Rob Shaw: A chastened premier in British Columbia
David Eby was sworn in with a razor-thin mandate, and a whole new tone.
By: Rob Shaw
B.C. Premier David Eby swore in a new cabinet with a remarkably different tone from the one British Columbians are used to. Gone was the hotshot young leader who took power two years ago with an ambitious plan that gave rise to the largest drug, housing, and Indigenous reconciliation policy changes seen in a generation.
The Eby that took the stage last week in the ornate ballroom at Government House in Victoria instead unveiled a far-less assertive cabinet, part of a government that limped over the finish line in the October election with the barest of majorities, including one seat won by only 22 votes.
Chastened, he outlined another vision for the British Columbia government.
Instead of radical change, the premier promised to get back to the basics. Instead of an ambitious agenda, he pledged to slow down and listen.
Every new cabinet minister was given the same mandate letter demanding focus on areas of voter anger, including cost-of-living, housing affordability, health care and drugs, and street disorder.
“As British Columbians, I think we are are looking for the same thing: We want a job with a decent paycheque, a safe comfortable place to live, a strong community, that connection to other people, a prosperous province for everybody, access to a family doctor, health care, the basics,” Eby said at the swearing-in ceremony.
“That vision for what we all want is the message that people sent us into the job with in this recent election.”
Eby does not often devote time in his speeches to discussing mistakes or political miscalculations. But they were more present than ever in his comments this week.
“Ours will be a government that listens, and ours will be a government that delivers,” he said.
Critics have accused the B.C. NDP of failing on these major files for more than two years. They were slow to acknowledge complaints from people about the open drug use and street disorder caused by decriminalization and safe supply policies (which the government originally attributed to fear-mongering), a failure to hear cost-of-living complaints related to the carbon tax (originally framed as climate denialism) and an inability to recognize concern over major changes to land management under new Indigenous reconciliation efforts (which the Eby administration originally attributed to racism).
The new listening exercise matches up with another pledge Eby made in front of his new cabinet: To achieve public buy-in before major policy changes.
“These are big challenges, these are complex problems, and they are not unique to British Columbia,” Eby said.
“They will take time to address. But I commit to you we will, I will, ensure that we will bring British Columbians along as we solve these problems, as we deliver solutions to this incredibly challenging time that British Columbians face. It’s what they expect us to do and it’s absolutely what we are going to do.”
Eby later told reporters the election results — which saw the B.C. Conservatives surge from almost no seats to 44, three shy of the NDP — were a message that people want his government to consider other perspectives as well when solving problems.
Inside the Eby administration, all this has translated into an early effort to slow down and focus. That’s the opposite approach Eby took to his first term, where he shot out of the gate on day one with a massive 100-day action plan, a promise to clean up Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, a push for involuntary addictions treatment, and a blitz of housing legislation to ban short-term investment rentals and mandate density for municipalities.
This time, his strategy is to pick his battles, on core issues, and save the ambition for the future. He said he intends to try and serve a full four-year term. But with a one-seat majority, even one MLA’s resignation, illness or defection would put his government at risk.
“I’m grateful for the opportunity that British Columbians have given us, in a time when people around the world are chucking incumbent governments, they've given us the chance to come back and take on these hard problems,” said Eby.
“But I also accept with humility the message that they sent. This is a narrow majority, I understand that they want us to work with other perspectives, with other MLAs in the house, with all British Columbians in addressing these serious issues. And we're going to do that.”
If that’s true, British Columbians are about to see a side of their 37th premier they’ve never seen before.
Rob Shaw has spent more than 16 years covering B.C. politics. He now reports for CHEK News and writes for Glacier Media, as well as the website Northern Beat. He is the co-author of the national bestselling book A Matter of Confidence, host of the weekly podcast and YouTube show Political Capital, and the weekly political correspondent for CBC Radio’s All Points West and Radio West programs. You can reach him at rob@robshawnews.com
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I appreciate the dedicated coverage to BC - Thanks.
I do take issue with one thing Eby said:
"I also accept with humility the message that they sent. This is a narrow majority, I understand that they want us to work with other perspectives, with other MLAs in the house, with all British Columbians in addressing these serious issues. And we're going to do that.”
But he also said this, according Vaughn Palmer in the Vancouver Sun on November 4: “We’re open to working with the Conservatives as long as they meet our bright-line test around the kind of province that we want ... Eby hasn’t precisely defined the bright-line test for determining whether Conservative MLAs are acceptable or unacceptable to the NDP government."
In other words, Eby plans to brush aside elected representatives whose views don't meet some kind of purity test. He doesn't sound very "chastened" to me.
No one should forget that Eby produced an instruction manual on how to sue the police if your feelings were hurt during an arrest. That kind of ideology doesn’t just disappear into thin air.