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MP Hedy Fry Predicts Sunny Days For BC-Ottawa Relations

But Trans Mountain pipeline expansion looms as battleground for Horgan, Trudeau.

Jeremy Nuttall 3 Jul 2017TheTyee.ca

Jeremy J. Nuttall is The Tyee’s reader-funded Parliament Hill reporter in Ottawa. Find his previous stories here.

Long-time BC MP Hedy Fry says she’s not expecting battles between John Horgan’s new NDP government and the Trudeau Liberals.

But a political analyst warns a conflict over the proposed Kinder Morgan pipeline expansion — opposed by Horgan, approved by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau — could poison relations between the province and Ottawa.

Horgan was asked to form government Thursday after Christy Clark’s BC Liberal government lost a confidence vote.

Both the Greens and NDP have vowed to “use every tool available” to block the Trans Mountain Pipeline expansion. The project would triple the pipeline’s capacity to carry oil from Alberta’s tarsands to Vancouver’s port and increase tanker traffic on B.C.’s coast. The project was approved by the federal government and former Christy Clark government and construction is slated to start in September.

Fry, MP for Vancouver Centre since 1993, said she’s already on good terms with some members of the incoming B.C. government.

“I know a lot of the NDPers,” Fry said. “Talking with them on all the issues... is a bit of an open relationship policy.”

Despite the pipeline issue, the two governments have much in common, she said.

“If you look at the NDP I don’t see that there are too many things that they have on their plate that might be a sticky wicket at the moment,” Fry noted. She said both governments are keen to work on trade and housing issues.

But the pipeline issue is credited with helping the NDP gain seats in Metro Vancouver and poses political problems for Liberal MPs in the region.

In June, Fry and Burnaby North-Seymour MP Terry Beech both voted against a Conservative motion declaring the project has “social licence” to proceed. Vancouver-Quadra Liberal MP Joyce Murray was absent and the rest of the Liberals voted with the Conservatives. The NDP opposed the motion.

Fry said Trudeau has made his decision and there isn’t much the new government in Victoria can do about it.

“In my experience over the 24 years I’ve been around there have been festering issues, there have always been disagreements between federal and provincial governments,” Fry said. “In this one I think it is very, very clear whose jurisdiction it is.”

But David Moscrop, a political scientist at the University of British Columbia, said though the two governments may have much in common the pipeline issue could become heated enough to poison relations in other areas.

“Personalities matter,” Moscrop said. “It’s all rosy at the start. It's all ‘congratulations’ at the start, but we don’t know how John Horgan’s going to approach negotiations and discussions with the federal government.”

Horgan will also have to manage relations with the federal New Democrats, who have their own divisions on pipelines and the Alberta NDP government, which supports the pipeline expansion.

Like Fry, Moscrop said he doesn’t know how the NDP government and Green MLAs intend to stop the pipeline. “At the end of the day I’m not convinced this can be stopped,” he said.

Fry also notes that new governments often change their positions when they take power and learn things aren’t as simple as they seemed in opposition.  [Tyee]

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