It’s hard to tell whether Premier David Eby’s trade mission to China will be useful, given we don’t know who he’s meeting with or who even is on his delegation. But one thing’s certain: the timing is awful.
While the premier tours Beijing and Shanghai from June 27-July 2, back home several crises are burning.
A joint plan with Ottawa to buy unsellable condos from B.C. developers and repackage them as rent-to-own units continues to implode politically.
Almost no one, including the development community, publicly supports the idea. It has been described by critics as a $300-million taxpayer bailout of developers who built too many units and refuse to sell them to people at a loss.
On Sunday, federal Opposition Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre wrote the chair of Parliament’s ethics committee to demand an investigation into conflicts of interest arising from a program that benefits property developers, after the attendance of B.C. developers as donors at a Liberal fundraiser Prime Minister Mark Carney held in Vancouver in February.
“Far from making housing more affordable, the bailout prevents a price correction from taking place, preserving high prices for developers rather than lowering them for buyers,” the Conservatives wrote in a press release Sunday.
It seems inevitable at this point that the program will be cancelled. But with the premier currently half way across the world, tied up in meetings in China, it will be harder for him to quarterback his government’s extrication from the mess.
After all, the condo bailout was the B.C. government’s idea. BC New Democrats didn’t consult with the development sector—or anyone else, it appears—before cooking up the proposal, and then were stunned when it landed without support.
“If people hate it, it’s OK we don’t have to do it,” Eby has said.
The proposal has become a problem for Carney. Given Ottawa’s contribution is barely $140 million, the juice isn’t worth the squeeze for the federal Liberals on the idea.
Eby will also be absent this week when Alberta drops its long-awaited plans for a new oil pipeline to B.C.’s coast.
Premier Danielle Smith has said she’ll release a route, costs and proponents by July 1, with Carney then designating the pipeline a project of national interest by the fall.
B.C. has spent more than a year fighting the idea, insisting a new oil pipeline isn’t needed, that no proponent will materialize, that taxpayers will have to subsidize the project and that any route to the province’s north coast is unacceptable because it would require lifting a federal tanker moratorium.
Now, at the critical moment of launch, Eby finds himself locked into meetings in China and subject to a 14-hour time difference in responding to whatever Alberta proposes.
He’s been the face, voice and strategist of B.C.’s opposition to the pipeline. Swapping in a B.C. minister, at a key moment, is sub-optimal to say the least.
The premier is cutting short his China trip a day early to come back to announce B.C.’s own agreement with Ottawa on July 2. It’s expected to contain federal money for a variety of projects, including the Massey tunnel and North Coast Transmission Line.
But the timing will leave B.C., once again, late to the game on the pipeline. A mop-up press conference is reactive, not proactive.
The BC NDP put together the China mission several months ago, not foreseeing the timeline of these issues. But it also could have rescheduled this trip right up to the moment Eby left on Saturday.
Instead, the B.C. government goes into a huge week of political developments with the premier 9,500 kilometres and 15 time zones away from leading it through the crises.
Rob Shaw has spent more than 18 years covering B.C. politics, now reporting for CHEK News and writing for BIV. He hosts the weekly show Political Capital and has a NEW daily podcast, Political Capital Daily .
