John Horgan believed most British Columbians are New Democrats, they just don't know it yet
The broad outpouring of grief and affection for an unapologetic NDP partisan are a tribute to his drive to win power for all the right reasons
The sudden, tragic death of former Premier John Horgan, finally overcome by a third bout of cancer on November 12, triggered an outpouring of grief, affection and gratitude for all that he had achieved for the province during his five years as Premier.
Horgan’s broad, populist appeal has been underlined by the countless Horgan selfies posted by British Columbians who encountered him somewhere along the way and still cherish the memory. They were proof of his conviction that “most British Columbians are New Democrats, they just don’t know it yet.”
Many of the tributes missed the long, hard road Horgan travelled to get to the Premier’s office, driven by that belief. His career entailed a lifetime effort to build the New Democratic Party and to win power, without which none of his successes as Premier would have been possible.
Once in office, he demonstrated a deft touch in exercising power. He was ready to make tough decisions but prepared to step back when necessary. Fundamental to his approach was a belief in collaboration, a value he attributed to countless childhood hours spent watching Star Trek.
“Everybody worked together,” he told some friends in a video visit a few days before his death. “You know, different people coming together for a common outcome. It was all smart stuff then, and it is today, but for a young boy watching it, that stuck, that was my ideology.
“How do you all work together to get a common outcome to benefit everybody? To each according to their need, from each according to their ability.”
It was my good fortune to work for Horgan as his chief of staff during his years in government and I can say with certainty that he was as partisan as they get. He loved people on an individual level but was intolerant of privilege, entitlement and inequality.
He wanted power, not for himself, but so he could lift others up. He was power-hungry for all the right reasons and saw the roots of power in collaboration, a belief that drove him to reach across party lines, engage with opponents and respect the public service.
Nothing in Horgan’s personal background pointed to a career in politics. A wayward teenager raised by a hard-working single mom, Horgan’s only brush with politics before his university days was a weekly assignment chopping wood at the rural cabin of Victoria’s legendary Legislature reporter Bruce Hutchison, who would always take time to discuss current events.
A chance invitation to hear NDP leader Tommy Douglas speak during his undergraduate years opened Horgan’s eyes to social democracy. That interest crystallized in 1983 when he heard NDP leader Dave Barrett address a huge protest rally at the Legislature. Inspired by Barrett’s oratory, the 24-year-old joined the NDP.
From there it was off to graduate school in Australia and then all the way to Ottawa, where he found work with the BC Members of Parliament in Ed Broadbent’s federal NDP caucus. The party was on a roll, electing 30 members in 1984 and 43 in 1988.
Horgan forged lifelong friendships on the Hill, not only with Broadbent but also with fellow political staffers like Adrian Dix, Gerry Scott, and Glen Clark, all of whom later played key roles in the provincial party. He had a ringside seat during Canada’s national constitutional crisis, watched the free trade debate unfold, and saw some of the great political debaters of the day in action.
He soaked up the rhetorical techniques of people like Barrett, by then an MP, and Jim Fulton, the New Democrat from Skeena, whose Parliamentary theatrics included dumping a dead salmon on the fisheries’ minister’s desk.
The election of the Mike Harcourt NDP government in 1991 opened the door to work in Victoria. Horgan and his wife Ellie, now with one son, hurried home. He worked in a series of political posts for the next decade, rising ultimately to chief of staff in the office of Premier Dan Miller. Between Ottawa and Victoria, Horgan acquired more direct experience in BC politics than many elected officials do in a lifetime – yet he had never faced the voters.
That came in 2005 after a son’s friend grew tired of Horgan ranting at the television about some bad political news. “Why don’t you do something about it?” the kid demanded, and Horgan finally took up the challenge.
In the door knocking and campaigning that followed, he heard first-hand from voters in Juan de Fuca – Malahat how much many were suffering from government policies, not least the members of the Hospital Employees Union, who had seen their union jobs contracted out and their wages cut by up to 15 percent by government legislation. His determination to right those wrongs, and many others, never wavered.
Horgan would have to wait for his chance. In 2005, under the leadership of Carole James, one of Horgan’s closest friends, the NDP rebounded from its catastrophic 2001 defeat to increase its caucus to 33 seats, one of them Horgan’s. Although the New Democrats added two more seats in 2009, she still lost to Gordon Campbell’s Liberals, triggering a caucus revolt that forced her out.
In the leadership race that followed, Horgan made his first bid for party leadership, ultimately losing to Adrian Dix, who was himself defeated by Christy Clark in 2013. When the race to replace Dix began in 2014, interest was low.
For Horgan, the previous nine years had been marred by a series of defeats and the ordeal of caucus infighting. If there were good memories from the Opposition years, he seldom shared them. Now that the leadership was there for the taking, Horgan declined.
Fortunately, both for Horgan and the province, the NDP caucus and party leaders refused to take “no” for an answer. When Horgan finally did relent, he was acclaimed. Among a series of policy commitments he made, one stood out: he would oppose the Trans Mountain Pipeline expansion, but support LNG development if it complied with BC’s climate plan, reflected reconciliation with First Nations, produced benefits for BC and jobs for British Columbians.
But for nearly two years as Opposition leader, Horgan struggled to find his feet. Senior staff came and went. The Christy Clark Liberals seemed unstoppable. Worst of all, after 15 years in opposition, New Democrats had begun to believe they were losers, doomed to defeat.
The story of the 2017 campaign is well-told in A Matter of Confidence: The Inside Story of the Political Battle for BC, by Rob Shaw and Richard Zussman, but the book understates the internal changes driven by Horgan that played an important role in the victory that followed.
One was his LNG commitment, a clear signal that he refused to surrender resource workers and Interior communities to the BC Liberals. A second was his decision to hire Bob Dewar, a veteran of the Manitoba NDP, who pledged to do everything in his power to make Horgan Premier, an attitude that began to spread. Third was the forceful new approach signalled by a provocative promise to eliminate school portables in Surrey, a daunting commitment, but the only one Surrey voters wanted to hear. (His later pledge to eliminate tolls on the Port Mann Bridge, of course, proved a turning point in the election to come.)
At the same time, Horgan made clear-cut pledges to NDP constituencies that had become frustrated by middle-of-the-road waffling at election time. Horgan was emphatic: yes, to a $15 minimum wage, yes to $10 a day childcare, yes to card-check certification for union organizing, yes to union-friendly community benefit agreements on infrastructure projects, yes to restoring the rights and conditions of health care workers.
“I may be an asshole,” he declared in one memorable speech to skeptical building trades workers, “but I’m your asshole.” They loved it.
By early 2017, the NDP rank and file’s morale was starting to climb, along with voter interest. Although he was unable to dislodge the Liberals on election night, Horgan forged an alliance with the Green Party that ultimately drove the Liberals from office, provided for three years of dramatic political change, and laid the foundation for the 2020 election, which produced the biggest NDP majority in its history.
The Confidence and Supply Agreement was just one example of Horgan’s inclusive approach to the exercise of power. During the Covid pandemic, consultations with business, labour and other civil society groups occurred almost weekly. The unanimous Legislature vote in support of the Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous People Act was further evidence of Horgan’s gift for uniting British Columbians to create change.
All this was possible, however, only because of the years of commitment he put into the New Democratic Party, sparked decades earlier by his encounters with Douglas, Barrett and Broadbent.
Not surprisingly, delegates to the NDP’s 2017 convention supported Horgan’s leadership by 97.5 per cent in a mandatory review. One of the government’s first acts, and arguably one of Horgan’s greatest legacies, was legislation taking big money out of politics, eliminating union and corporate donations. There was much more to come.
(Rod Mickleburgh’s excellent obituary of Horgan in the Globe and Mail sums up many of the achievements and challenges of the Horgan years.)
When cancer struck Horgan for the second time in 2021, the draining radiation treatments forced him to reflect on the government’s accomplishments and his own remaining energy. The long checklist agreed upon with the Greens was complete or well underway. The government was in good shape. The party was strong. He resigned as NDP leader.
“How did I get to be so lucky?" he asked MLAs in his last Legislature address. "I've loved every minute of it, and I can't say any more than that."
“It’s not about me, dude,” he would often insist, and he meant it. It was about all of us, lifting us up. And as he told visitors last week, his 2004 doorstep conversations with hospital workers twenty years earlier came full circle.
“I had an HEU member yesterday [who] came in to help me wash my back,” Horgan recalled, “and he said, ‘I never thought I’d get the chance to thank you for what your government did for me and my brothers and sisters. Here I am. I get to wash your back.’
“And it was like, you know, I was just doing my job so he could do his job. And there we are, both in tears as he's wiping my back. It was truly amazing, and that really brought it around for me. That's what governments can do.”
Good stuff Geoff. You were a big help to him. His contribution warrants a book and you’re the guy to write it.
Well and thoughtfully portrayed. thanks Geoff