Kinder Morgan's British Columbia Project Could Be In Trouble

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Horgan and B.C. Green leader Andrew Weaver announced their agreement Monday, a "four-year framework" in which the Greens pledge to support an NDP government on confidence votes such as passing a budget and a bill to supply money to the government.

A lot rests on Lt. -Gov.

If her party fails a confidence vote, Clark said it's likely that Guichon would ask the New Democrats to form government given they won the second highest number of seats in the legislature.

But Letnick said it appears clear what he called a "coalition" between the NDP and the B.C. Greens will defeat the Liberal minority government at the first opportunity.

The Liberals hold 43 seats, the NDP has 41 and the Greens three in the 87-seat legislature, which Clark said she plans to reconvene "as quickly as we possibly can".

And, as a politician, the Green leader surely knew the political price his party would pay for aligning with Clark and the Liberals.

Richard Johnston, a professor of political science at the University of British Columbia, said the announcement was "a revolutionary moment in B.C.'s politics".

"If you listen to Horgan and Weaver talk about their platforms together, it's interesting to hear them pick distinct things that show how similar they are".

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USA crude was down 1% to $47.73 per barrel. "It really looks as if fears of oversupply is what's driving the market". The market expectation for crude stocks was a decline of 3.5 million barrels.

That essentially means the Greens will support the NDP on legislative confidence votes.

She said she will not ask the lieutenant-governor to send voters back to the polls and will stay on as leader of the opposition if the Liberals are no longer the governing party.

NDP Leader John Horgan says after 16 years in Opposition, the NDP is excited about the prospect of forming the next government.

"There's an bad lot that can be done in British Columbia to stop the shipping of diluted bitumen in our coastal waters", Weaver said, pointing specifically to the rights of First Nations.

"Whatever has been said about promises for support for four years, that's a hard promise to maintain when you've got such a close division in the (legislature.) I don't think we've ever seen anything like this, certainly not in Canadian history".

There are no guarantees Horgan can succeed, even with the support of Green Leader Andrew Weaver and his two fellow MLAs. It won't help the hundreds of thousands of kids like mine who were part of the generation who went through school under B.C. Liberal governments, but it bodes well for present and future students.

Prest added she is looking forward to the Green Party holding a bigger say on how government approaches large industrial projects such as the proposed Kinder Morgan pipeline.

The agreement with the NDP and Greens also calls for the referral of the Site C hydro dam project to the B.C. Utilities Commission to determine economic viability, which Raymond James analyst Frederic Bastien noted could put major contracts with construction and services providers at risk. The Lieutenant Governor must have some assurance this stitched together government may stand and survive to provide good government. There are different systems, but the intent is that when a party like the Greens gets 17 per cent of the votes as they did May 9, they get 17 per cent of the seats.

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