B.C. Premier John Horgan arrives in Ottawa this week for his debut on the national stage. At the same time that his government's lawyers are in court battling both Ottawa and Alberta over the expansion of Kinder Morgan's oil pipeline across the province, Mr. Horgan will be looking around the table for allies on a broad range of issues, from the softwood-lumber trade war with the United States to the opioid crisis.
The plan is to stay on his best behaviour.
That strategy is not only meant to depersonalize the brewing pipeline conflict, but to mark a new era in B.C.'s relations with the rest of the country.
British Columbia has a long and colourful history of lousy intergovernmental relations and the calculation in the Premier's office is that maintaining B.C.'s reputation for grandstanding won't help him secure the national support the province needs at this time.
Mr. Horgan's wish list is long: He needs support to keep the softwood-lumber battle on the front burner as Canada navigates the current round of negotiations on the North American free-trade agreement.
The lion's share of softwood exports to the United States come from B.C., and it may be challenging to keep the focus on lumber at the same time Canada is responding to the latest hard-line protectionist measures taken by the U.S. Commerce Department against Bombardier Inc.
That's not all. In the recent provincial election, the NDP Leader promised voters expensive new social programs. Federal dollars will be key to delivering on those commitments. Mr. Horgan and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau are not going to agree about the merits and risks of the Kinder Morgan pipeline.
However, the B.C. Premier may leave that argument for another day when the first ministers talk about economic growth and job creation on Tuesday morning.
B.C. premiers do like to play to the home crowd by talking tough on the national stage.
Mr. Horgan's immediate predecessor, Christy Clark, was criticized last December for what federal officials described as a "stunt" at a critical meeting of first ministers over the pan-Canadian framework on clean growth and climate change. It wasn't an isolated incident: Ms. Clark had a penchant for creating drama on the national stage, and had similarly dropped verbal depth charges over pipelines and Senate reform.
She was in good company.
"B.C. has a long history of mercurial premiers," noted University of the Fraser Valley political scientist Hamish Telford. "That's built the perception that exists in Canada about wacky British Columbia."
An exception to the rule was Liberal premier Gordon Campbell, who spent a decade cultivating a professional approach to his dealings with the rest of Canada. Mr. Campbell may be the model that Mr. Horgan will seek to emulate.
Mr. Telford noted it was another NDP premier – Glen Clark – who topped the charts when it came to outlandish sparring with the federal government. Mr. Clark was angry about Alaskan fishers harvesting salmon that were due to return to B.C. rivers, and he pressed Ottawa to shut down a U.S. torpedo-testing facility at Nanoose Bay on Vancouver Island as a retaliatory measure.
When Ottawa rejected his plan, Mr. Clark then rallied environmentalists about the presence of U.S. nuclear-powered submarines in Canadian coastal waters, and the federal government expropriated the land at Nanoose Bay from the province in a bid to cool the dispute. "He elevated a fish war to a global nuclear conflict," Mr. Telford recalled. "It was a serious overreach."
But overreaching is a fine tradition for B.C. premiers. Social Credit premier Bill Vander Zalm earned international attention over his feuds with the federal government. Feeding off the backlash against the Meech Lake accord in Western Canada, Mr. Vander Zalm tried to derail the offer to recognize Quebec as a distinct society. He argued that B.C. should be declared a distinct society, too. When a New York Times reporter interviewed Mr. Vander Zalm about the dispute in 1987, Mr. Vander Zalm explained that Ottawa-bashing is just part of British Columbia's politics. "Come to any political rally. If you stand up and attack the feds, you can't go wrong, it's the most popular issue every time."
Mr. Horgan, however, has different ambitions. He is leading a fragile minority government, with the support of the Green Party. His electoral gains in the spring were based largely on his promises to tackle affordability issues.
If he wants to retain his current popularity ratings, he'll leave the boxing gloves at home and hope to secure instead federal support for daycare, affordable housing and public transit.
Justine Hunter