Last week the B.C. NDP unveiled its plan to lure the LNG industry to B.C., including big tax breaks and an exemption from carbon tax increases.
The B.C. Green party was incensed — warning the plan violated its power-sharing deal with the government. But Green Leader Andrew Weaver said he wouldn’t topple the government just yet.
On Monday, he joined CKNW’s Jon McComb Show to argue that he isn’t a “toothless tiger” over his reluctance to pull the pin.
The NDP’s LNG plan includes a PST exemption for construction costs worth about $6 billion, and crucially, will freeze the carbon tax at $30 per tonne for certain facilities.
That sidesteps the Green-NDP deal to begin increasing the tax by $5 per tonne this year, and Weaver argues it will also put a hole in the deal’s pledge to hit specific emission reduction targets.
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Weaver argued that if the deal is enacted, those targets will be virtually unreachable. He said adopting it would mean that everyone else — including other industries — would have to reduce emissions by 50 per cent by 2030 and 95 per cent by 2050 to meet the government’s legislated targets.
“It would essentially shut down all existing industry, and it’s simply not in the cards.”
Why wait?
The Greens were so incensed by the plan they sent out a press release — and a letter to LNG Canada — saying it would cause them to lose confidence in the government.
But if Weaver is so strongly opposed to the plan, why not pull the plug now?
On Monday, Weaver argued that his threat to topple the government is very real, but that he wants to give the NDP government the chance to make good on its climate plan first.
“We have told them straight up that that plug is going to be pulled. But I think right now we need to give them the chance to develop that climate plan that they’ve promised to do,” Weaver said.
“What’s going to happen is we’re going to wait. They have just a few months ago put together their climate team, I am going to be meeting with them in due course.”
WATCH: NDP government offers billions in incentives to LNG industry
While Weaver argued that permitting LNG while trying to draft that plan amounts to trying to fit “a square peg in a round hole,” he said he still wants to see the plan before he makes a decision.
“We’ve been very clear to Mr. Horgan, that plan needs to be forthcoming, we’re not going to wait until after an LNG decision to have that plan in place. If that plan is not coming and is not realistic, Mr. Horgan will be back on the campaign trail.”
Playing for time?
With the NDP giving the green light to the Site C dam, and now LNG — both of which the Greens oppose — Weaver was pressed on whether his party was merely playing for time, in order to live long enough to see a referendum on proportional representation.
The Greens have long fought for a proportional voting system; if one had been in place for the 2017 election, it would would have netted the party nearly 15 seats, instead of just three.
Weaver denied that he was stalling — saying that while the Greens weren’t happy about Site C, the NDP had technically followed through on its promise to send it for a regulatory review.
WATCH: B.C. premier reveals new ‘bombshell’ LNG plan
But on LNG, he said he was willing to forsake the upcoming referendum if it meant stopping the industry.
“I was a climate scientist who left my field at the pinnacle of my career, took a substantive salary cut, took a massive hit to my pension…to run out of principle, because I could not stand by and watch Gordon Campbell’s policies for climate mitigation to be ripped up and torn aside by Christy Clark and the B.C. Liberals,” Weaver said.
“For me to stand by and let the B.C. NDP do the same thing, I couldn’t sleep at night.”
Weaver said for now, there is no final investment decision on the Canada LNG plant, and that the NDP hasn’t tabled its climate plan yet.
But he said if Horgan does not deliver a climate plan that meets the standards of their power-sharing deal by the fall, the Greens will put forward a confidence motion, and bring down the government then.
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