Wednesday May 20, 2020 ~ VICTORIA, BC
Editorial by John Twigg ~ for West Shore Voice News | Editor Mary Brooke
It looks like the latest victim of COVID-19 will be the B.C. Legislative Assembly, which will be called back into Session next month with a radically new operating system and fewer MLAs sitting in the historic chamber.
Premier John Horgan today announced in a news conference after a regular cabinet meeting that the Legislature will resume sitting next month, beginning on June 15 or 22. But only about 30 of the 87 MLAs will be sitting in the main chamber at any one time (i.e. sitting about three desks apart, to achieve physical distancing). The others will be in adjacent rooms or in nearby offices or conceivably even in their home constituency offices but still participating in the live proceedings via Zoom or Skype, with the video monitors and computers to enable all that now being installed.
Debating and passing the budget:
Horgan said the main business of the sitting will be to debate and pass the budget and its line-by-line estimates along with what he said would be a “modest” number of Bills, presumably most but not all of those relating to implementing budget measures.
Plus there will be some semblance of a Question Period, though perhaps with not all ministers present in the room. No doubt the MLAs will still make time for a daily Members’ Statements segment but there won’t be many introductions of people in the visitors galleries due to COVID precautions and probably there will be fewer reporters in the Press Gallery’s privileged benches too.
Venue adaptations, but politics continues:
Though the venue will change the politics probably will remain the same, which was reflected in Horgan’s decision to open his remarks to the media (who were mostly online and not in the news conference theatre) with heartfelt condolences for Snowbirds Capt. Jenn Casey from Nova Scotia who died in a crash Sunday in Kamloops and then he made comments castigating the recent rise of racist attacks in B.C. – saying “hate has no place in B.C.” and that cultural diversity is one of the B.C.’s strengths.
The latter was a response to a number of incidents around the province in which some people verbally and physically abused visible minorities, especially people who appear to be Asian, apparently because China was the original source of the COVID virus. But perhaps also because China’s behaviour since the outbreak late last year in Wuhan has been highly questionable, including allegedly keeping the outbreak secret while their embassies and agents around the world bought up medical supplies needed by health workers to protect themselves while treating people with cases of COVID-19.
B.C.’s fight against COVID enters Phase 2
But that said, the Premier then shifted to the official start of Phase 2 of B.C.’s fight against COVID19 and claimed Restart BC is “off to a good start” and that the province is in a “solid” position regarding supplies of PPEs (personal protective equipment) and may be able to share some of it with the private sector though as with many aspects of COVID issues that the federal government “needs to be a part of this”.
Horgan also welcomed the federal government’s recent agreement with the U.S. administration of President Donald Trump to keep the Canada-U.S. border closed to casual travellers for at least another month, noting commercial traffic and travellers on “essential” matters could still pass through (e.g. a Canadian medical graduate taking a new job at an American hospital). Keeping the border semi-closed had been strongly supported by Health Minister Adrian Dix, who recently noted the COVID infection rate in the U.S. is a high and still rising in the U.S. while in B.C. it is low and dropping.
In a news conference last Wednesday (May 13), Dix said the government is fully committed to reviving surgery levels in B.C. but it will take some time. “Our job now is to prevent a resurgence of COVID19 in B.C.,” he said.
Maintaining the climate change fight:
Horgan was asked about a personnel change involving the deputy minister of Environment, which he said was [merely] a personnel matter and does not reflect any shift in his government’s priorities to fight climate change while pursuing an economic plan for (expanding) a clean, green and reduced carbon economy.
Indigenous issues:
Similarly Horgan was asked by Vancouver Sun columnist Vaughn Palmer about difficult negotiations between the Wet’suwet’en ancestral chiefs and elected chiefs over how to proceed with adopting and implementing a new ground-breaking treaty to settle a very old dispute (because their territory on B.C.’s central coast was never legally ceded), which Palmer has a strong column on in today’s paper. But the premier didn’t seem perturbed and welcomed the apparent progress, noting they now have the tools needed to take a new direction.
Wooing sports to BC during the pandemic:
Horgan also repeated his support for the notion of the National Hockey League reviving its play from a “hub” in B.C. but it sounded like the league may have other plans, possibly because B.C.’s health-protection regime now is so stringent.
In other words, Horgan is well aware of the turmoil in the world and how COVID is adversely affecting B.C.’s economy but meanwhile he’s still focussed on implementing the NDP’s policy agenda, which was also the theme more or less of an op-ed column under his byline that was published Saturday (May 16) in the Vancouver Sun.
===== About the writer:
John Twigg has been an independent political writer for over 30 years in BC.