By Rob Crooks
As the next session of the BC Legislature prepares to convene on February 12, the NDP government faces serious challenges on a range of issues and still must rely on votes from two Green MLAs to adopt a budget.
The Conservative opposition remains badly fractured, posing no immediate threat and having no clear frontrunner in their current leadership race. But Premier David Eby’s razor-thin hold on power could be shaken by unexpected byelections, or a loss of his party’s restive support base. There was a hint of that scenario in early January, when the well-organized $10 per day childcare movement (led by long-time NDP supporters) issued a stinging rebuke of the government’s abysmally slow record. The group issued a public letter calling Eby to account, signed by a wide swath of prominent labour and childcare activists, but it remains to be seen if the 2026 budget will ease the critical shortage of childcare spaces.
Recriminalizing healthcare issues
On another front, the government has ended the three-year pilot project that decriminalized the possession of 2.5 g of illegal drugs for personal consumption. Eby has been distancing himself from harm reduction policies in the name of “safety” and in favour of expanded police powers for some time now. However, some critics are not convinced that the program should have been cancelled. In an interview with CBC, the province’s former chief coroner Lisa Lapointe referenced the government’s own reports to Health Canada in showing that addiction services were being accessed more often, that policing had become more equitable and that drug-related deaths had “decreased substantially.”
Nevertheless, the government has instead opted for an increased reliance on “involuntary care.” Bill 32, passed in early December, amended BC’s Mental Health Care Act to shield healthcare workers from liability in delivering involuntary care. The bill effectively pits the rights of workers against the rights of healthcare patients. Experts have pointed endlessly to the research that demonstrates the counterproductive impact of involuntary care. Increases in involuntary care are also coming at a time when voluntary care isn’t readily available. A year ago, 1,771 youth were on a waiting list for voluntary treatment and there’s no reason to believe that the situation has meaningfully improved since then.
Attack on affordable housing
At the root of these problems is the lack of affordable housing and adequate healthcare services in the province. According to the BC Union of Ambulance Paramedics, 250 hospitals and emergency rooms had to close temporarily in 2025 due to staffing shortages. In White Rock and Kamloops, hospitals have drastically reduced OB/GYN services. The BC Nurses Union holds the shortage of 5,000 nurses in the province responsible for increased violent incidents experienced by staff.
Despite news about lower housing costs, affordable housing is faring no better. Vancouver’s mayor and crypto currency enthusiast Ken Sim and the overwhelmingly pro-developer city council have shredded protections for single-room occupancy units and supportive and affordable housing in Canada’s most impoverished neighbourhood, the Downtown East Side (DTES). City bylaws mandating developments in certain blocks to include 60 percent social housing have been gutted in an apparent attempt to draw condo investors back into the area.
All of this comes at a time when thousands of tourists are expected to visit Vancouver to watch FIFA World Cup games in June. In the run up to the 2010 Olympic games, when the current premier was the executive director of the BC Civil Liberties Association, he warned the city was making it easier for police to “remove homeless people from high-visibility tourist areas.” FIFA’s deal with the city will likewise give security forces similar extraordinary powers. A memo leaked from Ken Sim’s office last spring indicated the city’s plan to “re-unify” Indigenous people, who make up one-third of DTES residents, with their “home communities.”
Urgently needed funding for childcare, schools, healthcare staff and housing is going towards reinforcing carceral solutions. That funding is also being used for public subsidies to attract private investments into BC’s extractive sector.
Accelerating the extractive agenda
Mark Carney’s recent visit to China and Eby’s to India show both the prime minister’s and the premier’s desire to increase exports of fossil fuels, metals and minerals to Asia by way of BC ports. Eby expressed disappointment in November at not being included in the pipeline discussions between Alberta premier Danielle Smith and the prime minister. The pipeline would run to the northern port in Prince Rupert, where a tanker ban is currently in place. Eby has defended the tanker ban, citing his fragile agreements with Coastal First Nations that would be jeopardized by such a project. The tanker ban is a federal agreement, however, and Carney’s recent visit to Prince Rupert to meet with Coast First Nations may signal that he is prepared to play the bad cop to Eby’s good cop.
Coastal First Nations have repeatedly expressed their intention to oppose lifting the tanker ban, an opposition they reiterated to Carney in Prince Rupert earlier this month. Environmental protection is their first and foremost concern, but Gitga’at First Nation spokesperson Art Sterritt also rejected any notion of First Nations people benefiting from a pipeline. “There are no jobs in this,” he said. “There are no jobs in pipelines. There are no jobs in tankers.”
Last year’s federal Bill C-5 and the provincial Bills 14 and 15 were synchronized attacks on the rights of Indigenous nations to self-determination. Carney is hoping that removing barriers to extractive projects will strengthen his promotional campaign to sell Canada to the world as an “energy powerhouse.” Eby has repeatedly expressed his intentions for BC to play a major role in diversifying resource exports and neither he nor Ottawa will let Indigenous rights won through decades of struggle get in the way.
Eby spoke to the Natural Resources Forum in Prince Rupert upon his return from India. There, he attempted to assuage investors who may hesitate to place their money in BC because of the confusion caused by his own government over Indigenous land rights. Eby doubled down on his reactionary plan to amend BC’s Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous People in the wake of the BC Supreme Court ruling recognizing the Cowichan nation’s historical right to a parcel of land that covers part of the Vancouver metropolitan area. The decision has been attacked with campaigns of misinformation and fearmongering over private property. Eby has been one of the most vocal in criticizing the “overreach” of the BC Supreme Court, implying that his government should have the final say, not the law.
The fightback
The ongoing crises of capitalism and the uncertainty caused by the erratic flailing of the weakening empire to our southern border is leading to an accelerated transfer of public funds toward subsidizing private investors. This is being accompanied by mass unemployment, a roll back of rights and advancing repression for the peoples of Canada.
But these attacks are also being met by an increased fightback. In late 2025, the BC General Employees Union (BCGEU) had 25,000 public employees go out on strike for 8 weeks. Looming strikes this year by transit workers, teachers and healthcare workers could show who really runs this province.
As always, the ruling class will try to make the working class pay for their crisis, but they will be met with steadily increasing militancy in the labour and people’s movements.
Rob Crooks is BC leader of the Communist Party
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