Just like becoming a father, serving as premier of British Columbia has changed David Eby.
The one-time activist lawyer is now dealing with the full depth of the “complexities” that come with governing.
“As a father and as an almost 50-year-old, there’s been a maturation in my view around issues and increased recognition of the complexity of some of the challenges that the province faces,” Eby said in a year-end interview with Black Press Media.
The last year has presented the province with a new layer of major challenges, on top of underlying issues such as the difficulty of accessing healthcare, the rising cost of living, entrenched homelessness and a growing deficit.
Tariffs, oil pipelines and court decisions that throw a wrench into reconciliation efforts — none of these were atop the agenda during the October 2024 election.
The resulting combination has forced Eby’s hand in several ways.
The NDP is a pro-labour party, but Eby’s government sat at the employer’s end of the longest public service strike in the province’s history. Despite a strong environmental lobby within the party, Eby has turned to natural gas-boosterism to keep the economy afloat. Having once fought to keep the street-entrenched out of jail, he has now turned to involuntary care to get them off the street.
While Eby said his “core values” remain the same, he clearly has taken the NDP in a new direction, creating tension within the party at times.
Disagreements aside, Eby still managed to get 82.3 per cent of party members’ support in a November leadership review vote.
As a young activist lawyer, things were more straightforward for Eby. He advocated for people in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, first with the Pivot Legal Society, and later with the B.C. Civil Liberties Association. He even wrote a book on how to sue the police.
Reflecting on this time, he said he was focused on advocating for a “very defined constituency” of people, such as those exploited by landlords or abused during arrest.
“Now my constituency is the entire province,” Eby said.
University of British Columbia political science lecturer Stewart Prest says the B.C. NDP is also facing the difficult position that many left-leaning governments find themselves in, where they are given less credit for economic progress but more blame for economic downturns.
“They’re fighting that battle against significant economic headwinds,” he said.
And it does not help that Eby took over as premier in 2022 with a budget surplus, but the province now faces a projected deficit of $11.2 billion.
Meanwhile, the underlying challenges facing British Columbians that were a focus of the last election still simmer for many.
“Those problems continue to frustrate many voters,” Prest said.
It was a difficult year. To get through it, Eby said he relies on his yoga mat for non-stressful exercise — “it’s definitely very Kitsilano, Vancouver, but pretty unapologetic,” he says — and the advice of former MLA and one-time interim NDP leader Joy MacPhail, who has chaired the BC Ferries board of directors since 2022.
He called MacPhail his most trusted advisor.
“Joy, with her incredible background, has seen it all and provides me with great insight,” Eby said. “We don’t always see eye to eye on what the particular solution is, but I invariably find her helpful in real moments of crisis.”
One of those crises Eby dealt with this year involved MacPhail. When news broke in May that B.C. is buying four ferries from a Chinese shipyard, Eby’s links to MacPhail raised questions about how much the government knew about the decision-making process behind that contract award.
One thing after another
It could be argued that the ferry fiasco was a crisis of the government’s own making, but outside forces also had a lot of impact on B.C. in 2025.
It began with what Eby called the most significant moment of the year — the initial set of social media posts from U.S. President Donald Trump threatening a trade war against Canada.
“The reverberations of those tweets echo through to today,” he said.
This led Eby on a crusade against tariffs, affording him the political capital and social licence to introduce several pieces of legislation aimed at boosting the B.C. economy and filling government coffers, while giving him a scapegoat for a growing deficit.
“The major projects that we’re advancing here in British Columbia, and the enthusiasm and the support from the federal government for those projects,” he said, “I’m not sure that would be the same had we not been targeted in that way by the president.”
Some of this has not sat well with First Nations leaders, who complain the government pushed legislation through without proper consultation. This includes infrastructure and energy bills 14, 15, and 31, each of which narrowly passed in the legislature with Speaker Raj Chouhan casting a tie-breaking vote.
The government’s relationship with First Nations took another blow later in the year when the Cowichan Tribes court decision upended the traditional understanding of land rights by finding that a First Nation can have a title claim to private fee simple land. The province is appealing.
Just when the dust began to settle on that decision, the B.C. Court of Appeals ruled parts of the Mineral Tenure Act are invalid because they are not consistent with the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act (DRIPA).
Eby is taking heat for this because he was a major part of the John Horgan government’s effort to pass DRIPA in 2019. But even though DRIPA calls for all laws to be made consistent with the U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, Eby says it was not meant to allow courts to invalidate previously existing laws.
“Our government’s bright line position is that this work has to be done by government,” he said. “There are no judicial shortcuts. It is a delicate and tender piece of work.”
Eby is now also burdened by an effort by Alberta to get a new oil pipeline built to B.C.’s north coast, which he warns could further alienate B.C. First Nations opposed to repealing a regional ban on tanker traffic.
Royal Roads political communications Prof. David Black says Eby is playing a weak hand here because decisions are being made without his involvement. Black says Eby must seize back control of the narrative.
This could involve backing an alternate solution, such as routing the pipeline through Vancouver.
“Taking possession of the pipeline issue and making it less something that’s done to them but something they’re doing for themselves might be their way out of this dilemma,” Black said.
Whatever he does, Black said Eby will continue to find it difficult to “thread the needle” and boost the economy, while also protecting the environment.
The next year will likely find Eby trying to weigh these competing sides both within his party and in the public sphere. But there will also likely be some more curveballs. And it will continue to be difficult to deliver change quickly.
“I think that a lot of times in government there’s an effort to hit home runs,” Eby said. “And what we’re trying to do is recognize that these are really serious and challenging issues, and that is going to take time.”