B.C. NDP Leader David Eby arrives for a campaign stop at the Albion Community Centre, in Maple Ridge, B.C., on Oct. 7.DARRYL DYCK/The Canadian Press
BC NDP Leader David Eby is staring up at a 1980s version of modern architecture, a tall office building of concrete and blue glass and white metal tubes, on prime waterfront property. He is intent on pulling it down.
The six-storey office building is headquarters of the Insurance Corp. of B.C., designed for an era when public-sector workers were required to show up in the office. With the provincial government’s hybrid-working scheme, it’s sitting half empty and Mr. Eby intends to replace it with hundreds of units of subsidized housing. But it will be years before these promised new homes will be occupied.
Mr. Eby carved out a name for himself as a fiery anti-poverty activist and civil libertarian on the Downtown Eastside before entering politics. He has served in opposition and as a cabinet minister, but he has not yet won a mandate from voters as premier. He was coronated by his party in October, 2022, in a leadership race where the only other contender was disqualified.
Upon taking up office, he vowed to work within “the world of the possible” to make headway on some of the province’s most intractable challenges, including unaffordable housing, a health care system coming apart at the seams, and a crisis of confidence in public safety.
By rebuffing suggestions that he seek a mandate from the public through an early election call at that time, Mr. Eby has taken a risk. He’s been on the job for two years and in this election, voters still feel considerable frustration on housing, health care, and public safety, according to public opinion polls.
The ICBC project announced in June – without a business plan in hand – is an example of Mr. Eby asking voters to look ahead with optimism. The province bought the property from the Crown corporation as part of its promise to build 10,000 units of housing over the span of a decade or more. It’s a prime waterfront site adjacent to a transit hub, but the promised homes won’t be finished until the 2030s.
“When you’re trying to move things on housing, there’s a lot of slack in the rope you’ve got to pull in first before it starts to show movement. It’s a long lag between the policy shift and the impact,” Mr. Eby said in an interview, sitting on a bench in front of the future-project site during an interview in September.
The world of the possible, Mr. Eby has learned, is not just frustratingly slow, it is more constrained than he’d hoped.
This year he has been forced to shelve his ambitious decriminalization plan, and he abandoned his commitment to the carbon tax as a critical tool in the province’s battle with climate change.
On the top issues that are expected to define the Oct. 19 provincial election, such as the cost of living and access to health care, Mr. Eby knows he needs to convince voters that he’s tightened the slack and better times are ahead.
When he took his seat in the premier’s office in the fall of 2022, Mr. Eby told The Globe and Mail that British Columbians want to see really strong action on housing, and on the chaos and challenges of mental health and addiction in our communities. “And governments that fail to respond to those challenges are not going to get a second chance,” he said then.
Today, he argues that his government has not failed to respond – it’s just been facing tough headwinds.
“People are right not to be happy with the state of housing and affordability and the health care challenges we face. I’m not happy either.” Inflation has created affordability challenges for households around the globe, and British Columbia’s population has grown by roughly 280,000 people in the past two years, adding pressure on access to health care, education and housing.
“We’re putting a lot on the table, and saying we’re making some progress on these issues now,” he said.
The challenge for Mr. Eby is to take apart the Conservative platform while promising that after seven years of NDP government, the province is now moving in the right direction.
“I’m very hopeful that that will be a successful strategy, but it is a much harder pitch than the ones that the Conservatives are making,” he said.
In the two years since Mr. Eby was sworn in, government insiders describe a premier’s office that keeps the reins tight. Mr. Eby, a lawyer himself, has appointed five other lawyers to his office, including a general counsel, to help implement his agenda.
Outside of that circle, Mr. Eby said he looks to an icon of the party, Joy MacPhail, when he needs advice.
Ms. MacPhail recalls meeting Mr. Eby when he first sought a party nomination in 2011. “He was so interesting – gangly, earnest, whip-smart and really, really trying hard to work the room.” He contacts her regularly to ask for advice – more on policy than politics, she said. “When he is seeking advice, I feel like I’ve been heard and respected.”
That wasn’t the experience of Selina Robinson, who was demoted by Mr. Eby in his first cabinet shuffle, and later fired from cabinet in February for saying Israel was founded on a “crappy piece of land.” Ms. Robinson was the most senior Jewish politician in the province, and her remarks had sparked a backlash led by Muslim and First Nations leaders that put the NDP Leader under pressure.
The Premier’s handling of the backlash over her comments reveals a lot about how he leads, Ms. Robinson said in an interview. “In my observations, the Premier’s style of leadership and decision-making is reactive in nature – designed to silence critics and gain votes, rather than grounded in principles and relationships.”
With other key stakeholders, Mr. Eby has been more successful in cultivating relationships. While he has not strong ties to the labour movement, Mr. Eby however has won trade unionist support through strong advisers, said Paul Finch, president of the B.C. General Employees’ Union, whose 90,000 members includes the civil service.
“One of the very smart things that Eby has done, is he’s brought in some very capable people into the premier’s office who were able to advise him well,” Mr. Finch said in an interview. He cited Amber Keane, a lawyer who serves as the premier’s director of strategic projects. “She is a dyed-in-the-wool labour activist, someone who really gets it.”
Just weeks before the start of the campaign, Mr. Eby sought to neutralize the Conservatives over the rising rate of the carbon tax. Conservative Leader John Rustad has promised to eliminate the tax to reduce prices at the pump, and the NDP had been steadfastly defending the tax.
The day he joined a Globe and Mail reporter for a walking tour of his future housing projects in North Vancouver, Mr. Eby pivoted abruptly, saying consumers need a break as families struggle with affordability. Environment Minister George Heyman had defended this year’s rate increase when it took effect on April 1, saying the tax is effective in reducing emissions. Immediately after Mr. Eby’s policy change, Mr. Heyman said the province needs to deal with people’s struggles with the high cost of living, and it now has other policies in place to address climate change. “We want people to support climate action.”
The NDP’s other major retreat this year was on the decriminalization of illicit drugs. The Conservatives hammered Mr. Eby’s efforts to tackle the opioid crisis with harm-reduction measures. In August, they drew attention to a vending machine distributing free crack pipes and cocaine-snorting kits directly outside the emergency room of Nanaimo Hospital. “Under David Eby’s leadership, we are seeing dangerous policies that promote and normalize hard drug use, even in places meant for healing,” Mr. Rustad declared. The Conservative message was resonating.
The province embarked on a bold experiment in 2023 with its decriminalization pilot project, which meant adults in British Columbia were not being arrested or charged for possessing small amounts of certain illegal drugs most commonly associated with overdoses. It was meant to reduce the death toll from opioid use by destigmatizing users, allowing them to get help. In April of this year, Mr. Eby abandoned the policy because of a widespread backlash over public disorder related to illicit drug use in hospitals, parks and other public spaces.
“The group of people we were targeting, the ones who were using fentanyl alone at home in their basement, didn’t seem to show any more interest or ability to talk to family or friends, employers get into treatment,” Mr. Eby says now. “And the people with brain injuries, mental-health issues and synthetic-opioid addictions felt free to use everywhere and anywhere.”
Having jettisoned some of the baggage that could weigh the party down in this campaign, Mr. Eby has focused in the campaign on attacking the Conservatives.
”My message to British Columbians is, now would be the absolute wrong time to take our foot off the gas on these things, to lose the progress on housing, to lose the progress on health care, through big cuts.
“And we’ll see whether they find that convincing.”