Tom Fletcher has covered BC politics and business as a journalist since 1984.In his year-end comments on the BC legislature session, Premier David Eby continued his angry tirade against what he calls “racist” and “denialist” opposition questions about his government’s radical indigenous rights agenda.Closing provincial parks to non-indigenous people, establishing broad no-go zones for industry, and relinquishing Crown title weren’t the top issues. Instead, the press gallery was laser-focused on the turmoil in the BC Conservative party that had led to leader John Rustad stepping down.Eby summed it up as “a hodgepodge of craziness,” a soundbite that received wide play as everyone wound down and prepared for Christmas, sorry, holiday parties.As usual, there was little or no discussion about the two-seat BC Green Party. They got scant attention in the 2024 election as well, but if you want a hodgepodge of craziness, it’s easy to find in the fringe party that is once again on the edge of holding the balance of power.The BC Greens are aghast at things like the just-completed Site C hydro dam. They have maintained for years that the third dam on the Peace River isn’t a logical increase in much-needed renewable power, as is obvious to anyone who followed the extensive environmental review.No, it’s a “fracking dam,” built entirely to serve the multinational gas industry. The Greens strongly opposed the NDP government’s North Coast Transmission Line project because it is partly to electrify the Nisga’a Nation’s liquefied natural gas processing plant. The BC legislature speaker had to cast a deciding vote to prevent the NDP government from falling, with the BC Conservatives opposed not to the power line but political interference in major projects that was the NDP’s real aim with its legislation..BC Greens publicly called the Nisga’a-led pipeline and LNG plant, which is nearing a final investment decision, a “megaton carbon bomb.” It would displace thermal coal with the lowest-carbon LNG in the world, but the BC Greens promote “indigenous-led resistance with robust solidarity from diverse settler communities.”In the 2024 election, the BC Greens avoided calling for the just-completed LNG Canada plant to be shut down. Instead, their platform called for the northeast BC gas fields that supply it to be wound down, starting immediately.Imagine these politicians heading to Asia to meet representatives of China National Petroleum Corporation, Petronas, Korea Gas, and Mitsubishi, and tell them why the largest private investment in Canadian history is soon going to run out of gas. They might need to discuss how much compensation each would receive for their $40 billion investment.But the BC Greens, like the one-person band in Ottawa, don’t need to think through what their policies would actually lead to. Green goddess Elizabeth May has been doing a heroic meeting schedule in the Gulf Islands this month, and recently stopped in Saanich to symbolically “transplant salmon carcasses back into the ecosystem.”The BC Greens lost their leader in the 2024 election, but managed to hold Saanich-Gulf Islands and, surprisingly, the wealthy West Vancouver-Squamish-Whistler seat. Two seats is an official party in this error-prone province, as we were reminded when two Conservative outcasts formed OneBC..The BC Greens have a new leader, 25-year-old Emily Lowan. She’s a professional environmentalist, having moved from UVic student union campaign director to Climate Action Network Canada. She’s been on a “Fight the Oligarchs” tour, going from town to town to deliver the same dumbed-down Marxist wealth redistribution rhetoric found on campus for decades.On with Vancouver radio talk show host Mike Smyth this week, Lowan described her Instagram video of a stop at Lululemon magnate Chip Wilson’s ocean-front mansion in Point Grey. He’s not paying his fair share, so we need a wealth tax on billionaires, coincidentally just like the one that’s the subject of a union-sponsored ballot initiative in California right now.Alas, oligarch Chip wasn’t available to talk with her about a wealth tax to fund more social housing. Smyth asked Lowan, what does she think about his charity work, like buying a Vancouver Island river estuary and other sensitive lands as nature preserves? She hadn’t heard about that.It’s fairly rare for the BC Greens to get mainstream media attention. This isn’t so much a party as a TikTok trend. Like eating laundry detergent.Tom Fletcher has covered BC politics and business as a journalist since 1984.tomfletcherbc@gmail.comX: @tomfletcherbc
