Joan Phillip’s Voice Will Continue to Reverberate in the NDP

The outpouring of grief in response to news Friday of the death of Vancouver-Strathcona MLA Amshen (Joan Phillip), was striking for how many mourners, including members of the BC NDP caucus, posted pictures of themselves with Phillip, a revered leader both in the NDP and BC’s Indigenous rights movement.

Just four months ago, it was Phillip’s lone but firm voice that stopped Premier David Eby in his tracks when he announced a confidence vote to force through amendments to the Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act.

Phillip’s public declaration that she would vote no, spoken from what many feared was her deathbed to a premier holding a one-seat majority, may have been the most consequential act of her lifetime in the fight for social justice.

The fact that so many now are identifying themselves with Phillip’s legacy is a sign of how close Eby was to a potentially fatal internal crisis when Attorney General Niki Sharma gave him “a tap on the shoulder” and told him to stand down.

The grief and sense of loss at Phillip’s death are not feigned or performative. They are indicative of the vital leadership role Phillip quietly played inside the NDP caucus. It’s hard not to read Sharma’s own tribute to Phillip — “you taught me so much about life, history and what’s right” — in that context. (Eby’s statement hailed Phillip as “an epic fighter who dedicated her life to making the world a better and fairer place.”)

Now, tragically, Phillip is gone but the DRIPA crisis remains. Kerry-Lynne Findlay’s BC Conservative Party, unable to agree on anything but the need to repeal the act, is determined to keep it at the centre of political debate. Eby, of course, would prefer to discuss Trump tariffs.

His legislative agenda, however, does not give him that luxury. The stage is set for an autumn battle over reconciliation and Indigenous rights in which Phillip’s voice will still reverberate, despite her passing.

Eby’s political fortunes have taken a turn for the better over the course of a difficult summer, in which the province was beleaguered by wildfires, mass evacuations, a state of emergency and an intensification of the trade war with the United States.

The premier was upbeat July 3 when he welcomed reporters to a Legislature news conference to hear MLA Amelia Boultbee (Penticton-Summerland), once a Conservative and now an Independent, announce that she was crossing the floor to sit as member of the NDP caucus. Boultbee, who narrowly beat New Democrat Tina Lee in the 2022 election, instantly doubled Eby’s one-seat majority to two.

The arithmetic improved even more Aug.14 when Conservative finance critic Peter Milobar, recently defeated in the Conservative leadership race that elected Kerry-Lynne Findlay, announce his departure from the Conservatives to set as an independent.

By Saturday, five more Conservatives followed. And today Chilliwack-Cultus Lake MLA Áʼa:líya Warbus became seventh MLA to leave the party, saying she had lost confidence in Findlay, and will sit as an Independent.

That leaves Findlay with 30 caucus members. (Two MLAs who were elected as Conservatives are out of caucus facing criminal charges. Three others, who defected earlier, remain as Independents.)

Undeterred, Findlay completed purges of her staff and the party organization and brushed aside leaks from inside her caucus. “The work of renewing British Columbia continues without distraction,” she declared, adding “we are strengthening the Conservative Party of British Columbia as we prepare to form the next government.”

Party executive director Angelo Isodorou, a key leader of the Conservative’s 2024 revival, resigned, as did Aisha Estey, party president. On the positive side there was a pleasant dinner with Dallas Brodie, one-time Conservative and leader of far-right OneBC, which produced mutually admiring tweets.

The turmoil forced voters to reconsider Eby, who had seen his popularity sliding during the spring debates over DRIPA. A ResearchCo poll Aug. 18 showed the New Democrats suddenly leading the Conservatives 44 per cent to 39 per cent, while Eby was leading Findlay on “best premier” ratings by 37 per cent to 19 per cent.

With Milobar promising to launch a new centre-right party, joining OneBC, the Conservatives and Centre BC in the fight for centre-right votes, the NDP’s electoral prospects suddenly looked terrific.

The Conservatives are “chaos central,” Eby acknowledged Aug. 25, but he firmly ruled out a snap election.

“We’re not looking to an early election. We’re looking to deliver for British Columbians in the middle of an unprecedented trade war from our closest friend and ally, the United States, that is attacking our B.C. families and they need our support.”

Eby underlined his view Saturday by announcing a by-election in Abbotsford-Mission, where Reann Gasper had resigned to open a seat for Findlay. Former NDP MLA Pam Alexis, for many years a popular mayor of Mission, promptly announced her decision to run.

Findlay will have to beat Alexis to take a seat in the Legislature, but Brodie was quick to offer her support, pledging not to run a OneBC candidate. She called on the “Milobar Party” to do the same.

Despite the welcome turn in political fortunes, New Democrats face some hard days ahead. The last session, dominated by the self-inflicted DRIPA crisis and a brutal budget, was undoubtedly the worst since the New Democrats took power in 2017. As things stand, the debate in the Legislature may simply take up where it left off.

Distracted by fires and the trade war, the New Democrats have not undertaken a mid-term reset. Newly appointed chief of staff Andrew Mercier will not assume his post until Labour Day and the mid-summer cabinet shuffle, occasioned by finance minister Brenda Bailey’s need for a brief medical leave, simply moved around three front-bench veterans.

Does Eby have a B.C.-specific plan to support businesses and families in the face of Trump’s tariffs? If so, there’s no sign of it.

Despite the chaos surrounding her, Findlay has made it crystal clear that repeal of DRIPA and a broadside attack on the government’s reconciliation agenda will be her main targets when the Legislature returns Oct. 5.

Why not? It’s almost the only issue that the “not-NDP” members of the Legislature, Green Party aside, can agree on.

The Conservatives shocked even hardened veterans of social media disinformation campaigns in mid-August with an AI-generated attack ad that portrayed Eby as a cross between Hitler and Stalin. As martial music plays, Eby sticks pins in a map of the province where churches will burn and statues will be toppled. Joan Phillip is shown denouncing “colonial violence” and “genocide.”

This is the NDP’s culture war, Findlay’s ad says, all part of an alleged NDP plan to “transfer” 10 per cent of the province to First Nations. (Findlay, to be fair, did issue a statement mourning Philip’s death and hailing her “unwavering leadership on Indigenous issues.”)

The Conservatives are not limiting the campaign to the Legislature. Langley-Abbotsford MLA Harman Bhangu won Elections BC approval August 27 for an initiative petition campaign to repeal DRIPA. The petition is a non-binding process that allows any voter to propose a new law or changes to an existing law. (A 2010 initiative campaign on the harmonized sales tax effectively ended BC Liberal Premier Gordon Campbell’s career.)

Although Bhangu’s petition is unlikely to achieve the very high bar of signatures from 10 per cent of the voters in each of 93 constituencies, the campaign will be an excellent organizing tool and list-building opportunity for local Conservative organizations.

The NDP cannot duck this debate. The current legislative agenda is exactly what Findlay and her loyal followers are hoping for.

The only item currently on the order paper is the Kitselas Treaty Act, the result of negotiations with the Skeena River First Nation that began in 1993. Although supported by an 82 per cent majority of Kitselas members and endorsed by local leaders like Terrace Mayor Sean Bujtas, the treaty reflects BC’s Recognition and Reconciliation of Rights Policy established in 2019. There will be plenty of targets in this debate for mischief and misinformation by Findlay and her frontbenchers.

That leaves the DRIPA debate itself. Although Eby stood down from his direct amendments, he did not promise to leave the law untouched. It will be years, according to legal experts, before the courts have completed the complex appeals of the Gitxaala decision that set off the DRIPA crisis.

Has Eby’s team found a summer solution? If so, the work has been done very quietly. More importantly, will any legislative package have the support of the First Nations Leadership Council, which made its opposition to DRIPA amendments crystal clear? Such support is a precondition to support from the Greens and may be for some NDP members as well.

Despite the addition of Amelia Boultbee to NDP ranks, the government does not have any margin for error. It will need every possible vote to pass a “fix” to DRIPA, a feat that may only be possible with the vocal support of First Nations leaders. Amshen Joan Phillip was not an isolated voice. She represented a significant current of opinion in the NDP’s ranks.

Nor should New Democrats count on the Conservatives to remain divided on the one issue they seem to agree on. Even Milobar, castigated during his leadership bid by Findlay for “conflict of interest” because his spouse is Indigenous, declares himself determined to repeal DRIPA.

Ideally, the New Democrats will find a way forward that leans into reconciliation and DRIPA — unanimously passed by the Legislature in 2019 — as the only practical way forward, whatever adjustments are required. This would be the best answer to the implicit racism of the BC Conservative attacks, which several defectors cited as they left the caucus.

That seems like a strategy that Amshen Joan Phillip could endorse.