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Hold onto your hats, British Columbia. In a stunning shift of power, NDP Premier David Eby made the biggest political miscalculation in B.C. history, perhaps Canadian history, with a snap election that managed to alienate just about everyone. B.C. now is faced with a Conservative government with a huge majority, led by someone who was virtually unknown six weeks ago.
At this point, it’s not clear exactly what version of the Conservatives B.C. is getting in Lorne Doerkson. From the campaign, he came across as a principled man, your small-c conservative uncle from the interior, who was literally handed the leadership. Above all, Doerkson succeeded in being a credible option to the NDP and thus embodied change that voters were seeking after nine years of NDP rule, four with Eby as Premier.
Let’s line up the policy agenda of the incoming Conservative government, reviewing their platform and campaign for what’s likely to be on the front burner over the coming months. Doerkson’s campaign touched on some conservative bedrocks, but largely stuck to a script of economic growth and pocket book issues rather than culture wars. The 2027 B.C. budget looms large and will be a pivotal real world test of a large number of vague Conservative promises—tax cuts, spending commitments and deficit reduction—that simply don’t add up.
Ten things to look for:
Fiscal review panel
In Doerkson’s first press conference the day after the election, he stated a day one commitment to launch a fiscal review panel to get a better handle on provincial finances. This echoes a maneuver that Gordon Campbell used when he became premier in 2001. Campbell’s fiscal view panel reported that B.C. finances were much worse than believed—after his Liberal government had already implemented large personal and corporate tax cuts—and opened the door to large multi-year spending cuts in the 2002 budget.
For the Conservatives, an independent fiscal review panel will provide cover for jettisoning their election platform promises to rectify the province’s finances. I suspect the 2027 budget will also be delayed in order to let more time pass since the election, and a new austerity frame to set in. In any event, the new Conservative government must reckon with exactly what it’s going to keep and scrap from its platform.
Tax cuts
The biggest commitment in the Conservative platform was a large tax cut, which will cost the provincial government approximately $3-4 billion per year once it is fully phased in. If implemented for the 2027 tax year, the tax cut will also worsen the baseline deficit for the current 2026-27 fiscal year.
The tax cut would be an increase in the basic personal amount (the threshold for paying income tax) from $13,216 currently to $32,000 per year. This type of tax cut is costly and fairly ineffective economically, as it gives the same amount to anyone over the threshold—whether they’re a service industry worker, a lawyer or a billionaire—and a large share of those beneficiaries won’t even notice the tax cut. Individuals earning less than the already-existing $13,216 threshold do not get anything—but this is precisely where affordability issues are most acute.
The Conservatives also promised a cut in provincial sales tax (PST) for machinery and equipment expenditures by corporations. This is an orphan from B.C.’s brief move to a value-added tax harmonized with Ottawa (the HST) that existed from mid-2010 to 2013, when it was repealed due to political backlash. One of the rationales for the HST was that exporting businesses would get credit for HST they paid on their inputs. This measure is not particularly objectionable but does cost $500 million per year that would add to the budget deficit.
Public auto insurance
The Conservative campaign stumbled only once, when a letter from Doerkson to a number of insurance and legal associations was released, citing an intention to scrap the “no fault” auto insurance reforms brought in by the NDP and a greater private role for auto insurance generally (see my election analysis here). The Conservative platform took a more muted stance to “keep auto insurance affordable by maintaining ICBC [the Insurance Corporation of BC] as a public option and preserving no-fault for the vast majority of claims, while giving catastrophically injured victims access to legal representation, with capped legal fees.”
After NDP reforms in 2021, there are legitimate concerns that certain accident victims are not getting proper compensation from ICBC. A legislative inquiry was already underway specifically on this matter which was scrapped when the election was called, so getting that committee back up and running quickly is needed. ICBC has a surplus that could be used to boost care and compensation for victims without going back to a lot of litigation, but doing so would lower ICBC’s net income and show up as a larger budget deficit.
Spending cuts
In the era of spending cuts under Gordon Campbell, health care was the only part of the budget that experienced an increase, although it was insufficient to keep up with population growth, aging and higher costs for professional compensation. In contrast, education spending was flatlined in budget terms, which meant larger class sizes and real cuts after considering inflation. The rest of the B.C. budget experienced deep cuts to services, especially social assistance, child and transportation.
Health care spending is 40 per cent of the B.C. budget and education another 20 per cent, so any attempts to reduce the deficit inevitably run into core services that affect a wide swath of the population. During the campaign, Doerkson said repeatedly that he would protect public health care, and promised to take actions to ease emergency rooms and waiting lists, and improve seniors’ care—that will cost a lot of money.
How the government squares this circle will be critical for health care going forward: appointing a commission to look at the finances of public health care could be the first move in a game that leads to greater privatization of services. See Andrew Longhurst’s election primer on the state of B.C.’s public health care system.
Indigenous rights
Early in the election campaign, Doerkson said the first thing he’d do in office was repeal the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act (DRIPA), which was passed unanimously in the legislature in 2019. As Grand Chief Stewart Phillip commented, DRIPA has sought to address “a political system that repeatedly forces First Nations to prove and defend our rights in court instead of providing a durable, co-developed framework for governments to work together.”
Take away DRIPA and it will take B.C. longer to get big resource projects done, whether the planned Pacific Link pipeline, liquefied natural gas plants or new mines. While some on the right would gladly bulldoze Indigenous rights, these are fundamentally constitutional issues that will end up as legal battles in court and protests on the roads.
Supercharging economic growth
The Conservatives’ platform assumed substantial additional government revenues arising from new actions that would supposedly unlock pent-up economic growth, particularly in resource projects. There’s good reason to be skeptical of this claim. In the vast majority of cases, these projects are not waiting on public sector approvals but on a private final investment decision. Government permits and such have been in place for a long time for LNG but these huge capital investments have an uncertain future due to changing demand in global energy markets. New projects will go ahead when there are enough buyers locked in for the long-term.
Under status quo conditions, LNG production is set to triple within five years, with or without any further actions by the Conservatives. Like the federal vision of Canada as an “energy superpower”, the push for fossil fuel megaprojects has completely abandoned any pretense of acting on climate change. Quietly, however, other countries are acting to facilitate a renewable energy transition, one that undermines the future markets Canadian governments are counting on to buy those fossil fuels.
BC Hydro and new electricity supply
BC Hydro’s draft Integrated Resource Plan is under review at the BC Utilities Commission. One of the big potential drivers of future demand is mining and LNG facilities, linked to NDP policy to electrify the sector to reduce domestic carbon emissions. The NDP already watered down its own policy to “net zero ready” but a Conservative government is likely to abandon those commitments entirely. Going ahead would likely mean higher electricity rates for residential and business consumers in order to provide subsidized rates for LNG facilities.
The other big driver for electricity demand is for AI data centres. There’s been a huge pushback against data centres across North America, and a couple planned for Vancouver were met with massive protests. Still, it’s not hard to imagine that some data centre projects would go ahead in B.C. and the government may look to private power for them. In their platform, the Conservatives already endorsed private power for off-grid applications.
Local governments
The Conservatives promised a “respect local democracy act” that would prevent a future B.C. government from calling an election at the same time as municipal elections. Interestingly, municipal election turnout was way up and provincial turnout down. Beyond this smaller change, relations between the province and local governments could be reset. The Conservative platform talks about turning Metro Vancouver into a “lean regional utility“, which sounds like a messy political fight that would step on the toes of elected local councilors.
The Conservatives are likely to back off the housing supply and density targets that the previous NDP government had imposed on cities, promising to “give local governments a say in deciding where density goes”. Exactly what this looks like will be a hot topic, as will the Conservatives’ promise to “cut construction taxes and charges” typically levied by local governments to pay for infrastructure upgrades associated with new developments. Some efforts have been made federally and provincially to pay for a greater share of these infrastructure costs to enable lower development charges locally, but this area is contentious and costs are substantial.
Infrastructure challenges
One of the main drivers of higher provincial debt in recent years is new investment in public infrastructure, from hospitals and schools to roads, bridges and transit lines. In these cases, there are assets on the other side of the ledger as debt, and those assets underpin a successful economy going forward. The NDP had already trimmed future capital spending in its fiscal plan.
The Conservatives could go much further although much of their platform consists of promises to expand infrastructure. The Conservatives will need to quickly decide on a Massey tunnel or bridge, especially since the tunnel has already started and the feds are kicking in $3 billion from the new “prosperity partnership”. They also promised a new Skytrain extension in Surrey (hello, swing voters!) and an expansion of rail capacity through the Fraser canyon and in the Lower Mainland.
Addictions and mental health (aka “street disorder”)
The Conservative platform made a number of vague promises to solve complex problems like street disorder and public safety. For example, a key Conservative promise is 1,000 new law enforcement officers. But the party conflated a number of issues, including gang violence and extortion, with people who are on the streets due to addiction and mental health issues.
Addressing the addictions and mental health and homelessness and street disorder is going to require more than police officers. To make any dent in the problem will require dedicated multi-year public funds for treatment and related services. Expanding access to voluntary treatment has been a missing link in provincial drug policy in recent years. While talk of involuntary care has raised some thorny issues around individual rights, most of the effort needs to be in ensuring voluntary treatment is available on demand with wraparound supports beyond immediate detox needs. See Rachel Pettigrew’s analysis for the B.C. election campaign.
Adding it up
I outlined the key fiscal challenges facing B.C. in my election analysis here. The B.C. budget will be a key moment early in 2027. Arbitrarily trying to drive down the deficit will be a drag on growth with an economy already weakened by the trade war to the south, a dead housing market and no population growth. And this guarantees public services will be on the chopping block although it remains to see how deep and far those cuts will be.
The Conservatives have generally avoided mentioning public spending cuts in the campaign, but their agenda points towards a much greater desire to reduce taxes than to preserve services. If reducing the provincial deficit is a top priority, then something has to give. The Conservatives will be able to dip into $5 billion per year of contingencies that the NDP added as fiscal padding. Indeed, they already did some of this in their costed platform.
The other thing the Conservative platform did is to phase in their spending promises over four years, so, starting in April 2027, only 1/10 of the total spending promised appears, and spending commitments would not be 100 per cent funded until year four. That gives a lot of time for slippage, and I would be surprised if Doerkson’s election commitments to school meal programs, wildfire-fighting equipment, enhanced family benefits and more child care, among many other promises, survive the fiscal reckoning.
Stay tuned. In the coming days, the government will be sworn in and we will have a new cabinet and mandate letters to see more closely what the central government’s priorities are by ministry. Lorne Doerkson proved to be an effective communicator in the campaign, and has won over a large swath of B.C. with his compassionate conservative persona. Now the hard part comes because of the difficult choices and trade-offs that must be made when in power.
With David Eby stepping aside as NDP leader, the Conservatives have little opposition in the legislature and will have a lot of goodwill from British Columbians in its early days. In the short term, any fights are going to come from within, and Doerkson must be able to keep a fractious caucus together. The large majority he has inherited suggests that he will be able to ignore the most fringe elements in his caucus, if he chooses to do so. The most extreme were already carved off into the “true conservative” OneBC party, whose very existence likely helped the Conservatives win the election.
As the new Conservative government takes the reins, Conservative governments now rule from Ontario to the Pacific coast, with the exception of Wab Kinew’s NDP government in Manitoba. B.C. is in for a wild ride.
About the author
Marc Lee
Marc Lee is a Senior Economist with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. Marc joined the CCPA’s British Columbia office in 1998, and is one of Canada’s leading progressive commentators on economic and environmental policy issues. From 2009 to 2015, Marc led the CCPA’s Climate Justice Project (CJP), which published a wide range of research on fair and effective approaches to climate action through integrating principles of social justice. Marc continues to write about climate and energy policy, strategies for affordable housing, federal and provincial budgets and macroeconomics. Marc has an MA in Economics from Simon Fraser University and a BA in Economics from the University of Western Ontario. Marc is a past chair of the Progressive Economics Forum, a national network of heterodox economists. He also served as a Visiting Professor at Simon Fraser University’s School of Public Policy in 2024 to 2025.
