BC NDP and Green Party intend to form minority government

All eyes are on Premier Christy Clark after Monday's announcement that British Columbia's New Democrats have reached an agreement with the Green party to form a minority government, experts say.

"She has a constitutional responsibility to go to the Lieutenant-Governor since our party received the most seats and the most votes, and to try and form the government", Letnick told the Capital News moments after leaving a Liberal caucus meeting where Clark announced her decision.

"The ball is really in Christy Clark's court at this point", said Max Cameron, a political scientist at the University of British Columbia.

The Liberals won 43 seats in the May 9 election, one shy of a majority, but the formal, four-year agreement between the Greens and NDP would give them 44 seats, handing them a one-seat majority.

While perched atop the pole, Yates also blasted the songs "Dream Weaver" and "Orange Crush" in tribute to Andrew Weaver and the Green Party and John Horgan's NDP.

But the local MLA, now B.C.'s Minister of Agriculture, said no matter what happens, he would not stop working for residents of his constituency.

The pair took questions about their plans for the province's future, including what they intend to do about Site C, a project neither of their parties supported during the election campaign.

"In the end, we had to make a hard decision", Weaver explained to journalists, defending his party's choice to support the NDP over the Liberals. "It's just energizing Greens across the country and sending the message that it's possible to elect Greens", said leader Mike Schreiner.

On the hot-button issue of campaign financing, the parties promised to introduce a ban on both corporate and union donations in the first sitting of the next session of the legislature.

Randal Macnair, the NDP representative, said the agreement between the two parties is a good thing.

For Clark, it's the end of the line, as premier and as leader of the BC Liberal Party.

He added: "We know that this is the strength of our economy-bringing tech together with the resource sector in northern B.C. that are stable jobs that we can count on". "Recognizing that education is lifelong learning and re-looking at funding for K-12, which is going to mean that we have to look at how funding works in rural B.C., which it doesn't".

Trudeau's spokeswoman Andree-Lyne Halle said the federal government would continue to "work constructively with provincial and territorial governments on the issues that matter to Canadians".

"This last parliament the last four years has been a grind and after 16 years of B.C. Liberal government the public said quite clearly they want change and we're this much closer to making that happen today", he said. But if they can't hold onto it, or get suckered into some standard B.C. political trap that thrusts the province back into voting booths inside a year, voter fears that they can't be taken seriously will be tough to overcome.

"Should the government fail the test of confidence in the house, as seems likely, I would be given the job of leader of the Opposition", she said.

It also outlines the legislative and policy initiatives that the NDP agrees to advance as a condition of support by the BC Green Caucus.