A year of co-operation between the Green and New Democratic parties is proof minority governments can work in B.C., according to Green Leader Andrew Weaver, who was in Kamloops on the weekend to attend the party’s annual convention.

Decked out in a flowery shirt and weary from previous engagements, the MLA from Oak Bay-Gordon Head sat down with KTW and a small napkin’s worth of food to discuss what has been the most influential year of his party’s existence.

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In May 2017, three Green MLAs signed a confidence and supply agreement, pledging to vote with the NDP on matters of confidence to hold Premier John Horgan’s minority government in place.

Weaver said their working relationship since then has been good, noting only some initial rockiness trying to figure out how they would collaborate.

“It’s been a remarkable experience. We didn’t know what was going to happen after we agreed to support [the] NDP government,” Weaver said.

The Greens have been successful in banning big money in politics, ensuring the establishment of the fair wage commission on increasing minimum wage $15 per hour to keep politics out of the decision and pushed the NDP to adopt an innovation foundation, which focuses on bringing the tech sector with the resource sector — all of which were conditions of the confidence and supply agreement.

Weaver believes the biggest success his party has had with the NDP government is getting it to recognize that reducing greenhouse gases is an economic platform.

“That’s why we’ve been focusing on innovation because it allows for growth in our economy in all regions of B.C. by building on our strengths when we’re given a target,” Weaver said.

He noted there have also been concessions by the Greens.

In his speech to delegates, Weaver cited one — agreeing to send the controversial Site C hydroelectric dam project to the BC Utility Commission for consideration and not demanding the project be stopped.

“I understand there’ll be some in this room who are troubled by that decision, as [was] our caucus. But in the end, this is the decision we had to make with that,” Weaver said, adding that forcing an election on the issue at the time would have likely led to a majority NDP government.

The commission didn’t take a stance on whether or not to continue with the project and, in December, the NDP decided to move ahead with completing the massive project.

“We have to grapple with these things all the time,” Weaver said. “We’ve agreed to support them on issues. There’s a lot of to-and-fro. The public won’t know a lot of the good work we do.”

Weaver said the past year has shown a minority government can get things done.

“I think you’ve just seen a full year of the B.C. Greens working with the B.C. NDP,” Weaver told KTW. “When you focus on what you can agree on, you can actually get the best of both. In the NDP platform, you’d find some stuff in there that perhaps caters really nicely to the labour union elements of that party that perhaps we’re feeling a little more uncomfortable with. And in our party, you might have found some stuff that’s really catering to the environmental element of our party and maybe NDP weren’t comfortable with some of that, so you tend to govern more centrist.”

When the B.C. Liberals won a majority government in 2013 under the first-past-the-post system, they didn’t have to listen to any other party in the legislature, Weaver said.

“I think you’re seeing with our minority government right now that when there’s a requirement to work together, things like collaboration, compromise, consensus start to rise to the centre. If you don’t have to force collaboration, you don’t listen to anyone,” he said.

Weaver said a proportional representation system (on which voters will cast ballot this fall) brings MLAs of different parties together to find common ground in order to govern, noting parties with fewer MLAs can shift the balance of power.

“That’s a far healthier democracy than one where Peter Milobar spends his time worrying about lunch receipts instead of actually working for the betterment of people in Kamloops,” Weaver said, referring to the Kamloops-North Thompson (Liberal) MLA’s recent attempt to have Victoria-area MLAs pay for their own meals and not qualify for daily per diems.

Weaver said the first-past-the-post leads to an adversarial system, but added he does not have a preference for any of the three options proposed for the fall referendum:

Dual-member proportional representation, which would would elect two MLAs per riding — one using first-past-the-post metrics (whoever earns the most votes in the riding) and the other with proportionality (using provincewide results). In this case, ridings would be approximately doubled in size;

Mixed-member proportional representation, which would see potentially expanded ridings choose MLAs by party based on the proportion of the vote in the riding;

Rural-urban proportional representation, which would see MLAs in urban areas chosen with a ranked ballot and those in rural areas elected using a mixed-member proportional system.

“Honestly, this is not my file. I haven’t spent a ton of time looking at it,” Weaver said. “I do know that the present system does not serve people well.”