British Columbia’s political landscape is undergoing several shakeups a little over three months ahead of this fall’s Oct. 19 provincial election.
This week, climate scientist and former Green Party leader Andrew Weaver slammed NDP Premier David Eby and said he’s considering aligning with B.C. Conservative Leader John Rustad. Weaver previously struck a confidence and supply agreement with former premier John Horgan in 2017 to give the NDP the balance of power.
“My prediction is that the B.C. Conservatives will win,” he said in an interview with CBC News.
Eby said Friday at an unrelated news conference that it’s “extremely bizarre” that Weaver might favour Rustad, who says climate change isn’t a crisis and was turfed from the former B.C. Liberals, now known as B.C. United, for his views on the subject.
On his party’s website, Rustad says the “changing climate is real, and man is impacting our climate,” but it “isn’t a crisis,” and the party will not engage in “over-taxation, hype, scare tactics” on the issue. He has also said he would prohibit teaching climate science in classrooms.
“I would have assumed, given his life’s work, that Dr. Weaver would have no difficulty making a decision about which side to choose, but that’s really up to him,” Eby said.
Weaver, who was lead author for the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that won a Nobel Prize, says his views on climate are not the same as Rustad’s, but he views the Conservative leader as a listener like Horgan.
“I would not be standing here talking to you if John Horgan were premier because John Horgan listens to people,” he said.
“I’m talking to you about this because I don’t think David Eby does. He’s surrounded himself with people who will help him control government through his office, in my view, and that is not healthy for democracy.”
Weaver has also said he’s concerned about the exit of almost a dozen NDP representatives ahead of the fall vote. Cabinet stalwarts Bruce Ralston, Harry Bains and Rob Fleming have all recently announced they will not seek re-election.
“It told me something very sick is going on when literally the entire team from the 2017 to 2020 period is moving on,” he said.
Weaver added that he doesn’t view climate change to be “the greatest issue facing humanity right now.” Instead, he considered it to be the rise of authoritarian regimes, pointing to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Rustad told CBC News that he and Weaver have “a lot of things” in common, including ideas on energy policy, before commenting on the former Green Party leader’s shot at Eby.
“[Eby] is an authoritarian, and that is not what this province needs,” he said. “Andrew Weaver can see that, and he agrees that is not the direction this province needs to go in.”
Environment Minister George Heyman, a veteran NDP minister who has also announced he’s not running in the fall election, said he can’t understand how Weaver could consider aligning himself with Rustad, “who barely gives credence to the notion that there’s climate change.”
“I haven’t had a chance to talk to Andrew about this, but I simply can’t believe he would turn his back on his life’s work and the work we accomplished together in government,” he said. “It simply doesn’t make sense to me.”
Heyman dismissed Weaver’s suggestions that Eby controls power from his office and said he can’t speak for his colleagues, but his decision not to run for re-election came after a lengthy career in politics and environmental and union leadership.
“I’ll be 75 years old when the election’s held in 2024,” he said. “I would like to slow down a bit and spend more time with my family.”
B.C. Green Party Leader Sonia Furstenau told CBC News that the B.C. Conservatives are not taking climate change seriously enough and are not prepared to address its impact on the province. She also criticized Weaver for his apparent support of the B.C. Conservative Party.
“Well, I, think that this is a person that has demonstrated that he has no allegiance to either political parties or to values, it appears,” she said.
Defections from B.C. United
Another noticeable shift in the B.C. political scene was the recent defection to the Conservatives of former B.C. United MLA Elenore Sturko, a champion of gay rights, who said last year that Rustad needed to “make an unequivocal apology” for calling homosexuality a “lifestyle.”
Sturko, who is gay, said after her defection in June that it was easy to ignore polls that have consistently put B.C. United distantly behind the NDP and the Conservatives, but it was impossible to dismiss what she was hearing from voters.
The B.C. Conservatives now have four members in the legislature: Rustad, Sturko, Bruce Banman and Lorne Doerkson, all former members of Falcon’s party who crossed the floor.
The B.C. Conservatives’ fundraising has also surged in recent months, leapfrogging B.C. United to take second place. The provincial NDP, however, is still on top and far ahead in terms of political donations.
David Black, a political communications professor at Greater Victoria’s Royal Roads University, said the political maneuvers are largely tied to the surge in popularity of Rustad’s Conservatives and the steep decline of Falcon’s B.C. United.
The B.C. Conservatives received less than two per cent of the popular vote in the 2020 provincial election, but it now appears they are in a position to become the official opposition or even form government after the fall vote, he said.
B.C. United and the Greens could be completely shut out, said Black.
“These things will change in September with the writ, and I don’t know where it’s going to go, I really don’t,” he said. “But I think we can expect some volatility because it’s going to be a very energized political environment.”
Black said he’s not as astounded by Weaver’s advances toward Rustad, judging from Weaver’s past political moves that saw him exit the Greens, sit as an independent and endorse Horgan’s NDP in 2020.
“This is Weaver exploring the outward reaches of his sometimes-contrary self,” Black said. “It is a very odd marriage of personalities and positions. It’s more of a pretext of just what Weaver, and fairly so, believes to be of a number of vulnerabilities and errors he thinks Eby has made.”