The sun was shining on Vernon’s Cambium cidery when B.C. Premier David Eby stopped by earlier this week after making announcements in Kelowna and West Kelowna.
At the same time, a political storm was brewing, and it continues to pick up steam.
As early as next week, members of the Legislative Assembly will vote on a bill to suspend sections of the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act (DRIPA). Eby has said the vote will be a confidence motion, meaning if the bill fails, his government will fall and a spring election will be triggered.
Such was the backdrop in the province when Eby sat down with The Morning Star April 9 for an exclusive interview and discussed a wide range of topics, from DRIPA to housing, Vernon’s forthcoming psychiatric ward, the deficit, the overdose crisis, social disorder and more.
Eby offered his thoughts on how best to tackle these issues, while knowing that if the DRIPA suspension legislation doesn’t pass, his NDP party will have to fight in an election to be the ones to tackle them.
DRIPA and the possibility of an early election
Eby’s government brought DRIPA into law in 2019 to commit the province to aligning its laws with the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. But an appeals court decision that used DRIPA to invalidate parts of the Mineral Tenure Act has brought on legal liability issues, with two court decisions already relying on the precedent the appeals court set.
Eby has said the plan to suspend parts of DRIPA is highly necessary in light of the liability issues the legislation has triggered. The B.C. Conservatives, meanwhile, want to repeal DRIPA altogether, citing the Cowichan Tribes decision — which found Aboriginal title exists on an area of Richmond land containing parcels of both public and private property — and interpreting the decision as a broad threat to private property rights.
Eby and the NDPs have faced sharp criticism from First Nations as talks of the DRIPA suspension vote have ramped up, with the the First Nations Leadership Council calling the forthcoming bill a “unilateral betrayal.”
Asked whether suspending parts of DRIPA is worth the risk of alienating the support and trust of First Nations his government has worked hard to collect, Eby told The Morning Star it’s “not something we wanted to do,” but it nonetheless has to be done.
“Absolutely, it can risk the trust,” Eby said. “But what we can’t do is have unlimited legal liability because of the Court of Appeal decision on the Declaration Act.”
It’s something he said he’s tried to communicate with First Nations Chiefs, to mixed results at best.
“Some are more sympathetic than others, but we’re going to have to show through our actions that we’re still committed to the work (of reconciliation), and we will, because this work underlies a huge part of our economic success that we are counting on as a province, but also some long-standing social issues that are the history that we inherited in this province. So there’s lots of work to do.”
With only a one-vote majority in the legislature, Eby will need all the votes on the DRIPA suspension bill that he can get. He previously said he’s confident he’ll get the votes. One major question mark, however, is the vote of NDP MLA Joan Phillip, who Eby acknowledged is in a “unique position” given her husband is Grand Chief Stewart Phillip, who has publicly condemned the NDP’s suspension plan.
“These are complicated things,” Eby said when asked if he’s spoken to Joan about how she’ll vote. “Joan herself is a remarkable Indigenous leader and a woman who’s broken glass ceilings throughout her life and brings a huge amount of personal experience to our caucus.
“It’s a thoroughly unpleasant thing that we are engaged in right now, but necessary.”
Joan Phillip is currently battling cancer, as Eby himself noted. Asked if an election could be triggered in the event she’s unable to vote on a DRIPA suspension bill for health reasons, Eby said “things are always inherently fragile” with a one-vote majority, and whether Joan can or will vote in support of the bill, the government will reach out to Independent MLAs as well as Greens and Conservatives to find support wherever it can.
What’s happening with Vernon’s psychiatric unit?
Eby was last in Vernon two years ago to announce a new in-patient psychiatric unit at Vernon Jubilee Hospital. Little has been heard about the project since.
Eby said the project is moving, but it’s been slowed down due to “serious increases” in costs as the province tendered it.
“Construction inflation in our infrastructure has been a major issue. Families doing renovations are seeing this. You can see it at the hardware store and at the grocery store. The inflation and the cost of construction is a serious issue,” he said.
“The expansion in that psychiatric care is crucial. But doing it in a way that is sustainable financially for the province, especially when we’re under pressure from global events, tariffs and other challenges, is also equally important. So we’re working with Interior Health to find a path forward.”
The psychiatric unit is indeed highly needed, as evidenced by the case of Ezra Cool, who did not make it to one of two psych wards at the Vernon hospital after six days in Emergency, and who died in a highway collision while experiencing psychosis after escaping wraparound supervision.
In light of Cool’s case, Eby said more healthcare spending needs to be directed towards frontline patient care, and that means reducing corporate and administrative healthcare spending where possible.
“Where we can find savings and efficiencies in the healthcare system is in reducing silos between health authorities, working more efficiently with innovation and technology, but certainly in reducing non-frontline positions in health authorities — VPs, assistant VPs, communications teams, and so on,” he said. “We’ve communicated an unambiguous message, not just to health authorities, but also to the public sector in the province — universities, colleges, and others — that they have to reduce administration costs so that we can direct more money to the frontline.”
Eby said he couldn’t speak to Cool’s case specifically, but could “enthusiastically agree” that more nurses and other healthcare professionals are needed broadly across the province, including Vernon.
“That’s why we launched a number of different initiatives. We have a new medical school that has students starting in August. We expanded spaces at the University of British Columbia for physicians. We’ve expanded nursing training across the province. But all of those take years to bring those doctors and nurses and health professionals on. So we’ve also been recruiting and really met a welcoming audience in the United States,” the premier said. “We’ve had more than 2,000 American health care professionals — doctors, nurses, and health science professionals — apply to work in British Columbia, including in the Okanagan.”
Social disorder and the overdose crisis
Eby’s government chose not to renew its drug decriminalization pilot program earlier this year. When asked what the NDP learned from the three-year experiment, Eby said there is a need amid the crisis to be humble enough to recognize when things aren’t working.
“The focus continues to be on increasing the availability of treatment in Vernon and in the Okanagan, both voluntary and involuntary treatment,” Eby said. “We’re working with mayors on identifying a site for additional involuntary care for people struggling with addiction, mental health issues and brain injury, which is an unfortunately growing population.”
The B.C. Conservatives have signalled they want involuntary care for people trapped in a cycle of drug addiction and overdose expanded significantly. Kelowna-Mission MLA Gavin Dew called this the more compassionate approach at a Vernon townhall last month, while adding it needs to be done to curb spikes in social disorder that are making it hard for businesses in Vernon and Kelowna to operate.
Eby said involuntary care does in fact exist in the province already, though it’s designed for a very specific part of the population struggling with mental health, drug addiction and brain injury. He pointed to the Red Fish Healing Centre in Coquitlam, which does involuntary care for people throughout the province.
“But it’s not enough,” Eby said, adding an additional site has been identified in Surrey and other sites are being identified in the north.
“We’re still struggling to find an appropriate site in the Interior and on the Island for this care,” Eby said, explaining the province is looking for sites that are “as close to turnkey as possible” so that they won’t take two or three years to build from scratch.
Eby added he’s proud of how Vernon has reduced homelessness of late, “which has a positive impact on street disorder.”
Housing indicators strong in Vernon
A bright spot for Eby’s government is the way in which its housing strategy has manifested in Vernon, where the vacancy rate has eclipsed three per cent, housing starts are roughly on target this year and the price of homes is down annually.
“Vernon’s done a really good job of building the housing that we need to respond to a growing population. And that, in mind with some of our other initiatives, is helping to drive that healthy vacancy rate, which means rents are a little bit cheaper for people, which is absolutely crucial,” Eby said. “It also means houses for purchase come down in price when there’s more homes available as well, which is important for keeping people in the region and attracting them here.”
Eby said the City of Kelowna has asked the province to lift short-term rental restrictions to allow for more tourism accommodation to be available there, which is something he said can be done.
He added the first homes are being seen built under bills 14 and 15, legislation that allows multi-unit housing on a single lot, which will hopefully further improve the housing crunch locally.
Premier agrees deficit too high
Putting a damper on efforts to improve things like housing and healthcare is the reality that doing so is expensive.
B.C. is running a deficit of $13.5 billion this year. Asked how he’d respond to critics who say this deficit is simply to high, Eby said, “I’d agree.”
“We have to do our work to drive down the deficit, and we are. We’re reducing the size of the public service. We are identifying additional sources of revenue for the province. What we can’t do, unfortunately — and this is just the reality of the cost of providing healthcare and education to people — is cut our way to addressing the full challenge we face. The only solution is to grow our provincial economy.”
The latter point is why he was in Kelowna the day previous to announce that $6.75 million was on its way to four local manufacturing companies, creating 101 new jobs.
“There are a couple of key pieces in the budget that are important to this work,” Eby said of his government’s economic growth strategy. “One is a tax credit for manufacturers that are buying new equipment to invest in their firms and to access new markets. The second is $400 million that assists us in partnering with major firms that are looking to invest in British Columbia.”
Amid the second term of sitting U.S. President Donald Trump and his globally constraining tariff policy, Eby said diversification is the name of the game for B.C. and Canada, as it is with other countries.
“When we visit India, when we visit Asia, there is a huge interest in partnering with us because they also want to diversify their risk away from the United States,” he said.
“Things have been moving very, very quickly, and the federal government has been supporting that work as well. Our trip to India, for example, there will be a new free trade agreement with India that potentially removes the duty on Canadian lumber, which is 10 per cent, which would have a very positive impact on the lumber industry in British Columbia. The speed at which it’s moving right now is remarkable.”
— With files from Mark Page, Black Press Media