B.C. Green Party house leader Rob Botterell is ready to get back to work after a somewhat contentious three-month party leadership race.
That contest nearly devolved into a legal battle over the process for verifying the identity of new members, several thousand of whom signed up over the summer to enable them to cast a vote.
"The summer session of musical chairs is over, and the political shenanigans seem to be dying down — at least a bit for now," Botterell said.
But the B.C. Greens still have some unanswered questions. The landslide leadership victory of 25-year-old climate activist Emily Lowan will have major implications for the direction of the party, and she clearly has some different ideas about where to take things compared to its two sitting MLAs.
The B.C. legislature begins its fall sittings on Monday, Oct. 6. This is the first of three articles previewing the session, with the next two detailing the priorities of the other opposition parties and the government.
The biggest question for the Greens will be how to approach renegotiating the party's deal with the NDP.
Botterell and MLA Jeremy Valeriote first hashed out the Cooperation and Responsible Government Accord (CARGA) in the months following the last provincial election in October 2024. The deal is up for yearly renewal in December.
While Lowan has called for changes, it is still unclear exactly how much input she will have.
"We'll certainly be factoring in Emily's perspective on how to approach some items," Botterell said on Thursday (Oct. 2).
Lowan ran her campaign on the theme of "fight the oligarchs, fund the future," and worked with the stated goal of bringing thousands of new, young members into the party.
Botterell and Valeriote have so far taken a much more pragmatic approach, using CARGA to implement parts of the party's agenda in exchange for supporting the government on confidence motions, even if they still strongly disagree on certain issues.
Without a seat, Lowan will be unable to push her agenda in the legislature itself, so there will need to be some negotiating between her and the two MLAs.
"That may be more complicated than one might assume at first because Ms. Lowan clearly comes from a different generation and has a different sense of priorities for this party," University of British Columbia political science lecturer Stewart Prest said. "She is unapologetically targeting ideas around extreme wealth or the realities of extreme wealth and inequality within the province."
For now, Botterell's language is optimistic and focused on working with the government where possible on issues such as affordability and the economy, "without sacrificing the environment and without sacrificing Indigenous relationships."
Despite the different perspectives, Botterell highlighted the energy Lowan brings to the party.
"I think it's terrific that Emily is the leader of the party, and we're meeting and working together and building a common view of how we're going to approach the fall, how we're going to approach renegotiation of CARGA," Botterell said.
Lowan replaces Sonia Furstenau, who lost her seat as an MLA in the last provincial election. Furstenau remained as party leader for about three months before Valeriote took over on an interim basis.
"This is exactly the same approach we took after the election, when Sonia Furstenau was leader of the party and we were the new MLAs," Botterell said. "It wasn't this or that, this first, this second; it was sitting in a room and working together."
