Hansard - Tuesday, March 4, 2025 Afternoon, Issue No. 16

I would like to begin our proceedings today by acknowledging that we are privileged to gather on the traditional territory of the lək̓ʷəŋən-speaking people, the Songhees and Esquimalt Nations.

We honour and respect their enduring stewardship of these lands and the wisdom, culture and traditions which are so generously shared with our community and with our province.

O siém, hәysxʷq̓ә.

On behalf of all the members, I would like to welcome all the guests in the gallery, our family members and everybody, because they all want to introduce you. If we do it, then we won’t have time for the budget.

So welcome on behalf of all our members.

Thank you so much.

Orders of the Day

Hon. Brenda Bailey: Hon. Speaker, I move that this House, at its next sitting, resolve itself for this session into a committee to consider the supply to be granted to His Majesty.

Motion approved.

Presentation of Estimates

Estimates of Sums Required
for the Service of the Province

Hon. Brenda Bailey presented a message from Her Honour the Lieutenant Governor: Estimates of Sums Required for the Service of the Province for the fiscal year ending March 31, 2026, and a supplement to the estimates for the fiscal year ending March 31, 2026, recommending the same to the Legislative Assembly.

Hon. Brenda Bailey moved that the said message and the estimates accompanying the same be referred to the Committee of Supply.

Motion approved.

[1:35 p.m.]

Budget Debate

Hon. Brenda Bailey: Hon. Speaker, I move, seconded by the hon. Premier of British Columbia:

[“That the Speaker do now leave the Chair” for the House to go into Committee of Supply.]

I would like to begin by acknowledging the lək̓ʷəŋən peoples, the Songhees and Esquimalt First Nations, upon whose territories we are gathered.

It is an honour to present Budget 2025. We are introducing this budget during the most consequential time in B.C. in generations, a time that few of us could have imagined just a few short months ago. These unjustified tariffs could put tens of thousands of British Columbians out of work, significantly impact our province’s finances and cause economic harm to people and businesses on both sides of the border.

While our economy is built to withstand this threat better than most provinces, the impact may still be severe.

Budget 2025 is about standing strong for British Columbia and making sure public services are there when we need them. Now is the time to focus on what really matters to our communities and the people of our province. It is time to protect the essentials and prepare for what comes next. No matter what challenges we’re facing, one thing will always remain true: we will never back down from our commitment to the people of British Columbia.

We are blessed to live in a place surrounded by natural beauty, with everything we need to succeed — abundant natural resources and clean energy; a diversified and inclusive economy with access to global markets; and, our most important asset of all, the skilled, hard-working people who call this beautiful place home.

Like everyone here today, I love this province, its people and its places. Growing up in Nanaimo, I saw the resilience of resource workers like my dad, who was a heavy-duty mechanic in the forestry industry at a time of economic ups and downs. Like my small-business-person mom, running an independent book publisher. I saw my parents, who came home tired but proud of their day’s work. I know what it means for a community to live through economic booms and busts.

As a young woman, I went off to university to study in Montreal, but ultimately, there was nowhere I could imagine raising my family rather than right here in British Columbia. In an early job as a child protection social worker, I saw firsthand what families need to thrive and stay strong together and the devastating impacts that can occur without that support.

As a CEO in the tech sector, I’ve seen the entrepreneurial spirit that runs through our province. Working in business, I had the opportunity to travel the world and see how made-in-B.C. innovations made a mark on the world stage. I saw the reputation that British Columbians have around the world as smart, thoughtful leaders who are caring but strong.

Strength, tenacity, compassion and vision; kind but tough — these are the values of British Columbia, and these are the values that have informed this budget. We will be prepared for whatever comes next. Budget 2025 includes $4 billion in annual contingencies to prepare for the future, including the initial impact of tariffs. We will manage our finances carefully so we continue to work to improve health care, education and other core services without adding fees or hiking costs. And we will support the businesses that create the jobs and economic activity that we need to deliver those services.

[1:40 p.m.]

As someone who has worked in both the public and private sectors, I know how economic headwinds can affect people and communities, and we must take care of the economy so we can take care of people.

We are supporting workers, businesses and industry. We are accelerating major job-creating projects. We’re diversifying where we sell our products and our resources, and we’re growing a more diversified economy. We’re doing it all in partnership with First Nations, business, industry and labour.

Unjustified duties threaten our forestry communities. Our B.C. Softwood Lumber Advisory Council is working across sectors to fight for B.C. industries. This includes our work with our new trade and economic security task force, which is informing our tariff response and helping us strengthen our economy.

With the evolving threats that we’re facing due to this attack on our economy, it’s important that we take a closer look at our spending. We are reviewing all government programs and spending, to ensure that every dollar is delivering results for British Columbians, while at the same time prioritizing Canada, B.C. and other countries’ products and services for everything that government buys.

We have already put a temporary pause in hiring on the government’s public service to reduce administrative costs. The public service is full of talented, committed and thoughtful people, and I know they will work creatively to come up with new and innovative ways of doing things. I come from the private sector where it’s a normal course of business to have periodic reviews of spending and to ensure that every dollar is being well spent. That’s what we’re doing. That is what British Columbians expect of us.

Budget 2025 recognizes the importance of balancing the budget over the long term, but never at the expense of the services that people rely on every day. This is not about doing less; it’s about making the right choices to not only meet the moment but to seize it.

We’ve heard from the task force and other people in the business community that we can do more to help B.C. companies and workers succeed.

Through our B.C. manufacturing jobs fund, we’re helping businesses modernize, innovate and grow, while also protecting and creating jobs, particularly in the communities most affected by boom-and-bust cycles.

Through our future-ready action plan, we are helping people get the skills that they need to build rewarding careers and drive our economy forward.

And through our integrated marketplace initiative, we are connecting promising B.C. tech companies with industry-leading partners to prove out their products and their services in real-world environments. Budget 2025 continues this good work with a $30 million boost to this project.

British Columbia is home to some of the top tech companies and most promising start-ups in the world. This innovation helps commercial clients get new technologies tailored to their needs, while also helping tech companies scale up, expand into new markets and create more high-quality jobs and opportunities here at home.

The best part? The technologies are focused on addressing key challenges in our province and around the world, including health care, climate change and resource management. This benefits us all.

Success stories are already stacking up. I think of Coquitlam-based Moment Energy, which developed a new battery energy storage system. The integrated marketplace initiative connected Moment Energy with the Vancouver International Airport to provide reliable, high-speed charging capacity for airport vehicles. The company has since gone on to land major customers and earn a spot on the prestigious Global Cleantech 100 list.

Budget 2025 also supports our thriving film sector and our vibrant video game and virtual reality industries with boosted tax credits. This will encourage investment in our province, protect good jobs and help us maintain our reputation as one of the top film and creative industry destinations in the world.

[1:45 p.m.]

I don’t know if you remember how exciting it was the first time you recognized Vancouver or Langley or the Interior as a backdrop to your favourite movie or series. I do. A video game I love, The Last of Us, became a TV series that was filmed in my hometown of Nanaimo and across the Lower Mainland.

Popular video games like the EA Sports series were also made in B.C., while major productions such as SHŌGUN and The Mandalorian were brought to life here, putting tens of thousands of British Columbians to work in the creative industry sector.

We haven’t taken a wait-and-see approach to the threat of tariffs. We got to work right away. We’re already accelerating 18 natural resource projects worth $20 billion in economic activity and more than 8,000 jobs, while looking for more projects to expedite. This builds on work we’ve already done to reduce mining permitting timelines by 37 percent and reduce or eliminate permitting backlogs across the economy.

While we work to expedite these projects, we will not lose sight of our commitment to working in partnership with First Nations and advancing our climate objectives. In fact, 12 of the 18 priority projects are majority First Nations–owned, and half of them are clean energy projects.

We will continue to meet our high environmental standards while breaking down barriers to growth. This will help us generate a stable supply of affordable clean energy to power our economic growth while protecting our land, our air and our water for future generations.

It is clear that we have what the world needs — cutting-edge technological innovations, critical minerals needed for the clean energy future and some of the lowest carbon products on the planet. There’s a huge appetite for B.C. goods and services around the country and around the world. We have more than 50 trade and investment representatives in 14 international markets ready to help businesses expand.

I know firsthand the value of these local market experts. When I owned a video game company, I was looking for an international partner to break into the Japanese market. I was struggling to make the necessary local connections until our trade and investment representatives opened those doors for me.

B.C. is also leading the way in breaking down interprovincial trade barriers. Last year we swiftly ended a trade dispute with Alberta by signing a deal to allow B.C. wineries to ship directly to Albertans.

As we further diversify our economy, we need to ensure that our products can get to new markets efficiently. With our proximity to Asia, B.C. has some of the most unique shipping advantages in the world, and every day more than $800 million worth of cargo moves through our world-class ports.

We need to support our robust trade with growing markets with updated, reliable infrastructure. This is why Budget 2025 includes $16 billion over the fiscal plan to build and improve bridges, roads and transit to make it easier and faster for people to get to work and home, while also strengthening our supply chains to ensure that we can keep goods moving quickly.

A growing economy is not only about creating good jobs. It also creates the wealth that we need to improve vital services, especially health care. Here in B.C., communities are growing. People are getting older, and many doctors and nurses are retiring.

Our government is confronting these challenges head on. We’ve added more family doctors and tripled the number of nurse practitioners. We’ve made it possible for people to get care from a pharmacist for minor illnesses, and we’re getting more internationally trained medical professionals off of the sidelines and into our hospitals, caring for patients.

We’ll be training the next generation of family doctors at an upcoming medical school at SFU’s Surrey campus. Budget 2025 builds on this work with an additional $4.2 billion over three years to continue growing capacity across our health care system.

[1:50 p.m.]

As part of our ongoing plan to improve home and community care for seniors, we are boosting funding by more than $100 million this year. This will make it possible for more seniors to live healthy, independent lives right at home.

We’re also building on our historic $1 billion investment in mental health and addictions care, with an additional $500 million over the fiscal plan. This will help us continue supporting made-in-B.C. models of care, like Road to Recovery and Foundry centres for youth and Indigenous-led treatment, recovery and aftercare services. It will also allow us to advance our work to support people with concurrent mental health and addictions challenges, including through secure and dignified care.

Budget 2025 also includes $15.5 billion over the fiscal plan to continue to build the hospitals, clinics and other facilities we need to strengthen our health care system. Publicly funded and universally accessible quality care is part of who we are as Canadians. Let me be very clear about this. We will never be the 51st state, and we are never going to be a place where people have to pull out their credit card to pay for health care.

The foundation for a healthy life starts in childhood. Our government knows that investing in students is essential to building a strong province and a strong economy for today and tomorrow. That means supporting the caring and committed teachers and the staff who go above and beyond for their students every day. Budget 2025 invests an additional $370 million over three years to hire more teachers and support staff in our schools. This includes special education teachers as well as teacher-psychologists and counsellors to support the growing number of students with special needs.

We know that kids need support beyond the classroom, too, and that’s why Budget 2025 provides an additional $172 million over the fiscal plan to support more children and youth with autism, severe disabilities and complex care needs.

Like many families, our government is making careful budgeting decisions to get the most out of every dollar. Our capital plan includes $4.6 billion over the next three years to build, renovate and seismically upgrade schools and playgrounds throughout our province. This includes additions that can be built twice as quickly as traditional projects, at a fraction of the cost. In just the past two months, we’ve opened additions at four schools, adding more than 1,000 new student spaces in growing communities throughout B.C.

As a parent, I know that when you send your kids off to school, there’s nothing more important than knowing they are learning in a safe, supportive environment — a place where they’ll be helped if they’re struggling, fed if they’re hungry, comforted if they’re hurt. Now more than ever, in a world that feels uncertain even to us as adults, we must ensure our kids always feel supported at school and give them the best start in life.

One of the biggest challenges facing British Columbians continues to be finding a decent home they can afford. It’s a big challenge for employers too. If people can’t afford to live here, companies can’t attract the talent that they need to grow. Any recruiter will tell you that we can’t afford to lose out on the best and the brightest. This is why our government is taking action with the province’s most ambitious housing plan ever.

We’re speeding up the delivery of new homes, we’re helping more people achieve the dream of home ownership, and we’re protecting renters and helping those who need it most. And we’re cracking down on speculation. Through Budget 2025, we’re increasing the speculation and vacancy tax rate to turn more empty units into homes for people.

Our efforts are starting to pay off. We have more than 90,000 homes delivered or underway throughout the province. Rental home construction starts have tripled over the past seven years, and rental prices are starting to come down.

[1:55 p.m.]

With global cost escalations, we’re facing tough new headwinds, but we can’t afford to let up now. Budget 2025 builds on the success we’re starting to see in our BC Builds program, with an additional $318 million over three years. This will help build thousands of rental homes for middle-income people, such as nurses and teachers and construction workers.

We know that people with lower incomes need support too. Budget 2025 provides a boost to the rental assistance program and Shelter Aid For Elderly Renters program. For both programs, we’re expanding access and increasing the monthly supplement. We expect these changes to double the number of families that benefit from rental assistance and help a total of 25,000 seniors pay their rent. On average, the monthly supplement for seniors will increase by 30 percent.

Nowhere is the impact of the housing crisis more apparent or devastating than on our streets. Far too many people are living outside in encampments. Our government has been working with municipalities to help more people come indoors and access support services to get their lives back on track. Budget 2025 commits an additional $90 million to continue this important work so that no one is left behind.

Housing is often the biggest expense for families but certainly not the only one. That’s why our government has always prioritized helping people with the cost of living. We permanently increased the B.C. family benefit and made a historic investment in school food programs. We became the first province in Canada to make prescription contraception free, saving people up to $300 a year on birth control pills. We took tolls off bridges and made transit free for children under 12.

We have driven down our public car insurance rates to less than half than our neighbour Alberta’s for-profit rates. On top of that, we have delivered ICBC rebates for the past four years. Now in Budget 2025, it gives people a little bit more, with a fifth rebate of $110. We are also maintaining the basic car insurance rates through to 2026, marking six years in a row with no increases, to help keep rates affordable for British Columbians.

Everyone deserves to live and work in a safe community. That’s why we’re keeping repeat offenders off the street with more officers and stronger enforcement, and we’re going after the gangs and the guns and the toxic drugs that are hurting our loved ones and communities. Budget 2025 dedicates $235 million over three years to continue improving community safety throughout the province.

We are also continuing to invest in our repeat violent offender intervention initiative and our special investigation and targeted enforcement program. These programs bring together police, prosecutors and probation officers to provide a coordinated response to repeat violent offenders.

Small businesses are the anchor of our communities, and the heart, but small businesses today are facing big challenges, including being hit with theft and vandalism far too often. Through Budget 2025, we are launching a new community safety and targeted enforcement program. This will help police crack down on shoplifting, robbery and other property crimes by providing them with enhanced resources.

We are also providing funding for the police academy at the Justice Institute of British Columbia to expand training and capacity and produce more police officers every year. Together we’re creating safer communities throughout the province.

In difficult times, our shared values can show us the way forward, shared values like reconciliation with Indigenous peoples. This remains a foundational priority for our government. It’s woven into everything we do, and we are continuing our nation-leading work to implement the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act. We are partnering with First Nations on economic projects that create prosperity for all, and we are supporting social and cultural well-being.

[2:00 p.m.]

In Budget 2025, it advances this work with $45 million over three years in new, stable funding for the First Peoples Cultural Council. This will help the organization continue supporting First Nations in their efforts to revitalize their languages and cultures, while also creating good jobs and economic benefits.

Language and culture make us stronger. I think of Kwitelut i Kwelaw’ikw, the chair of the First Peoples Cultural Council. She grew up hearing stories about her mother and her auntie, whispering in Kwak̓wala at residential school, to keep their language alive. Kwitelut is now studying two languages, and her one-year-old grand-nephew can already beat the drum and sing the songs of his Sḵwx̱wú7mesh ancestors. She says she does this work with nch’ú7mut sḵ wálwen, which means “one heart and mind” in Sḵwx̱wú7mesh.

This spirit of shared purpose is exactly what we need right now. It’s with one heart and one mind that we will secure a brighter future for all. That brighter future will be one of our own making. When faced with big challenges, there are those who might say we should retreat and respond by cutting spending on the public services that people rely on, but we know that this would only weaken the services we all need and drive up costs for people when they can least afford it.

These challenging and uncertain times invite us to reflect on what matters most — having a stable, secure job that pays the bills and allows you to save for a rainy day; being healthy and able to get the health care you need when and where you need it, so you can continue to enjoy your favourite activities; having happy kids, nieces and nephews who are learning and growing every day; and living in a safe community with great amenities, where everyone feels at home.

There is so much happening in the world right now that is beyond our control. What is within our control is how we take care of people; how we make our communities safer, stronger and healthier; how we build a world-class education system, to prepare our kids for a fast-changing workforce; and how we build a more resilient, diversified economy that works for everyone. These are the things that this budget commits to.

We are going to get through this storm together. We will build a better B.C., no matter who occupies the White House, a province that is as kind and compassionate as we’ve always been with an economy that’s more resilient and more prosperous than ever before.

With the chaos and the confusion that is coming from south of the border, none of us knows with certainty what the future holds, but this we do know: we will meet the future together, and this government will support British Columbians every step of the way.

Peter Milobar: Thank you to the minister for presenting the budget today and to all the Ministry of Finance staff that have worked very long hours and very long days to get us to where we are today.

I will say, on behalf of the official opposition, I will keep my remarks…. Oh, I won’t be two hours. I don’t know if I’ll be exactly 30 minutes, but just in case…. I won’t be two hours today, just for everyone at home.

You know, I would have thought, after canvassing yesterday in question period around all the communications staff that were hired by the Minister of Finance over the last few days after the hiring freeze was announced, that she would have had, in her speaking notes, one really important part on this budget that was missed, for the viewers at home: an $11 billion deficit. That was missed out of the minister’s budget speech. I thought it was important that maybe we’d get that out of the way, right off the front.

Mr. Speaker, in my time here today, I just want to touch back a bit. The minister touched on a lot of things that the government did in 2018. At first, I wasn’t going to go back in history, but I thought I should, on budget dates.

[2:05 p.m.]

The budget, typically, is presented…. We’ve heard a lot about trying to present this budget on the backdrop of tariffs, which happened to be on the exact same day. We knew, on February 1, that March 4 would be tariff day, after they were first delayed.

Well, back in February 2020, then Finance Minister Carole James, as part of the budget, brought in legislation that changed the ability for the government, after a fall election — which we thought, at the time, would be a fall 2021 election — to present the budget by the fourth week in March.

Lo and behold…. Not that they were planning, back in February of 2020, to have an October 2020 election, but magically, there was a fall election in 2020, and the new government was not going to have to present a budget in 2021 until the fourth week of March. At least the late Premier Horgan had us sit for a couple of weeks that December in 2020.

One of the only pieces of business was actually to amend that new piece of legislation to give the government the ability to present a budget after a fall election by April 30 the following year. In fact, they waited till April 20 for that first budget to be presented.

Why I say that is that one would think, after all of the over-the-top war analogies that were used in the throne speech, this government might have, given the seriousness of the tariff threat, decided that of all years to delay the budget or move it forward a week and not have it land on the exact same day as everyone’s trying to sort out what exactly the tariffs mean…. It might have been a good year to do that. Nonetheless, here we are today.

That pretty much sums up this tariff response in this budget. It’s non-existent. There is nothing in this budget around the tariff response of meaningful programs or supports or even possibilities. So when the minister talks about $4 billion in contingencies, including supports for impacts of tariffs, I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out that last year’s budget projected a $3.88 billion contingency fund in this year’s budget. That means $112 million extra is in this budget than what they were already planning on budgeting last year. Hardly an aggressive response to potential impacts of tariffs.

I don’t know if the government’s noticed, but it’s been a pretty dry winter. Something tells me it might be a bit of a bad fire season for those contingency funds as well.

Trade before tariffs, year-over-year, is down 3 percent in B.C. Exports are down 3 percent. We were already facing troubles heading into this budget, yet this minister and this Premier are trying to convince everybody that this is strictly based, an $11 billion deficit, on the uncertainties around tariffs.

Interprovincial trade. We called for that in our election campaign platform that the Premier routinely liked to mock. It’s interesting that although we have new, updated modelling on what will happen with U.S. tariffs, there’s been no modelling done or provided, at least to the public, as to what removing the interprovincial trade barriers — as we’ve been calling for since the election, including in January, with mutual recognition programs — would actually do for the positive of the B.C. economy to demonstrate just how seriously and how quickly we need to move on interprovincial trade.

There’s no modelling for that. There’s only modelling about the potential negative impacts of tariffs to the United States. We know that interprovincial trade is a 23 percent tariff equivalent to British Columbia. We know that New Brunswick today actually removed barriers immediately on things like alcohol moving between provinces. Nova Scotia had tax relief in their budget, introduced last week, even in the face of tariffs — promised tax relief for business and for residents.

Yet this government, despite the fact they made campaign promises, has not followed through on any of their campaign promises in this budget. In fact, the deficit is flat-out not realistic in this budget. It shows why this government has tried using tariffs to walk away from their campaign promises.

[2:10 p.m.]

I’ll dig into that just a little bit. In last year’s budget, this government was forecasting 2.3 percent growth for this fiscal year and an $8 billion deficit. Well, at the six-month check-in point for this current fiscal year, for the end of September 30, this government, on page 39 of that document, on the second-quarter update, had already downgraded growth to 1.9 percent for British Columbia for this coming year.

The growth projected in this year’s budget document is based on a 1.8 percent growth. This means the Premier, as a sitting Premier with full access to the treasury, as the books were unfolding last year, heading into an election, surely ought to have known the financial state of the province as he was making campaign promises like a $1,000 grocery rebate — which has been officially revoked in today’s budget on the same day tariffs get announced, which will actually increase our grocery prices. That is the logic of this government.

The plain fact is that this budget has actually been modelled on what numbers they were showing as of September 30 in their second-quarter report, yet somehow, they’re still blaming tariffs. The U.S. election hadn’t even happened yet. The Minister of Finance would know because the Minister of Finance was openly campaigning for the current President’s candidate against him at that time.

We hear this minister talk about sharpening the pencil, repeatedly. Sharpening the pencil. So let’s look at that.

The full-time-equivalents…. Last year in the budget, they said they wouldn’t hire any more than 500 people more, yet in that same second-quarter update, they said: “Oh, good news: we haven’t hired any more than we did at the end of the first quarter.” Problem is that that was 2,000 people, not 500. So this time last year they told us they were only going to hire 500 more people in the one category. They hired 2,000, and now we’re supposed to celebrate the fact they’re not hiring any more than that.

The B.C. public sector compensation chart, last year, had 520,000 people on it. In 2017, when this government took office, it had 320,000. In this year’s budget, in the backdrop of the minister saying “sharpening our pencil,” “tightening our belts” and “watching every penny….” This year that 520,000 is 593,000 on the public sector compensation rolls. That is what this government means when they say sharpening their pencils. I’m not sure how many of those are in the minister’s communications department or not.

Is it any wonder then, based on the same modelling that they provided in September on what this year’s budget would look like, that pre-tariff, the deficit is up $3 billion and spending is up $4 billion. There’s some good pencil sharpening for you.

Debt-to-revenue is up. Debt-to-GDP is up. GDP growth is down. And our debt-per-capita has gone from $17,000 a person to $21,000 a person. In fact, our debt over the next three years is going to grow by another $68 billion.

When this government took office in 2017, the total provincial debt was $50 billion. It was bad enough that they doubled it in their first few years in government. They are now going to add another $70 billion. We will be at $210 billion at the end of this fiscal plan, after this government started at $50 billion. It took 150 years to get to $50 billion. It has taken this government eight years to quadruple that. It is shocking.

Let’s look at housing for a minute because, again, results do matter. There’s been a lot said about housing. Again, a lot of this language is the exact same language we’ve heard, much like the throne speech, every single year in a budget. The problem is most of these programs are existing programs.

[2:15 p.m.]

When you read the language very carefully in the speech or in the document, it’s “continue” or “keep on with.” It’s that type of language. It’s not new. It’s not expanded. For the few programs that have a few extra dollars to them, the way this government runs programs, no doubt they do, because everything winds up over budget. It doesn’t mean they’re actually adding any more capacity to the programs. It just means they need more money to underdeliver once again.

On housing, we heard the minister talk of $90 million continuing on for homelessness. Of course we support that, but it’s a continuation. It’s not new money. It’s because the other program is coming to an end, which was funded at about the same rate.

You know why they need to continue that on? It’s because if you look at the projects of over $50 million descriptions and at almost every single B.C. Housing project listed, they’re all running significantly behind schedule. There are no homes to put people in. No wonder they need a homeless program to continue on for another three years.

These are the results we’ve been getting from this government year over year over year: housing values down 8.3 percent, the value of building permits; number of permits down 12.8 percent; multifamily down 7.2 percent. Now, these are all numbers in this year’s budget. I’m not inventing these numbers. These are the government’s own numbers. You wouldn’t know it from the speech we just heard, but that’s the government’s performance on housing based on their own black-and-white document.

In fact, it’s interesting, because in 2025, with 5.5 million residents, the government keeps patting themselves on the back that we will have 46,000 new home starts. Well, in 2017, when they took office with a population of 4.8 million people in B.C., there was 44,000 new home starts. So I would suggest to the government that if they think an extra 2,000 homes per year, when you’re adding — what? — about 100,000 people a year, isn’t exactly tackling the housing problem that the government makes you want to think they’re doing.

In this budget document, I’ll point out some of the other campaign promises that aren’t in this. Again, when I was watching the other provinces roll out their budgets over the last few weeks, many commitments governments made to businesses, to residents have been followed through on. All of those provinces are exposed to tariffs, and when you hear the minister talk, they’re more exposed than B.C. So I’m not quite sure what B.C.’s excuse is, but it is an excuse. Make no mistake about it.

Again, if they doubt me, they can go back and look at their own second-quarter update document about what they were projecting this year to look like as of September 30.

No health commitments. Hopefully, the Green Party perked up to that. That was a signature piece of the whole confidence agreement. Nothing in there that they agreed to a few months ago with the Green Party to cling to power.

No grocery rebate.

And $370 million over three years to the K-to-12 system for teachers, for teachers assistants, for a wide range of things, yet the Premier promised a teacher assistant in every classroom up to grade 4. I don’t think $120 million a year is going to cut that, even just that promise, let alone all the teachers you need to hire and everyone else for just natural enrolment growth.

No involuntary care — certainly, no expansion. No expansion of recovery and treatment.

[2:20 p.m.]

No increase of any significance to agriculture. Again, in our platform, we committed to doubling agriculture in British Columbia. Threats to food security in this tariff war have never been more relevant. Nothing in this budget to deal with that of any consequence. In fact, this government is projecting….

Some of these numbers in this booklet are just incredible: 7,000 job losses in the agricultural sector is projected in this year’s budget document. Does that sound like a government trying to grow agriculture in B.C.? That does not sound like a government serious about agriculture to me. That sounds like a government managing a decline and not prepared to do anything about it.

But you know, the Ministry of Environment, they see just under a $1 million bump to their budget this year. Again, backdrop of an agreement to cling to power with the Green Party. Just under $1 million for a Ministry of Environment increase. Well, in the Ministry of Environment, 50 percent of their budget is for staff. They’ve confirmed that to me in previous years’ estimates, and $1 million isn’t even going to cover the increased cost of staff, even before the new agreement for labour.

The interesting thing is, though…. We heard yesterday from the Finance Minister that political staff are considered core to this government and protected by the hiring freeze. Those will continue. Boy, do they ever, because although the Ministry of Environment, as a whole ministry, has less than a $1 million increase, the Premier’s office actually has a $1 million increase in it. Talk about priorities of sharpening your pencil — 7,000 job losses in the agricultural sector, a cut to the Ministry of Environment and an increase to the Premier’s office budget.

This government likes to take credit and go on and on about the economy doing so well in B.C. Again, I ask them: if it’s doing so well, why are we running record deficits year after year? If it’s doing so well, why do we actually not have a clear path to a balanced budget? In fact, the deficits stay high for the next three years. No clear path there whatsoever. No chipping away at it. It just keeps going up.

In fact, once again in their own budget documents, they make a very clear statement that our economic growth has mainly been tied to population growth in immigration, not because of any magical thing this government’s been doing but because of population growth through immigration.

One of the key risks is that our population is supposed to decrease. It’s projected to decrease next year and this year. So the cash cow of immigration that’s kept this government even remotely close to having an economy functioning — not in balanced budget territory, by any means, but at least functioning — is disappearing in front of our eyes.

Vast majority, once again, five straight quarters in their own budget document, out-migration, primarily to Alberta, in the tens of thousands of people. That trend seems to be more than just a blip after five straight quarters, one could argue. It was masked, in those previous quarters, because our immigration number, overall, was still going up. But no more. Because of the change in the PR rules and students, it’s on full display in this year’s budget.

I’m pretty sure that has nothing to do with tariffs. That has to do with a government who has squandered opportunity after opportunity after opportunity to seize the moment, to tear down internal trade barriers, to actually have a robust economy in B.C. going.

They’re running a record deficit, and they’re doing nothing meaningful to try to get rid of internal trade barriers that would kick-start our economy. Why is that not being done, with or without tariffs? It makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.

[2:25 p.m.]

I’ll just close with this. There are no targets in this budget. There is no tangible jobs plan. There is no tangible housing plan with anything new that we haven’t heard, year over year. There is no clear direction on what this government is trying to do with trade expansion, what goods and what countries they are trying to actively target for that expansion. We have no line of sight to that.

We have no line of sight of what interprovincial trade being removed would truly look like and what would be the most key sectors to do it in right away. Nova Scotia has signed off on it. We’ve introduced, through our leader, a private members’ bill today, modelled on what Nova Scotia did as well. It could be done very quick.

Look how fast the Premier changed his mind on trying to put a carbon tax on dirty coal coming through B.C. after we brought it up. Or how fast the government started to move, despite having a crack team of cabinet ministers sitting together trying to figure out how to deal with tariff issues…. Our rookie MLA from Prince George–Mackenzie, after asking for months for relief on biodiesel, has to introduce a private members’ bill, which gets actioned a day or two later.

The government will want to keep playing their games around this. We’re taking the tariff threat very seriously. We’ve been bringing forward actual very meaningful and tangible ways to lessen the impact and protect jobs in British Columbia. I’m not sure what the Premier and his cabinet are doing other than repeating the same talking lines created by an ever-growing communications department.

Make no mistake about it. Be it from agriculture, be it from internal trade, be it from any sector you want, this budget, with the amount of money they’re pushing out the door with it, is nothing but a colossal document of missed opportunities. There is no boldness in this. There is no big reach. There are no programs whatsoever to try to meet the challenges we’re going be facing over the next little while head-on.

So we’re going to continue to bring forward meaningful changes that can be actioned. Hopefully, the government continues to listen to this side of the House, as they have on three different occasions to this point. We’ll continue moving that forward.

With that, I’ll reserve my time and adjourn debate.

Peter Milobar moved adjournment of debate.

Motion approved.

Introduction and
First Reading of Bills

Bill 5 — Budget Measures
Implementation Act, 2025

Hon. Brenda Bailey presented a message from Her Honour the Lieutenant Governor: a bill intituled Budget Measures Implementation Act, 2025.

Hon. Brenda Bailey: I move that the bill be introduced and read a first time now.

I am pleased to introduce the Budget Measures Implementation Act, 2025. This bill consists of two parts.

Part 1 amends the Balanced Budget and Ministerial Accountability Act to include the 2027-2028 fiscal year in the period of fiscal years for which budget deficits are allowed to be forecast in the main estimates.

Part 2 amends the School Act, the Taxation (Rural Area) Act, the Speculation and Vacancy Tax Act, the South Coast British Columbia Transportation Authority Act and the Income Tax Act in order to implement the tax measures announced in Budget 2025.

Finally, the bill makes various technical changes to harmonize with federal income tax provisions, as well as other technical amendments.

The Speaker: Members, you heard the question.

Motion approved.

Hon. Brenda Bailey: I move that the bill be placed on the orders of the day for second reading at the next sitting of the House after today.

Motion approved.

[2:30 p.m.]

Tabling Documents

Hon. Brenda Bailey: I have the pleasure to rise to table the government’s overall strategic plan and the budget and fiscal plan for 2025-26 to 2027-28, which together fulfil the requirements of sections 7, 8, 10 and 12 of the Budget Transparency and Accountability Act.

I also table, on behalf of the ministers responsible, the service plans as required under section 13 of the Budget Transparency and Accountability Act.

The service plan documents are presented in two binders. The first binder contains the service plans for the Office of the Premier and 23 ministries.

The second binder contains service plans for 30 delivery agencies and Crown corporations. The second binder also includes a listing of the organizations that are exempt from the reporting requirements of section 13 of the Budget Transparency and Accountability Act.

Hon. Mike Farnworth moved adjournment of the House.

Motion approved.

The Speaker: This House stands adjourned until 1:30 p.m. tomorrow.

The House adjourned at 2:31 p.m.

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