government, it appears that party is headed towards a more activist path, one not championed by former leader Weaver.
However, he is sitting somewhere else in the legislature chamber now. And the Greens are the poorer for it.
Keith Baldrey is chief political reporter for Global BC
