‘Horgan managed to make the NDP not scary’: expert looks back at premier’s run

As the sun sets on John Horgan’s tenure as B.C.’s premier, a political scientist shares what he thinks the legacy is that the outgoing leader is leaving behind.

Hamish Telford, professor at the University of the Fraser Valley, draws a distinction between Horgan’s policy legacy and his political legacy.

“I think John Horgan leaves [behind] a very impressive political legacy,” Telford said.

“He has really firmly planted the NDP in the center of the political spectrum, pushing the Liberals to the margins and diminishing the threat from the Green Party.

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“[He] has established the NDP as the governing party of the province at least for this decade. And I think he has left the party in very good shape for David Eby to pick it up and carry things forward.”

But policy-wise, Telford says the Horgan years were in many ways a continuation of the path laid by the B.C. Liberals.

“I see a lot of continuity surprisingly from the BC liberal days, he’s doubled down on LNG [liquefied natural gas], public sector labor negotiations no different under John Horgan than under the BC Liberals.

“This is perhaps how [Horgan] solidified the NDP as the governing party, but has perhaps not pushed the province all that far into an NDP direction.”

Throughout his five years working as premier, Horgan was successfully able to dramatically cut childcare costs, improve support for children in provincial care, slash ICBC rates and eliminate MSP premiums.

Horgan also helped B.C. become the first province to adopt UNDRIP (the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People).

But Horgan’s run wasn’t always easy. Dealing with record-breaking wildfires, historic floods, a heat dome, and of course, the COVID-19 pandemic.

Telford believes a big test for incoming leader David Eby will be his willingness to make difficult decisions on issues like the environment, and housing.

“When it comes to the environment, will he actually cut back on things like LNG development? Or will he continue to make those trade-offs and in terms of encouraging LNG and other resource developments at the expense of climate change, will he be willing to make those hard trade-offs that John Horgan was reluctant to make?” he said.

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Although the two men are aligned on a lot of political issues, Telford notes, a big difference between the two is their social skills.

“John Horgan had a bit of a reputation when he was the leader of the opposition for having a temper, and we sometimes saw that come out. Including last week, with the Appadurai issue. Horgan showed his anger with what he perceived to be a hostile takeover of the party.

“David Eby is a lawyer by training, he’s much more careful with his words, he’s a more cerebral person. So, I don’t think [Eby] will fall into that sort of trap that Horgan occasionally fell into. Eby has the opposite problem of being to sort of aloof and intellectual and perhaps not clicking with people on a social level, which Horgan did extremely well.”

Telford wraps up by saying he thinks this is a great opportunity for the NDP to showcase generational change and possibly better appeal to younger voters with a younger premier.

-With files from Kurtis Doering