VICTORIA — Ask a question in the halls of the B.C. legislature these days, and chances are, no matter the minister or the topic, you are going to get this answer: Sorry, but the issue is under consultation.

Many of Premier John Horgan’s big ticket election promises are caught up and delayed in some form of vague public review now that he’s in government.

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The referendum on proportional representation. Moving to a $15-an-hour minimum wage. Cutting B.C. Ferries fares. Implementing the $10-a-day child care plan. Solving Metro Vancouver housing affordability crisis. Instituting a $400 annual renters’ rebate. Eliminating Medical Services Plan premiums. Reforming Freedom of Information rules. Building the Site C dam. Indexing disability rates to inflation. Legislating poverty reduction targets. Replacing the Massey tunnel. Taxing and legalizing marijuana. And so on.

Those 13 items are just some of the major promises from the NDP’s election campaign that various cabinet ministers have said in the past few days can’t proceed until they incorporate comment from the public, community groups, experts and the government’s political friends in the B.C. Green party.

For most of the items, there’s no real time frame on the reviews, or sense of how the public will be consulted.

“Yes, there’s a lot of work to do, there’s a lot of issues that need to be talked about and need to be discussed and we need to get the implementation right,” Carole James, the finance minister and deputy premier, said in an interview. “What you are seeing is really the results of 16 years of a government that didn’t provide the input for the public to have their say.

“There will be timelines on the numbers of pieces we move on, MSP and others, you’ll see as those panels get put into place there are very specific timelines around reporting out. So this won’t be endless conversation, they will come to a close, and come to results, and report to the public and legislature on a regular basis.

“That’s the key from my perspective, we need to give the public the opportunity they haven’t had from the past government, and haven’t had for the last 16 years, (which) is to be listened to.”

If you are one of the 795,106 voters who cast their ballot for the NDP in the May 9 provincial election you might be forgiven for asking: Hey, I thought the NDP had these promises all figured out? After all, they produced a 118-page election platform, along with a 12-page fiscal plan, and over a 28-day campaign spelled out in detail what the party would do if it won government, in what timeframe, at what cost. Why consult now, after they won and can just enact what they promised?

Unfortunately for the NDP, its platform assumed the party would win the 2017 election. It did not. Instead, with 41 New Democrats, 41 Liberals, three Greens, one independent MLA and one vacant seat, the NDP is only nominally in charge of governing with the agenda it promised voters.

The party needs Green support to stay in power. Green Leader Andrew Weaver boldly announced last week that “what the NDP promised in their election campaign is not really relevant to the situation today.” Behind-the-scenes, the Greens have used their objections to either delay or alter the $10-a-day child care plan, $400 renters’ rebate, the bill to ban corporate and union donations and the 2021 timeline for a $15 minimum wage.

Stuck without an easy path forward with their Green partners, the NDP have resorted to the sideways step of consultation.

There are three ways you can view the sudden proliferation of public reviews that are tying up all the NDP promises.

• One is that perhaps the NDP over-promised in the election, and the party is now kicking the can down the road until it figures out what to do and whether it can afford it (it’s awfully convenient that some of the most expensive items, like the multi-billion child care promise, are put off at a time when the New Democrats have already spent all the money in the budget, despite raising taxes on corporations and high-income earners).

But James co-chaired the NDP election platform, she’s one of the most competent MLAs on either side of the house, and internally the NDP seem to know exactly what is required to get going on many of the stalled files. So that explanation seems unlikely.

• A second view is perhaps the NDP are using the consultations to slow-play the Greens. The government could take several months to line up public support, community groups, academics, experts and other allies as validators. Then, it could return with that ammunition to the negotiating table, saying it has the public’s backing to proceed whether the Greens like it or not. That kind of pressure, combined with the realization the Greens are now offside with the major players and public, might be enough to pressure Weaver and his crew to stop blocking the NDP’s key issues.

When I ran that idea past James she laughed. “You are a cynic for sure, Rob,” she said. True. But even so, put that one down in the maybe column.

• The third consideration is perhaps the NDP actually wants to gather ideas from the public and incorporate them into its policies.

“I’m taking door No. 3 to that question,” said Horgan when I put the options to him during a press conference recently. “I want to hear from those people and I want to make sure we’re putting in place programs and policies that make life better for people. That’s what we campaigned on. I don’t have a magic solution but the public does, and the challenge for a new government is to work with as many people as possible to get those outcomes, and that’s what we’re going to do.”

That’s assuming the public doesn’t get consultation fatigue with all the many surveys, town halls, forums and questionnaires the new government will soon begin lobbing their way on a variety of weighty issues.

Ultimately, we’re all going to have to wait several months to know the government’s true motivations for all the reviews.

But if the NDP spends months consulting on an issue, only to return next year with the identical policy promise it had first made in its May election platform, you’ll know all of this was just one big partisan exercise to try and get around their stubborn “friends” in the Green party.