Sonia Furstenau’s outburst at John Rustad guts clout with NDP

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VICTORIA — When Green leader Sonia Furstenau was asked this week if she could work with John Rustad, she responded by directing a stern lecture at the Conservative leader.

“ I have concerns about statements his candidates have made and positions his party has taken on many issues,” Furstenau told reporters.

“It is really up to John Rustad to demonstrate what kind of leadership he has at this point. He has not been responding to very direct questions about things that his candidates have said.”

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Furstenau was deeply offended by those comments, not least because some of those who offended her the most had got elected to the legislature.

“There have been statements made by Conservative candidates that are truly disturbing — racist, dehumanizing, homophobic and conspiratorial,” said Furstenau.

“Some of the candidates have been elected and I have yet to see a satisfactory response from John Rustad about this.”

A satisfactory response to candidates being elected? After a democratic election, the usual response by winners and losers alike is “the voters have spoken.”

Not Furstenau.

“Elected representatives have a serious burden and responsibility to hold themselves to a high standard and see themselves as representatives for everyone in their communities,” she scolded.

“It is John Rustad’s responsibility now to ensure that his caucus understands the seriousness of the burden of being an elected representative.”

Rustad had a stern response of his own.

His party captured five times as many votes as the Greens.

Those Conservative candidates who deeply offended Furstenau were elected, which was more than she could manage in the riding she chose in the provincial capital.

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“Sonia is not obviously a big fan of democracy,” Rustad told Rob Shaw of CHEK TV. “The people of various ridings have spoken as to who should be elected and who shouldn’t be elected.”

The two leaders did connect briefly by phone this week.

I can’t imagine Rustad would apologize for the verdict of the voters, nor is it likely the two found any common ground on which to work together.

The Conservative leader told the reporter, “I’m interested in knowing just what sort of steps she’s thinking about.”

Furstenau referred all questions along those lines to “our platform — I really invite people to become familiar with the B.C. Green platform.”

The platform plank with the greatest implications for the future of the Greens is the call for a switch to proportional representation.

The party would win more seats that way and would be more securely entrenched in the legislature.

B.C. voters have twice rejected a switch to proportional representation in the past 15 years, both times by a decisive margin of 61 per cent.

This time the Greens want to switch to proportional representation now and hold the referendum after the fact, a decade or so down the road.

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“Sentence first, verdict afterwards,” as the Queen of Hearts said in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.

The Greens also proposed to skip the referendum in their power-sharing negotiations with the NDP in 2017 too.

NDP leader John Horgan ruled it out. I doubt Premier David Eby would agree to it now.

Asked this week, the premier said he “won’t speculate on what the Greens are prioritizing for their constituents and for the communities where they were elected.”

No point bargaining in public.

Besides, as previous Green leader Andrew Weaver pointed out, Furstenau has handed all the leverage to the NDP by ruling out the Conservatives.

“She just undercut any negotiating ability the B.C. Greens have with the B.C. NDP, “Weaver fumed on X, the social media platform Friday.

“It’s 2017 all over again,” Weaver continued, referring to that year’s negotiations on the NDP-Green power sharing agreement with him as party leader and Furstenau as an MLA.

“I had to deal with Furstenau undermining my negotiating ability by telling folks she ‘threw up’ after we met with the B.C. Liberal negotiating team,” said Weaver.

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“Negotiations are like a game of chess. Furstenau just blew it. If I were Eby I’d just call the Greens’ bluff!”

Weaver supported Conservatives and other candidates this election. He has already called for Furstenau to “pass the torch” to a new generation after “British Columbians resoundingly rejected her far-left eco-socialist vision.”

But he is on the mark in his recollection of how her intransigence undermined his bargaining strategy on the power-sharing agreement back in 2017.

Weaver would have preferred to play off the Liberals and NDP against each other, getting them to one-up each other’s offers.

Furstenau’s refusal to consider an arrangement with the Liberals simplified the negotiations for Horgan and the New Democrats.

When Horgan realized that the Greens would only dance with one partner, he knew he didn’t have to offer a lot of concessions, and he didn’t.

The power-sharing agreement mostly reflected positions the NDP had already taken in its election platform, with minor tweaks of a face-saving nature to the Greens.

With this week’s blast of righteousness against the Conservatives, Furstenau has once again reduced her own party’s bargaining leverage in dealing with the NDP.

vpalmer@postmedia.com

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