Second Session, 43rd Parliament

Official Report

of Debates

( Hansard )

Thursday, March 5, 2026

Afternoon Sitting

Issue No. 134

The Honourable Raj Chouhan , Speaker

ISSN 1499-2175

The HTML transcript is provided for informational purposes only.

The PDF transcript remains the official digital version.

Contents

Routine Business

Tributes

Doug Creba

Hon. Sheila Malcolmson

Kuldip Singh Thandi

Sunita Dhir

Statements

Kalle Eriksson Participation at Milano Cortina Paralympic Games

Scott McInnis

Orders of the Day

Third Reading of Bills

Bill 3 — Budget Measures Implementation Act (No. 2), 2026

Second Reading of Bills

Bill 2 — Budget Measures Implementation Act, 2026 (continued)

Gavin Dew

Jennifer Blatherwick

Bruce Banman

Amna Shah

Kiel Giddens

Hon. Diana Gibson

Scott McInnis

Debra Toporowski / Qwulti’stunaat

Tony Luck

Hon. Jodie Wickens

Reporting of Bills

Bill 5 — Trade Recognition Act

Third Reading of Bills

Bill 5 — Trade Recognition Act

Second Reading of Bills

Bill 2 — Budget Measures Implementation Act, 2026 (continued)

Hon. Jodie Wickens

Proceedings in the Douglas Fir Room

Committee of the Whole

Bill 5 — Trade Recognition Act

Hon. Ravi Kahlon

Kiel Giddens

Gavin Dew

Jeremy Valeriote

Ian Paton

Rob Botterell

Sheldon Clare

Proceedings in the Birch Room

Committee of Supply

Estimates: Ministry of Education and Child Care (continued)

Lynne Block

Hon. Lisa Beare

Steve Kooner

Heather Maahs

Thursday, March 5, 2026

The House met at 1:01 p.m.

[The Speaker in the chair.]

Routine Business

Tributes

Doug Creba

Hon. Sheila Malcolmson : I rise to give homage to Doug Creba. This tribute knits together the words of Jan

Pullinger , John Little and Sue Creba.

Sue and Doug were a partnership. They helped build a fairer and more just community,

and our region will be poorer now that one of the partners is gone. Our deepest condolences

to Sue, their terrific kids and grandchildren.

Doug was a person who made things happen. He met life, including political life, head

on. Doug was a constituency and ministerial adviser to both Jan Pullinger and then

Evelyn Gillespie, both MLAs and ministers. He organized for Bob Skelly and, with the

BCGEU, bargained the NDP constituency assistants’ first collective agreement. Doug

served on the B.C. NDP’s provincial council and on the Nanaimo riding association

executive, including mine.

Jan Pullinger was Nanaimo’s first female MLA. I’m the second. Doug worked very hard

to elect us both, again and again.

This political work was built on a strong social justice foundation. Doug and Sue

volunteered in Africa for four years. In Nanaimo in the ’80s, Doug worked for unemployed

workers, then as a support worker, then as a social housing manager. Doug lived his

values in every way in his life — of sharing, of inclusion, of supporting one another

— sometimes fighting peacefully for justice, fairness and the greater good of all.

Doug single-handedly rescued our Mid Island Co-op. Or better, he gathered a team of

dedicated folks who together rescued the co-op and made it a thriving, profit-making

business. If you get a yearly profit rebate, his friends say it’s because of Doug

Creba.

Doug was in charge of backstage security at both the MusicFest in Courtenay and Islands

Folkfest in Duncan for many years, providing a secure and safe place for organizers,

performers and volunteers. This summer Howie and I loved seeing him hold court at

the Providence Farm beer garden for the last time.

His astonishing bucket list this past 12 months took Doug and Sue to Scotland and

to Cape Breton. They took the train across the country. Fiddle music dominated each

brilliantly optimistic tour.

In true Doug fashion, over his last 13 days, he was serenaded daily in Nanaimo Regional

Hospital by musical visitors from near and far, to the benefit of those in the adjacent

rooms in palliative care. I heard Doug’s hospital bed was pulled into the NRGH courtyard

for a huge Fiddelium show — true or not, legend.

[1:05 p.m.]

Doug spent his life giving all he could to the people and the community around him.

He fed us, literally. He was fun, hard-working, caring and richly human.

Doug died surrounded by friends and family through the evening, exactly the kind of

full house he would’ve appreciated.

Huge thanks to the wonderful NRGH palliative care team. They were exceptional.

Doug lived and died with courage and a great deal of love for and from those closest

to him. May we all live life so large, be so loved and leave such impact.

Kuldip Singh Thandi

Sunita Dhir : I rise today with profound sadness to honour the life of Mr. Kuldip Singh Thandi,

a respected community leader who passed away peacefully at the age of 80 after a courageous

year-long battle with cancer.

Mr. Thandi devoted many years of dedicated service to the Khalsa Diwan Society of

Vancouver, where he served with distinction as both president and treasurer. In these

roles, he led with integrity, humility and deep commitment to seva, selfless service,

inspiring all those who had the privilege to work with him.

He was a remarkable organizer and a trusted voice in the community. Through his leadership

and generosity, he strengthened the Ross Street gurdwara and supported countless families.

His wisdom, kindness and willingness to serve made a lasting and meaningful difference

in the lives of many.

Mr. Thandi’s contributions to the gurdwara and to the broader community will not be

forgotten. His legacy of service will continue to inspire future generations.

A memorial service for Mr. Kuldip Singh Thandi will be held on March 8 at 12:30 pm

at Riverside Funeral Home in Delta, followed by Antim Ardas prayers at 2:30 pm at

Ross Street gurdwara.

On behalf of the Legislative Assembly and the people of Vancouver-Langara, I extend

my heartfelt condolences to the family, friends and the entire community during this

difficult time. May Waheguru bless his soul with eternal peace.

Statements

Kalle Eriksson Participation

at Milano Cortina Paralympic Games

Scott McInnis : I’d just like to highlight a very important moment for a former student of mine coming

from Kimberley. Kalle Eriksson has been selected to compete in the visually impaired

para-alpine team in the Milano Cortina Paralympics.

Kalle is 21 years old, grew up skiing at the Kimberley Alpine Resort. He began his

journey with the para-alpine team in ’24-25, winning ten medals, including two golds,

with his guide Sierra Smith, who is a former World Cup skier herself.

I’m just wishing Kalle all the best. I hope to provide updates on some medal success

for him. He’s a ripping skier, but even more, he’s just a heck of a young man.

Thank you very much, and good luck, Kalle.

Orders of the Day

Hon. Mike Farnworth : I call third reading on Bill 3, Budget Measures Implementation Act (No. 2), 2026.

Third Reading of Bills

Bill 3 — Budget Measures

Implementation Act ( No. 2), 2026

The Speaker : The question is third reading of Bill 3, Budget Measures Implementation Act (No.

2), 2026.

Division has been called.

[1:10 p.m. - 1:20 p.m.]

Members who are participating remotely, please make sure your cameras are on.

Member for Kootenay-Rockies, would you please confirm that you are in a private place

— indoors and private?

Pete Davis : Yes, I confirm I’m in a private place indoors.

The Speaker : Thank you.

Members, the question is third reading of Bill 3, Budget Measures Implementation Act

(No. 2), 2026.

[1:25 p.m.]

Motion approved on the following division:

YEAS — 46

Lore

Blatherwick

Dhir

Routledge

Elmore

Toporowski

B. Anderson

Neill

Osborne

Brar

Krieger

Davidson

Parmar

Sunner

Beare

Greene

Wickens

Kang

Begg

Arora

Higginson

Sandhu

Lajeunesse

Choi

Rotchford

Chant

Phillip

Popham

Dix

Sharma

Farnworth

Eby

Bailey

Kahlon

Chandra Herbert

Whiteside

Boyle

Yung

Malcolmson

Gibson

Glumac

Shah

G. Anderson

Chow

Morissette

NAYS — 42

Loewen

Kindy

Milobar

Warbus

Halford

Rattée

Kooner

Banman

L. Neufeld

Van Popta

Dew

Clare

K. Neufeld

Rustad

McInnis

Valeriote

Botterell

Bhangu

Paton

Day

Chan

Toor

Hepner

Giddens

Dhaliwal

Wilson

Maahs

Block

Stamer

Gasper

Mok

Davis

Kealy

Brodie

Sturko

Boultbee

Williams

Chapman

Bird

Doerkson

Luck

Tepper

The Speaker : Bill 3 has been read a third time and has passed.

Hon. Mike Farnworth : In this chamber, I call continued second reading on Bill 2, Budget Measures Implementation

Act.

In

Section A, the Douglas Fir Room, I call continued committee stage on Bill 5, the

internal trade act.

In

Section C, the Birch Room, I call Committee of Supply debate on estimates for the

Ministry of Education and Child Care.

Second Reading of Bills

Bill 2 — Budget Measures

Implementation Act, 2026

(continued)

The Speaker : The member for Kelowna-Mission will continue his debate on second reading.

Gavin Dew : Bill 2 also contains a technical-looking amendment to the Assessment Act.

[Mable Elmore in the chair.]

That deserves much more scrutiny than it will probably get. It amends

section 19 of

the Assessment Act by adding a new subsection, 19(6.1). Here is the government’s wording:

“Subject to subsections (5) and (7), in determining actual value, the assessor is

not required to consider any restriction placed on the use of the land and improvements

by a person other than (

a) the Crown, (

b) a local government as defined in the

schedule

to the Local Government Act or (

c) a local trust committee as defined in the Islands

Trust Act.”

Why does that matter? Because in the real world, property values are affected by risk.

They are affected by uncertainty. They are affected when buyers worry that unresolved

claims, disputes or assorted constraints could delay development, increase legal exposure

or reduce the practical use of land.

This amendment appears to make it easier for B.C. Assessment to say: “Unless that

restriction comes from government, we are not required to take it into account.”

That raises an obvious question about clause 28. Does this mean a fee simple property

owner could see the market value or appraised value of their land diminished because

buyers and lenders price in uncertainty on the land base from unresolved land claims,

but the assessed value is artificially propped up because the assessor is “not required”

to consider restrictions not imposed by government?

In plain language, could British Columbians end up paying higher taxes on a paper

value that ignores real market uncertainty? This is not a small technical point. It

goes directly to whether people are being taxed on what their property is truly worth

in the market or on a cleaner, fictional value that is more convenient for government

revenue.

To be fair, the act still requires assessors to consider certain registered covenants,

but that only sharpens the question. The minister should answer clearly, and we will

ask in committee stage. When unresolved asserted claims impair market value in practice,

is B.C. Assessment expected to reflect that reality or pretend it doesn’t exist?

Bill 2 is also about protecting the discretion of the executive and reducing legislative

scrutiny. It extends the period through which deficits may be forecast. It raises

the threshold for capital projects that must be specifically stated to the Legislative

Assembly from $50 million to $125 million. That scopes out a lot of projects, including

projects we’ve seen delayed in this budget.

[1:30 p.m.]

Bill 2 also quietly reduces accountability for capital spending by changing the Budget

Transparency and Accountability Act threshold, as I previously mentioned. On its face,

that sounds like a technical adjustment. In practice, it means fewer major projects

are singled out and scrutinized. It means fewer projects are forced into the sunlight

of this House as distinct line items that members and the public can track. We saw

how important that was in this budget, with the significant changes in the delivery

date, if ever, of a number of long-term-care facilities.

The government will argue that inflation and construction costs justify this change,

but that argument is backwards. If project costs are rising and the risk of overruns

is rising, transparency should go up, not down. When the stakes get bigger, the reporting

should get sharper, not softer.

This is not happening in isolation. This government’s approach to infrastructure accountability

has a pattern. In the Ministry of Infrastructure service plan, the government does

not even publish a clear, measurable, on-time budget target. They acknowledge they

will develop specific objectives and performance measures later, to be determined.

That is the opposite of what the public expects, especially from a ministry created

to deliver projects on time and on budget, which now can’t even define a target for

delivering projects on time and on budget. British Columbians don’t want a government

that comes back after the fact and says: “We will decide what success looks like in

next year’s document.”

Put those two choices together, and the direction is obvious. First, they avoid clear

targets on whether projects are delivered on time and on budget. Then they raise the

reporting threshold so fewer projects have to be specifically stated to this House.

That is not better governance. That is reduced accountability, by design.

If this government is truly confident in its capital management, it should be willing

to measure performance openly and report more, not less. A serious government sets

clear targets, reports consistently and accepts scrutiny. This bill moves in the opposite

direction.

Then there is perhaps the most revealing part of this bill. After raising taxes on

paycheques, expanding the PST, squeezing homeowners and protecting the tax base wherever

it can, this government also decided to abolish the independent Office of the Merit

Commissioner — not reform it, not strengthen it, not modernize it; abolish it.

An office created in 2001 to provide independent oversight of whether appointments

in the B.C. public service are actually based on merit is being folded into the very

machinery it is supposed to oversee. Bill 2 removes the Merit Commissioner as an officer

of the Legislature, redefines the Merit Commissioner as the head of the B.C. Public

Service Agency acting in that capacity, repeals the core independent oversight provisions

and routes reporting to a minister instead of this House.

The government will try to dress this up as efficiency or cost savings, but the annual

budget for the office is about $1.7 million. That’s a lot of money, but in the scale

of a provincial budget, it’s pocket lint. Even the outgoing commissioner warned publicly

that the cost of losing independent oversight may far exceed the savings from eliminating

a small oversight body. He pointed out that a non-partisan, multiparty legislative

committee approved a three-year budget for the office only months earlier and recognized

its role in upholding merit-based practices.

So this is not some obvious, commonsense cleanup of a stale institution. It is the

government wilfully choosing to get rid of an independent watchdog that the Legislature

had literally just affirmed.

The timing is awfully convenient, is it not? This is not happening after a long run

of glowing audit results and perfect confidence in the system. The Merit Commissioner’s

own materials noted an increase in “merit not applied” findings and a decrease in

“merit” findings. The office’s reporting showed “merit not applied” findings rising

to 10 percent. The commissioner then said publicly that the most recent audit found

the highest rate of flawed hiring processes and outcomes in nearly a decade.

So this government’s answer to rising concerns about merit is not more scrutiny; it’s

less. Their answer to a watchdog raising alarms is to take away the watchdog.

[1:35 p.m.]

That is what makes this so politically revealing. The government is not eliminating

an office because the problem disappeared. It is eliminating an office because the

office still mattered. When trust in institutions matters, when competition for jobs

is tighter, that is exactly when independent oversight becomes more important, not

less.

Bill 2 does not merely rename the office. It guts the very architecture of independence.

It repeals the provisions dealing with appointment, audit, review and dismissal processes.

It strips away powers to compel answers and disclosure. It changes the annual report

so it goes to the minister, not the Legislative Assembly. And then, in the transitional

provisions, it dissolves the office and transfers its property, records, liabilities

and unspent budget to the Ministry of Finance. It defangs and neuters the watchdog.

That is not an efficiency measure. That is a consolidation of control. It is the executive

branch taking the files, taking the budget, taking the reporting line and taking the

oversight in-house.

There’s also a transparency problem here. Bill 2 removes the Office of the Merit Commissioner

from the list of public bodies under FOIPPA and creates a carve-out so records held

by or for the Merit Commissioner, or related to the commissioner’s functions before

this amendment, are outside the normal access route.

The government will say privacy protections still apply, and technically, that’s true.

But the political fact remains. This bill abolishes an independent office and at the

same time creates a special rule that makes access to its old records harder through

the ordinary public route.

For a government already known for secrecy, that’s not a good look — not a good look

at all. They’re burying the records, sweeping them under a rug, shutting down the

watchdog. That should tell you exactly what you need to know: that this government

has something to hide.

There’s another layer of irony here. The office’s mandate was expanded in 2018 to

include dismissal reviews. More recently that work was affirmed as important and meant

to remain independent from government. Yet now, through a bill — a budget bill, of

all things — the government is scrapping that independent structure and handing the

function to the bureaucracy itself. That is not just inconsistent; it is cynical.

It says independence is important right up until independence becomes inconvenience.

Let us be plain about what is happening here. This government is abolishing an independent

office that exists to make sure public service hiring is based on merit, at the very

moment that the office is reporting more problems in the system. It is moving oversight

from the Legislature into the executive. It is weakening transparency around the old

records, and it calls that progress.

British Columbia needs high-quality public servants chosen on merit, not a system

where friends and insiders can be rewarded with cushy jobs while taxpayers are told

to trust the same government that just fired the referee.

Taken together, Bill 2 tells British Columbians exactly what this NDP government is

about. More tax on work. More tax on services people rely on. Less relief for rural

and northern homeowners. Higher carrying costs for people who defer property taxes

so they can stay in their homes. More room for government discretion. Less legislative

scrutiny. And above all of that, the abolition of an independent office that exists

to make sure merit, fairness and accountability still mean something in the public

service.

This bill is not just a budget implementation bill. It is a statement of priorities,

and those priorities are badly out of step with what British Columbia needs right

now.

Jennifer Blatherwick : I am here today to speak in support of Bill 2.

Our budget does not pretend the world is easy. It recognizes fiscal constraint and

the enormous challenge of a much smaller working generation supporting our parents

as they age and need more complex care.

We simultaneously also need to invest in the future of the young people of this province,

especially with training that allows them to create a stable life here. This budget

eyes the challenges honestly and chooses stability, fairness and long-term strength

for British Columbia.

[1:40 p.m.]

It’s not a budget crafted in comfort or a time of global abundance. Each line recognizes

a time of uncertainty — economic, environmental, geopolitical and social.

We hear in our offices every day of the struggles and successes of our constituents,

our neighbours. We hear about the effect of tariffs. We see the changes in people’s

everyday choices. Their choice is to buy and support Canadian, to buy local, to ensure

that we stay strong.

I’m so heartened when I go to local farmers markets, the restaurants in my area, the

small local businesses, and I see more of my neighbours than ever before continuing

to invest dollars back into our province with their choices, to ensure that we choose

Canadian.

Sometimes those choices are hard. “Made in Canada.” “Grown in B.C.” Looking for those

labels means we need to take time, make the effort and vote carefully with our limited

budgets. Each individual choice is a powerful investment in B.C.’s future. Thank you.

This budget recognizes the difficulty of those hard-thought, careful choices and respects

them. Here’s what we know. We cannot ruthlessly cut our way to a stronger province.

On the other hand, borrowing has consequences, even if those funds are investments

in capital projects and in people that are growing our province. It’s reasonable and

prudent to sustain services for our province, our businesses, our non-profits and

our people. We defend our core services and discipline the spending.

This budget tells the story of global economic uncertainty, our changing alliances

and our commitment to forge our way through to the future by strengthening international

relationships with our long-standing partners and reaching out to create new paths

with our newer allies. Across the globe, we see slower economic growth, shaped internationally

by trade uncertainty, war and the ongoing climate crisis.

Here in B.C., we have localized challenges that we must respond to: the stresses created

by reduced federal immigration targets and rising borrowing costs worldwide. The budget

must also grapple with the rising cost of debt. Every dollar spent on interest is

a dollar not spent on nurses, teachers or public safety. The budget maintains front-line

core services in health care, education and social services, while making deliberate,

thoughtful choices to slow spending growth, modernize revenue and protect the front

line.

This budget demonstrates a commitment. Front-line services will be protected at levels

comparable to pre-pandemic benchmarks, even as economic seas become rougher. That

means concrete investments in the supports that protect us here in B.C. Over $2.8

billion in new funding, over three years, is directed to strengthening health care,

expanding capacity, supporting workforce recruitment and improving access to mental

health and addictions treatment.

We will keep connecting people to family doctors and nurse practitioners. Back in

2010, under the previous government, there was a promise that everyone would have

a family doctor by 2015. I want to acknowledge that there was, at the time, an enormous

and complex challenge in growing and expanding our health care system.

Personnel were retiring in an unprecedented wave. As the pattern of service of medical

professionals changed, the dominant age demographic was beginning to shift from working-age

adults to seniors. The province was becoming increasingly urbanized, but rural, remote

and northern areas still needed support, services and connections.

All of those challenges meant that the previous government could not complete their

promise. By the time they left government in 2017, there were 900,000 people — close

to one million people — without a doctor, 250,000 more people without a doctor than

before they made that promise.

I wish they had succeeded, because that would have been good for all people here in

British Columbia. It was a tough challenge, and the past plan didn’t work, but now,

in 2026, every single one of those challenges has intensified. We now have a higher

proportion of seniors than at any other time in our history, plus there is now a global

shortage of health care workers, with other provinces and countries competing fiercely

for the same pool of doctors, nurses and health care professionals.

Yet even with all of those challenges, let me talk about what is working: the current

plan under this government. B.C. is succeeding. We are turning a corner. We have attached

a record number of people to family doctors. In 2024, we attached a record number

of 250,000 people, outpacing the population growth of 167,000, and 4,000 people are

connected each week, which is a 52 percent increase from the previous year.

Additionally, more than 850 new family doctors have been added since the launch of

the new physician pay model in 2023. We now have the most doctors per capita of any

province in Canada, with more on the way. We will keep going.

[1:45 p.m.]

Of that $2.8 billion, $131 million is specifically dedicated to evidence-based mental

health and addictions services, helping ensure that we are able to support the most

vulnerable people in this province.

Health care matters, and education matters. For families and children, we will spend

$634 million over three years strengthening K-to-12 education, hiring more classroom

teachers, special education teachers, counsellors and psychologists.

We know how important it is for families to have safe, accessible and affordable child

care. We want parents to be able to choose to participate in our economy, so this

budget commits $330 million to maintain affordable child care fees and support operators

and educators. These historic and ongoing investments in child care have allowed thousands

and thousands of women to choose to join the workforce.

In the last quarter of 2025, over 900 new child care spaces opened all across this

province. Here are some: Burnaby, 74 spaces, including 24 for infant and toddlers;

Courtenay, 31 spaces, including 15 for infant and toddler; Douglas First Nation, 46

spaces; Kelowna, 48 spaces; Langley, 72 spaces; Maple Ridge, 110 spaces; Merritt,

76; North Van, 37; Skatin, 26; Sooke, 37; Sorrento, 56; Surrey, 80; Vancouver, 32

spaces; and Victoria, 224 spaces.

Deputy Speaker : Member, I’m just going to interrupt you and recognize the member for Vancouver-Langara.

Sunita Dhir : Can I seek leave to make an introduction?

Leave granted.

Deputy Speaker : Proceed.

Introductions by Members

Sunita Dhir : It’s my absolute pleasure to welcome, on behalf of the member for Vancouver-Fraserview,

28 grade 5 students along with their teacher, Joanna Molt.

They are from École Anne-H é bert, which is the first francophone school in B.C., established in 1983. The school

serves 323 students from kindergarten to grade 6.

May we all welcome them to this House, please.

Debate Continued

Deputy Speaker : The member for Coquitlam-Maillardville continues.

Jennifer Blatherwick : Every one of those spaces I mentioned represents a family that is able to find care

for their child, more freely make choices about their future and participate as they

choose in the economy. We need to make sure that the economy is strong, resilient

and diversified while being able to take on opportunities of the future. We have to

grow the economy in a way that’s good for B.C. and for Canada. We need to be responsive,

ensure we all benefit and build towards the future.

Budget 2026 advances the Look West: Jobs and Prosperity for a Stronger B.C. and Canada strategy. So $241 million to double trades training and apprenticeship seats by ’28-29.

This is the largest investment in trades training in our history. This represents

training opportunities for good family-sustaining jobs. A new $400 million B.C. strategic

investment special account to co-invest with the federal government on nation-building

projects to bring capital to this province. And $40 million to strengthen permitting

capacity in natural resource and tourism sectors, some of the heart blood of B.C.’s

economy. Expanded incentives for manufacturing, clean technology and innovation.

These investments recognize that economic security is national security and that British

Columbia is positioned to have a pivotal, nationally vital role to play in Canada’s

energy transition, critical mineral supply and trade diversification. Together these

large investments in the larger economy and the small investments in people’s lives

are the companion building blocks of a functioning, close-knit, interdependent society.

This budget will continue to improve another key pillar of our common good: public

safety. We want people to feel safe in their neighbourhoods, on their bus rides, their

walks home and in their small businesses.

Budget 2026 commits $139 million over three years to address repeat violent offending

and property crime. This includes the new chronic property offending intervention

initiative, expanded resources for the provincial forensic firearms lab and support

for faster investigations and charge approvals.

Compassion and accountability are not opposed to each other. They work hand in hand.

Communities deserve safety, where families can reliably build lives and businesses.

Individuals deserve pathways out of cycles of harm.

[1:50 p.m.]

Public safety is not an abstract policy discussion. It’s not a statistic on a spreadsheet

or line item in a budget. It’s something people live every single day in their communities.

Budget 2026 tackles those realities in response to data with collaboration across

all levels and thoughtful and careful planning. The budget provides $139 million over

three years to strengthen public safety and restore confidence in the justice system,

not through slogans or through shortcuts but through targeted, evidence-informed action.

I want to thank the Minister of Public Safety and their staff for their work, recognizing

that repeat offending has historically been one of the highest costs to the justice

system — enforcement costs, court costs, holding costs — yes, but also to businesses

and individuals in the community and, ultimately, also to the individuals who commit

the offences.

The research into patterns of crime is clear. A relatively small number of individuals

are responsible for a disproportionate amount of property crime and violent reoffending.

Ignoring that reality does not serve compassion, rehabilitation or the most effective

implementation of public safety.

With the introduction of the chronic property offending intervention initiative, we’ll

see a focused, coordinated approach designed to intervene earlier, supervise more

effectively and disrupt the cycle of repeated harm. This initiative improves coordination,

bringing together law enforcement and prosecutors and probation services and social

supports to ensure that individuals who repeatedly offend are no longer passed from

one system to another without accountability or follow through.

This budget recognizes that intervention is more effective with enforcement, and enforcement

with support has the best chance of success. The answer is not choosing one over the

other. It is ensuring that all the resources, efforts and policies align to increase

the chance of ending the cycle. Swifter and more efficient processes are good for

everyone.

Budget 2026 expands resources for the provincial forensic firearms lab, accelerating

ballistic analysis, firearm tracing and investigative timelines. Thorough, careful

investigation is a cornerstone of our justice system, and increasing efficiency while

maintaining integrity is essential. Delayed evidence is delayed justice, and delayed

justice undermines both deterrence and fairness.

Enhancing forensic capacity means faster investigations, stronger cases and quicker

charge approvals. We know the necessary responses can look different across the province.

What’s needed in Coquitlam-Maillardville looks different from what may be needed in

downtown Vancouver or what is required in rural, northern or suburban communities.

Budget 2026 supports community-specific safety responses, which means targeted enforcement,

improved access to justice services and stronger coordination between police courts

and social agencies, including action to address the extortion crisis that has affected

businesses and families in multiple regions of this province.

The creation of a dedicated task force paired with expanded victim supports and federal

partnership funding reflects an understanding that economic intimidation is not just

a criminal issue. It is a threat to community stability and economic confidence. The

budget ensures we meet that threat with full cooperation across every sector and level

of government and law enforcement.

Holding individuals accountable for repeated harmful behaviour is not incompatible

with breaking cycles of harm by continuing to support people, especially young people,

with treatment, housing support or mental health services. We can align public safety

investments with expanded mental health and addictions treatment, recognizing that

untreated illness and trauma can drive cycles of offending.

We must respect and support victims of crime and the damage done to communities. We

must also see the humanity of those repeating cycles of harm without ever excusing

the harm itself.

These public safety investments are part of a thoughtful fiscal framework that responds

to debt-servicing costs that put pressure on the future.

The budget invests in programs that deliver measurable outcomes, safer communities

and reduced repeat offending.

In those communities, we will continue to systematically approach one of the defining

challenges of life in British Columbia, the issue of housing. Over the next three

years, there is a budget of $37.7 billion for taxpayer-supported infrastructure. We

will continue to build the supports that British Columbians need. Investment in schools,

hospitals, transit, and housing continue. We will see thousands of units of housing

come online. But we have to integrate into that plan today’s economic conditions,

not yesterday’s projections.

Affordability measures remain in place through the B.C. family benefit, stable child

care funding and targeted housing tax measures. The budget updates the speculation

tax for foreign owners and untaxed worldwide earners, and the additional school tax

is strengthened for homes valued over $3 million. These measures are about fairness,

ensuring that those with the greatest capacity contribute appropriately while services

remain protected for everyone.

[1:55 p.m.]

Modernizing B.C.’s tax base is an essential piece of this budget. Comparatively, our

provincial sales tax has had one of the narrowest applications in Canada, even as

a significant

section of our economy has shifted toward services and digital platforms.

The application of our tax policy must be fairly applied across sectors, and we must

ensure that our revenue system is resilient to the changing composition of the economy.

Beginning on October 1, 2026, the budget expands the PST to selected professional

services, including accounting, bookkeeping, property management and non-residential

real estate commissions, to be consistent with taxation in other sectors at the standard

7 percent rate. Architectural, engineering and geoscience services will be taxed on

only 30 percent of the purchase price, maintaining a balance between revenue generation

and infrastructure cost control.

Budget 2026 also makes targeted adjustments to income taxation, an increase of half

a penny per dollar in the first tax bracket rate with a corresponding increase in

benefits for the 40 percent of British Columbians who are low income. This small change

means that B.C. is still one of the lowest-taxed provinces for working- and middle-class

families.

This budget in 2026-2027 doesn’t chase applause or leave people behind in education,

in health care or social services. It tells the truth. We face pressures, but we will

protect the services people rely on. We will invest in growth, in skills and in reconciliation,

and we will keep going.

Bruce Banman : It’s always a pleasure to be able to respond to a bill. In this case, it’s Bill 2.

I’ll be speaking about the failures and concerns surrounding the 2026 British Columbia

Budget Measures Implementation Act.

While budgets are intended to guide a province towards economic stability and improved

public services, this particular bill, this legislation in front of this House, raises

several very serious concerns. Rather than strengthening British Columbia’s long-term

financial health and improving affordability, critics argue that the 2026 implementation

act introduces policies that actually may increase financial pressure on residents

and businesses, delay important infrastructure and create uncertainty about this province’s

economic future.

Now, I know that we talk an awful lot in this building. There is always, sort of….

Well, one side spins, and then the other side counter-spins. But I think it’s important

to hear what those from outside of this building actually have to say, and I would

like to read into the record some of them. Let’s start with the media.

Rob Shaw says: “B.C.’s new budget hikes taxes to generate more than $800 million in

revenue, with increases to personal income tax and the PST scope, but still projects

a record-breaking $13.3 billion deficit and skyrocketing debt levels, and it holds

the line on education, health spending.” That was Rob Shaw.

“B.C. is raising personal income tax on the first $50,363 to try and generate new

revenue as the budget sinks in red.” Also Rob Shaw. “It’s the first time the lowest

income tax bracket has been raised since 2000, when the B.C. Liberals first took power.”

Rob Shaw.

The Times Colonist : “The B.C. budget brings public service cuts, delays to Vancouver Island projects.

Highlights from 2026 B.C. budget? Growing deficit, tax hike and PST changes.” Les

Leyne: “Tax adjustments coming to offset projected deficit jump in B.C. budget.”

[2:00 p.m.]

The CBC: “The B.C. budget increases tax increases, 15,000 public job cuts projected,

a $13 billion deficit.”

The CTV: “This fiscal year, B.C.’s deficit is expected to reach $13.3 billion, the

highest it has ever been.”

The Vancouver Sun : “Higher taxes, more debt: five ways the 2026 B.C. budget will affect you.”

The Globe and Mail …. Not really a stellar review thus far on this budget, from the press. The Globe and Mail : “B.C. budget projects record-breaking $9.6 billion deficit, rising to $13.3 billion

next year.”

I could go on and on.

Mo Amir: “David Eby’s entire premiership can be summarized by B.C.’s 2026-27 budget:

no vision, just managed decline, self-contradictory, no principles, no consistency….”

Deputy Speaker : Member, just a reminder not to use names.

Bruce Banman : Thank you, Madam Speaker. I was doing a quote. So I appreciate that.

Deputy Speaker : Yeah, even in a quote.

Bruce Banman : Thank you, Madam Speaker.

“The Premier’s entire premiership can be summarized: self-contradictory, no principles,

no consistency, trying to please everyone but pleasing no one, a generational price

tag for British Columbians.” That was Mo Amir. “I’m sorry,” he goes on, “but his government

can’t believe that an $11 billion budget deficit is unsustainable.”

Stakeholders. It’s one thing for the press to speak, but what do the stakeholders

actually have to say? The CFIB says that B.C.’s entrepreneurial drought deepens as

Budget 2026 increases taxes for everyone. “Break out the ibuprofen because Budget

2026 will be a huge headache for small businesses, not what’s needed when we’re facing

entrepreneurial drought,” said Ryan Mitton.

The Canadian Taxpayers Federation. “Bailey needs to cut government spending and stop

piling more debt on taxpayers. Government spending has rocketed up too far too fast.

It’s time for the government to put down the credit card,” says Carson Binda. “Brace

yourselves for big tax hikes and more debt.”

The Independent Contractors and Businesses Association:

“Tax increases, historic deficits and record debt make the Premier’s 2026-27 B.C.

budget challenging for B.C. construction businesses.

“First, a personal income tax hike will put half a billion more out of B.C. workers’

pockets. It gets worse. The NDP are reintroducing bracket creep, which punishes workers

who move from one tax bracket to another by taking more out of their paycheques. This

makes it more common for a person to get a raise, move up to the next tax bracket

and actually take home less money due to higher taxes.”

Think about that for a minute. So you unwittingly get a raise from your boss, or you

move, thinking you’re actually getting a better job, and you’re actually going to

take home less money than you were at a lower wage. Bravo. Well done on this budget.

Bravo.

I could go on. The Business Council of B.C.:

“We’ve got about $4 billion in the budget in tax increases, and that’s really concerning,

because the private sector is already very, very weak. The deficit deteriorates to

a record $13.3 billion, $3.1 billion larger than projected in last year’s budget.

“At 2.9 percent of GDP, the deficit far eclipses the one during the COVID-19 emergency

in 2021, when the government ran a deficit of $5.6 billion, of 1.8 percent of GDP.

And B.C.’s finances have unravelled at a breathtaking speed over recent years as spending

growth has far outpaced revenue growth.

[2:05 p.m.]

“Households and businesses also faced around $4 billion in tax hikes over three years

to try to plug the fiscal hole in a further blow to private sector economic activity.”

I’ve got about ten more pages. None of them are complimentary to this budget.

Implementing this, actually, is the highlight of the failure of this government over

the last ten years. They went from a surplus that they inherited to the point where

we are now approaching, I believe, $182 billion.

Interjections.

Bruce Banman : If the members want to get up and speak, I suggest they stand up and speak. Perhaps

the member would like to get up and speak.

The B.C. seniors advocate: “It’s going to put pressure on family caregivers, people

who should be in the workforce, who are now caring for that senior, and it’s also

going to create a situation where the seniors are not getting the kind of care they

should be.”

The BCGEU. “Health care, education, child care, public safety, public services — these

services allow our members to go to work, businesses to operate and communities to

thrive. They lower household costs and create stability in uncertain times. Weakening

them doesn’t solve a deficit. It shifts costs directly onto working families,” says

Paul Finch, president of the BCGEU.

“You cannot build a productive economy on a crumbling public foundation,” says Paul

Finch. “Any cuts to front-line services, any cuts to unionized employees that provide

critical services to British Columbians is just going to hurt people that need those

services right now. It is also going to hurt the economy.”

I think it’s important to listen to the agriculture sector, as well, that is particularly

abundant in my riding of Abbotsford South. This budget is disappointing. British Columbia

currently ranks last among other provinces in operating funding for its Ministry of

Agriculture. However, there is a long history of underfunding the sector in this province

most recently. Based on the five-year rolling average, B.C. is still last place at

3.4 percent compared to 4.6 percent for New Brunswick.

We placed behind New Brunswick and Nova Scotia in funding agriculture, yet we brag

about it all the time in this House. Spending on the Ministry of Agriculture and Food

would need to increase an estimated 25 percent from $143 million to $179 million to

contend with New Brunswick for 9th place. Nothing like racing to the bottom, is it?

As has been mentioned by others, this budget is nothing to cheer about, and the implementation

of this act is nothing to cheer about. As mentioned in, I believe it was, clause 25

this government has decided that the Merit Commissioner is no longer required. Well,

that’s interesting. That’s troubling.

I know if this side of the House had proposed that, that side of the House would be

screaming their heads off because we’d be hiring all our insider friends. That’s what

the Merit Commissioner is for. It is to ensure that insiders and people that we owe

political favours to don’t get plum jobs.

Well, there have been a few plum jobs that have been pointed out already on that side

of the House, like joke writers getting outrageous amounts of money.

[2:10 p.m.]

There have been some problems already on that side of the House. The Merit Commissioner

goes on, actually, to say that there has been an increase in problems that they’ve

identified.

What is this government’s response to that? Well, rather than strengthening the Merit

Commissioner’s position, streamlining it, improving the powers to ensure that the

public’s money…. You know, this is not our money. It’s not. These are hard-working

British Columbians that pay their taxes, hard-working businesses that fund our economy,

that pay it in goodwill, hoping that the rules in place make sure that there’s going

to be transparency, fairness and honesty.

The Merit Commissioner was put in place to ensure that, not just when one side is

there but when all sides…. No matter who forms government, the Merit Commissioner

is there to ensure that things don’t get out of hand, that we’re not giving plum jobs

to insiders, that we’re not stacking the deck on what should be neutral.

The one thing when I was a mayor is that I was always impressed and amazed at how

neutral the staff were. It’s for good reason. Even in our offices, in our constituency

assistants, I know my staff pride themselves in being apolitical. It’s a very difficult

challenge for them to do because, to the best of my knowledge….

I like my staff, and they like me, but they have a job to do. You can’t just say when

the phone rings: “Hi, who did you vote for last time? Oh, I’m sorry. You voted for

the wrong team. We’re not going to help you.” It’s not supposed to work that way.

The Merit Commissioner is put in place so that the bureaucracy remains neutral. It’s

a very important job. What this government is doing is basically saying: “You know

what? No, we don’t want that. Let’s get rid of that. That’s a little pesky. No, no,

no. I don’t like it. Let’s just fire him. We’re going to eliminate the position totally.”

It’s outrageous, and the public actually should be rightfully outraged as well, because

one day this side of the House is going to be government. Do you really want us hiring

all our inside friends? I don’t think it’s wise. This position is there for a reason.

This government has already been accused of being the most secretive government because

of what they’ve done with FOI requests, and: “Oh, now, wait a minute. In the budget

now, we’re going to actually….” They’ve become a little persnickety about: “You know,

these FOIs are just too tedious to write. We’re going to tighten it up to make it

even more difficult for FOIs.”

The public and the press should be outraged that this government is actually doubling

down on reducing transparency, instead of increasing transparency. Good governance

requires transparency. Sometimes, yeah, when you’re on that side of the House having

to answer questions, it’s annoying. It’s inconvenient. Well, tough bananas. That’s

what you signed up for. It’s just too darn bad. That’s the nature of the business

that you signed up for.

Good governance requires transparency, because what transparency does is it insists

that we end up with good governance. You have to be held accountable, and you can’t

hide everything behind glass doors. This isn’t The Wizard of Oz . You don’t get to hide behind a curtain and pull strings. Good governance requires

transparency, and what this government is doing is the exact opposite of that, at

a time when they’re spending more money than they’re taking in.

[2:15 p.m.]

There are some other things that are very, very, very concerning about this particular

implementation. When you have destroyed the economy to the point that this government

has…. They can blame it on everyone else, but when you’re running a business, if situations

change, you have to learn to adapt. If you don’t adapt, you’re going to go bankrupt.

Well, governments also can go bankrupt.

We now have a record deficit. We have a record debt of $182 billion. Divide that by

5.5 or 5.7 million people and tell me what you get. Somebody’s got to pay it. I don’t

think I’m going to be around long enough to pay that debt back. It’s no wonder the

youth are fleeing. If I got stuck with that credit card bill, I’d be leaving too:

“Thanks, Mom. Thanks, Dad. I’m out of here. You go pay your own debts.”

Decisions have consequences. Then, when you start running out of businesses, because

they’re closing down, and when the economy starts to tank, there’s only one thing

you can do, and that’s to raise taxes, which is exactly what they’ve done. Who do

you end up going after? Well, they’ve gone after the working poor. That tax rate is

rising, as it was mentioned.

The other one that they’re going to hit is they’re going to go: who else do you go

after? Seniors. They go after seniors because, actually, seniors have assets. Then

what you do is sign seniors up to say: “Hey, you know what? We want you to stay in

your home because we don’t have a long-term-care facility for you.”

Oh, that’s right. We cancelled all those. We’ve cancelled six of those. Abbotsford

cancelled one. Campbell River cancelled one or delayed. Chilliwack, cancelled or delayed.

Cottonwood’s long-term care is cancelled or delayed. Delta is cancelled or delayed.

Fort St. John is cancelled or delayed. Squamish is cancelled or delayed. It works

out to 1,200 beds cancelled or delayed. “Seniors, we want you to stay at home because

we’ve got nowhere but a hallway to put you in at a hospital.”

Then what you do to them is say: “Hey, don’t worry about it. We’re going to make it

more affordable. We know you’re hard up. We’re going to let you defer your property

taxes. We’re going to have a nice low rate for you because we want to be nice to you.

You’re actually helping us because it will cost us less to keep you in your home than

it would be to put you into a long-term-care facility, even though you probably need

one. We’re going to push you there as long as you can.”

What did they do with that? Well, now that you’ve signed up…. Once you’ve signed up,

now you’ve got to pay it back in order to get out of it, which the seniors don’t have.

Now what they did is…. This is the ultimate bait-and-switch. “We’ve signed you up

to this thing. Now we’re going to take from prime minus 2, which is a pretty good

deal….” Literally, what I heard is that they’re accusing seniors of somehow making

money by investing.

So they go: “We can’t have that. We don’t want you investing in the economy that’s

already poor. We don’t want you helping out in any way you can to help offset so you

can stay home. Yes, we know we don’t have a place for you. But what we’re going to

do to you now that you’ve signed up for this deal is…. We’re going to change it from

prime minus 2 to prime plus 2, and we’re going to compound the interest.”

If a credit card company tried to pull that kind of nonsense off, there would be all

kinds of screaming and all kinds of people that would be yelling to try and do this.

It is outrageous that we would do something like this to the very people that built

this country, the very people that are on a fixed income, trying to stay in their

house. We’ve now, midstream in an agreement, changed the rules on them. That is not

only shameful; it’s reprehensible.

[2:20 p.m.]

“We don’t have a place to put you. We’ve just shut down the building of 1,200 beds

in long-term-care facilities. We don’t have a doctor for you. We don’t have the at-home-care

people, even, for you. Now we’re going to charge you compound interest.” I don’t know

how members on that side of the House that say they’re for seniors, say they’re for

people on a fixed income and say they’re for the poor can sleep at night.

This is what happens when you mismanage a budget and you mismanage an economy and

spend money as if there is no tomorrow, and you know full well that you’re not going

to be in government and have to clean up the mess that you left. It’s reprehensible

behaviour. It’s reckless behaviour, and it is incompetent at a gross level to be able

to do this to certain individuals.

I wish just for once I could get up and say: “You know what? I’ve got nothing to complain

about on this side of the House.” I really do.

Interjection.

Bruce Banman : I know. The other side says: “No, no, that’ll never happen.” Darned right it’ll never

happen, because you guys keep mismanaging stuff so much. You give me an encyclopedia

to read from, on what’s wrong.

On this budget, I’ll go over a few of the other things. You know, I had a 30-minute

speech. I haven’t even gotten to it yet.

The rising provincial debt and deficit concerns, as I’ve gone over, increased the

financial pressures on seniors, through the property tax deferral changes. It delays

and reduces infrastructure projects. There are concerns about the housing affordability

and development. We had contractors in here talking about what this is going to do.

How does that affect them? How does this affect home prices?

Okay, now you’ve got to pay PST on the accountant. You’ve got to pay PST on engineering

firms. You’ve got to pay PST on all of the things that go into actually building a

home. For all those reports that were PST-exempt, now there’s going to be a 7 percent

added cost.

The average cost of a building, when you build it now, is about 30 percent of what

you pay for your property, for your new home, as government-demanded requirements.

Now there’s going to be another 7 percent on top of that, on a lot of these services.

What would have been wise would have been, if you want to stimulate the economy….

Do you remember the GST rebates back in the day? It was one of the biggest building

booms we’d ever seen. Rather than be innovative, and we want to have home affordability,

if we’d say, “You know what? It’s PST-free on anything to do with construction,” we

would have a massive increase. If what happened to the GST is similar — I believe

it would be — we would have a massive demand, and we’d spur it.

You know what? That would sure as heck help out our forest industry. Oh, wait a minute,

they can’t get any fibre to be able to supply the two-by-fours. We’d have to probably

bring them in, because you have…. Oh, that’s right. They’ve mismanaged that as well.

This particular budget is so bad on so many levels and so shortsighted on so many

levels. It provides little or no help to anyone. It’s grasping at straws, and I believe

it will be the ultimate failure of this government. I believe it will be the downfall.

This government has become so entrenched in ideology that they can’t…. They have forgotten

how to actually help people.

You need to have a small sliver of taxes from a very big pie to have a robust economy.

If you do not have a robust economy, you have to start going deeper and deeper into

people’s pockets. That’s exactly what this budget has done.

[2:25 p.m.]

It has cut the very nature of things we need, like long-term-care facilities. It has

hurt businesses by adding PST onto services that they don’t need at a time when they’re

already under immense pressure. It goes after people on minimum wage and seniors.

Now people — I would say to them — are going to look and say: “Jeez, do I want a raise?

Do I want to work overtime? Because if it bumps me into the next tax bracket, in addition

to the extra half percent I’m going to get clipped already by this budget, I’m going

to be worse off.” Like groceries and rent aren’t hard enough to buy already.

This budget and the implementation of it helps absolutely no one. It removes safeguards

in place, like the Merit Commissioner, to make sure that there is transparency. I

know this budget got recorded as a D. I would say it’s a triple-F — failure, failure,

failure.

I wish it was different, for the sake of this province. I wish it was different, for

the sake of those that are trying to open up a business or trying to feed themselves

or stuck with the very difficult choice of deciding whether they’re going to pay rent

or food or just pack up and move.

It is generally a pleasure to speak in this House, but I found no pleasure in talking

about this particular implementation act, because there’s not a heck of a lot of good

to cheer about.

Amna Shah : I am quite pleased to rise today to speak in support of Bill 2, the Budget Measures

Implementation Act.

Before I begin, I just want to acknowledge and thank all of the staff that make us

look good in our communities and the work that we do, who dedicate, really, their

lives to servicing our constituents; and also all of the people that stand with us,

whether we’re in our constituencies or whether we’re coming to this amazing chamber

to do the people’s work. I extend my sincere gratitude to all of their service, because

it truly does transform lives.

This budget that we’re talking about, through the Budget Measures Implementation Act,

is about protecting the services that people really rely on. It’s a bit more than

that. It’s not just about protecting the services. It’s about continuing to build

on the record level of investment in infrastructure, in health care, in education,

in housing, so that we can improve our communities, our standard of living, meet the

needs of the people across the province.

I know that for the past eight years, this government has been investing in communities

across British Columbia, and it’s to benefit everyday British Columbians, not just

the specific few but everyday British Columbians.

I want to take a quick trip down memory lane for what prompted some of these key investments

that have truly changed the lives of people, including people that I love and that

I care about, the people that are closest to me. I take a trip back in my mind to

my brother’s challenges crossing the Port Mann Bridge, at the time, which was tolled

quite heavily. And it was to the general discontent of the majority of my community.

I mean, who wants to pay to use a bridge every single day just to get to your job

that provides you and your family sustenance? I don’t think anybody ever wants to

do that. But as an individual, my brother, who was helping build this province, had

to go over that bridge every single day. He complained to me….

[2:30 p.m.]

You know what? Going over that bridge was something that affected my preference and

where I would like to take a job, actually. I was quite young, and I wanted to be

cognizant, because it builds up over a year. It’s in the multiple thousands, actually,

depending on how much you used that bridge.

I remember MSP premiums and my co-workers, my colleagues, having to pay that. It truly

was a burden.

I think back to my mom, who’s been an educator her entire career, an early childhood

educator, a Montessori teacher who’s educating children in their most formative years

of their lives, a Montessori teacher with great hopes and aspirations to help shape

our future, who wasn’t even making a decent wage at the time. It was heartbreaking

to see how much she put into it, as I know many educators do. It was difficult for

her, even, to see some of the parents who would struggle to pay their child care fees.

It wasn’t a good time. I saw a lot of people in my community, my closest loved ones….

I did see them struggle. That’s why the investments that this government has made

over the years are really transformative on people’s lives. I saw that happen.

Just to get back to some of these challenges, look at the tolls on the bridge. When

we went out there and spoke to people and we heard that this was not what it is that

people wanted…. They couldn’t afford it. The B.C. government of the day…. We removed

the tolls on the bridges. We got rid of the MSP premiums. They were not just an inconvenience;

they were major burdens on people’s families.

My mom was the beneficiary of the wage increases for ECE teachers directly. The parents

that she knew who were putting their kids through child care were the beneficiaries

of the early stages of the child care plan from its inception. All of these investments

that we’re talking about had a direct impact, and they matter. This budget is about

building on those investments.

These investments have been poured in despite all of the challenges that we faced.

We’re talking about some of the most challenging times in our province’s history,

in national history, global history.

I mean things like COVID-19 that really stopped our lives. One day we realized that,

oh my gosh, this is something like we’ve never seen before. The impacts of that are

still felt today in our communities.

I’m talking about floods, wildfires, and now we’re still facing challenges. We’re

talking about a trade war that’s threatening attacks on us, dependent on what a certain

individual feels like when he wakes up in the morning — we’re good, then we’re not

good — affecting our economy every single day.

You know what? Looking back, I’m so grateful to be a British Columbian because we

have seen our communities come together, helping each other. We have seen our communities

lifting each other up.

I want to take this moment to thank every single British Columbian who has stood up

to get us through some of these challenges. In the pandemic, we had heroic health

care workers, day in and day out, who spent time away from their families to put themselves

in harm’s way to help others, to save lives.

[2:35 p.m.]

I want to thank the member for Vancouver-Kingsway, who at the time was the Minister

of Health. He stood up every single evening, every single day with Dr. Bonnie Henry

to give us an in-depth analysis of what was going on in the province.

There was immense work that was put in through the Ministry of Health, through doctors,

through nurses, through all of the workers, the essential workers in our hospitals,

in our communities, and I want to thank them. I just want to thank them.

We had neighbours who were helping each other through floods, through wildfires, through

some of the most horrific moments of each other’s lives.

All of these things affected us, and they still continue to do so. It’s a difficult

time. I completely feel that. It is a difficult time all across Canada, in every single

province in this country. And you know what? Even though we have the second-lowest

net GDP-to-debt ratio, families are still feeling it. Families are feeling it.

With Budget 2026, it provides $37.7 billion over three years for capital projects

like schools, hospitals, roads, bridges, transit, because we know we have to keep

our economy going.

I support a budget that cares for people in my community, in Surrey. It’s about investing

in our kids. It’s about investing in health care. It’s about expanding opportunity,

figuring out creative and innovative solutions and partnerships with other sectors

— even non-profit organizations, the business sector — so that communities have what

they need to thrive, and that again, we are working together. This year’s budget continues

to deliver some of the most historic investment that Surrey has ever seen.

I’ll just start off with health care. We had this constant conversation about us needing

a new hospital in Surrey for many years — actually, probably for a decade. We knew

that we were about to expand in population and growth, and we needed that. It’s unfortunate

that the place where it could have been was sold off. It’s unfortunate. But we had

to get back to the drawing board. We had to fix the mistakes of that previous government.

So that’s exactly what we did. We’re continuing to deliver that new Surrey hospital

and B.C. cancer centre. It’s a $2.88 billion project. It’s not a small project. It’s

a state-of-the-art facility, which includes 168 in-patient beds, advanced imaging,

surgical suites, oncology services and, yes, an emergency department as well. I’ve

heard misinformation out there about it not having an emergency department. It certainly

does. Let’s just correct the record here.

I’ve been to the site multiple times to see the progress and to see how many skilled-trades

workers, construction workers, are working at this site. For some of them, this is

their first job. They’re being trained in partnership with the developer, with the

contractors, with the government to unlock opportunities for workers who are just

starting off in our skilled-trades sector and our construction sector in general.

I’m incredibly excited to see this state-of-the-art facility come to life when it’s

done.

In my own riding of Surrey City Centre, we have made and continue to make some enormous

investments in making it a place of educational excellence. We’re talking about the

new medical school, the first in over 50 years, coming to Simon Fraser University

— in 55 years, to be exact — which is going to train 648 future doctors in a 12-storey

facility that includes a family clinic and child care spaces.

[2:40 p.m.]

We’re talking about education for the future. We know people want to have families

and still be able to go to school and still train to become doctors, and we need to

accommodate that. So we build with that.

This project in itself is going to create over 3,000 jobs. As we see it open in 2030,

we have an interim space that’s ongoing, ready to accept new medical students this

coming year.

I am so excited for the first cohort of 48 students that are going to be attending

the first medical school here in B.C. in over 55 years. I really am. And I know the

families in my riding and the families across Surrey are happy about that too, because

they want to be able to live, they want to be able to work, they want to be able to

play in their city and locally.

And you know what? Also a special place in my heart is the cardiac catheterization

suites that were just opened in Surrey Memorial Hospital. A person who’s very near

and dear to me just recently had a procedure at one of those cath lab beds. Just to

see that that transfer to Royal Columbian didn’t need to happen…. That’s what needed

to happen before. Patients had to be transported over the bridge to Royal Columbian,

and it just was not ideal for anybody getting treatment at cath labs that was living

south of the Fraser River.

And we’re not done. We’re going to continue to invest through our acute care tower,

which is going to expand capacity. I heard members talk about that today. It’s going

to expand capacity at Surrey Memorial Hospital, including specialized services, women’s

health, pediatric services. So there is a lot more coming in terms of investments

for health to really expand and make health care services available to people living

south of the Fraser.

I just want to speak quickly about mental health care and our investments in mental

health care with this budget, and protecting the health care services that people

count on. We want to make sure that we have the resources to keep hiring the doctors

and the nurses and the health care workers that we need so that people can rely on

getting care when they need it.

This budget provides $131 million to support mental health and addictions treatment,

including expanding ACT teams all across the province, 100 new involuntary care beds

in Surrey and Prince George, and really expanding mental health supports across our

province and in Surrey as well. I was just at an announcement to open up ten new treatment

beds at a detox facility in my riding as well. I feel quite lucky.

One of the things that really is so near and dear to me is our continued expansion

of Foundry centres all across our province. Surrey City Centre just opened a new Foundry

centre, which was so needed in our community, a brand-new area of help and mental

health supports for our youth aged up to 24 years of age.

We’re going to continue to expand, through this budget, new Foundry facilities across

the province. We have 19 open right now. I think we’re going to get 16 more that are

on the way. These services, which are accessible in many different languages, are

culturally safe and informed mental health care and primary health care, life skills

training, all under one roof. These are transformative spaces for our community.

So we’re not going to just step back, because we understand the crucial need for these

services, especially during times of global instability, economic instability. We

understand the need for these very crucial services.

[2:45 p.m.]

I just want to pivot over to some of the investments in education in Surrey and the

historic investments that we’ve already made and continue to make.

Clayton Heights Secondary. We’re doubling capacity there with new additions to the

school that have spaces for Indigenous learning, for child care. This project that’s

going to open its doors in 2029 is going to be a welcome addition to the Clayton Heights

community.

Fleetwood Park too. I see the member from Fleetwood is here in the chamber with us,

who I know is very happy about expanding room for 800 more students at Fleetwood Park

Secondary. It is going to be completed in just a couple of years.

Projects like this just mean less crowding in our classrooms, in our schools, at a

point where Surrey’s population has really exploded in such a short period of time.

We know that we have to act and we have to act quick, and this budget ensures that

we continue with that type of work.

Education, whether it be early childhood education or whether it be elementary, secondary….

We all know that our post-secondary students require extra assistance at times and

extra care, and they do deserve that.

When I was at Kwantlen Polytechnic University to unveil the new $143 million student

housing and dining project, I just realized how many families that’s ultimately going

to impact. I mean, 358 beds, a 161-seat dining hall, hundreds of jobs in the creation

of that space. It is almost up to, I would say, 800 direct and indirect jobs that

it’s going to create.

It’s going to be the first student housing that KPU has ever had. We’ve seen the transformation

of KPU from Kwantlen University College to Kwantlen Polytechnic University. We can’t

stop there. It can’t be stagnant. It has to continue.

It’s important for families, especially during this time of global instability, to

be able to get around with ease. There are more and more families that are switching

from their car commutes to using public transit. I know that every time I have any

meetings or any events in downtown Vancouver, the SkyTrain is the way that I go downtown.

I would not get into a car and drive downtown — many reasons why. I fully support

taking public transit because it’s so convenient.

We’re trying to make it even more convenient for people outside of the Vancouver downtown

core to get there and back home. The Surrey-Langley SkyTrain extension, which is 16

kilometres of an expansion of the Expo Line, is so important to families in Surrey,

families in Langley and beyond, because it really unlocks the opportunity for jobs,

for opportunities. These are not just commutes; they’re livelihoods.

I referenced earlier in my speech that even something as simple as tolls actually

made me reconsider the opportunities in my life. Really bridging that connection that

previously wasn’t there is going to unlock economic opportunities and benefits for

communities outside of Vancouver and Surrey and Langley.

This budget supports that development. It supports the very strong need for that type

of development and innovation that we need in our province right now.

[2:50 p.m.]

Really, when you take all of these things together, these projects represent billions

of dollars in investments, tens of thousands of jobs and a future where our schools,

our hospitals, our universities are ready for the next generation. They’re places

of excellence. They’re innovative. They’re creative. They’re a draw for people — not

just locally, not just out of town, but a draw for the rest of the world.

We have people in our communities who are leaders in different sectors and fields,

and we have to invest in them, which is why this budget doesn’t just support core

services, doesn’t just preserve them, but it looks to opportunity and advancing opportunity

for the amazing people in this province who are going to take us forward. So while

we protect our critical services, such as health care and education, we just want

to make sure that people get the support that they need, when they need it.

As the Parliamentary Secretary for Mental Health and Addictions and Anti-Racism Initiatives,

that is the work that I do every single day. It’s finding opportunities, creative

projects that bring our community together. So when I speak about things like Foundry

or mental health care, it comes from deep within me, because I see how many lives

it transforms every single day.

I see it in the youth that use Foundry services, who say to me that they never thought

that they could feel so safe getting treatment, getting health care, that things are

so accessible that they just have to take out their phone. They just have to look

for appointments, in the comfort of their own room, feeling like they can finally

not be alone.

These are the things that we need to ensure that we keep investing in, and that’s

what Budget 2026 really does here, so I’m proud to support Bill 2 for the implementation.

There’s so much here that we need to really highlight, because our commitment to British

Columbians has never wavered. It never has, and it never will. At a time like this,

where there are multiple threats on the horizon….

We are going through that right now. We see what’s happening in the world, and really,

I’m worried about what that may bring, just like the families of Surrey, British Columbia,

just like the families of British Columbia everywhere. But I know, and I am confident,

that we can get through this when we get through it together. We’ve done it before;

we can do it again.

When we roll out a budget that protects what matters most to people, it strengthens

the system that people rely on. It builds a more resilient, more equitable, more caring

province, and it also recognizes that we have a lot more work to do. I don’t think

there’s anybody on this side of the House that thinks: “Drop the budget, we’re done,

and yay.”

I don’t think any of us believes that. We’re fully in understanding of the challenges

that we face right now, and I commend all of the members in this House — all of them,

both sides — for the work that they do every day. We may not see eye to eye on things,

but I truly feel as though all members of this House care for British Columbians.

I’m looking forward to getting to know all of the other members more, to be able to

work with them on some creative and innovative ways on how we move forward, because

there is no other way. Today I thank you for entertaining my thoughts on this bill.

Again, I just want to give a big thank-you to my staff here at the Whip’s office,

my staff in my constituency office and all of the people who uphold the work that

comes not just out of this chamber but out of the constituency offices, out of the

ministers’ offices, out of the public service offices.

[2:55 p.m.]

I don’t think that I could find a bunch that I could be more proud of, and it’s been

an honour of a lifetime. I never thought I would be here, but I truly am thankful

for everyone that surrounds me.

Kiel Giddens : I rise today to speak to Bill 2, the Budget Measures Implementation Act.

I do want to thank the previous speaker for her words about the work we all do in

our constituency offices. I fully agree that all of us are here to serve the public

and work on our constituents’ behalf. Whether we agree with a policy or not, the intent

behind it and the care is real, I believe, as well. So I thank the member for her

comments.

I want to start with what the Budget Measures Implementation Act, Bill 2, actually

is achieving, and that is something I did not hear from the previous member. There

was a lot of talk about spending, so what was actually in the budget. But I want to

get into what this particular bill actually means.

When we hear the words “budget implementation,” yes, that sounds like the administration

of the budget and the spending. It looks like a routine piece of legislation that

just adjusts the financial rules, and spending happens. But let’s call this bill what

it really is. It’s a tax bill. That’s something that we didn’t hear from the previous

comments. Bill 2 is the legislation that turns the tax increases from this year’s

budget into law.

[Lorne Doerkson in the chair.]

Every tax increase that families and businesses will feel from this year’s budget

is implemented through this bill. When we debate Bill 2, we’re debating the real financial

consequences that British Columbians will face in their paycheques, in their household

bills and in the cost of running a business. Unfortunately, when we look at the contents

of this bill, what we see is government asking British Columbians to pay more at precisely

the moment when many of them can least afford it.

Earlier this session, just a couple of weeks ago when we debated the budget, I spoke

about the people I represent in Prince George–Mackenzie. I spoke about the seniors

who come into my office because they can’t keep up with the rising cost on a fixed

income. I spoke about working families who are watching their paycheques shrink as

groceries, fuel, housing and child care are paid, but there’s too much month at the

end of the money. I spoke about small business owners who are exhausted from rising

costs and regulatory pressure.

Those conversations are the lens that I am looking at this legislation in Bill 2 with.

When I apply that lens of those families, the seniors, the small businesses, I see

a series of tax measures that will increase the cost of living and the cost of doing

business across the province.

Let me begin with one of the most significant measures in this bill, and it’s the

increase to the lowest personal income tax bracket. Bill 2, as it is in the budget,

raises the base provincial income tax rate from 5.06 percent to 5.6 percent. I know

that sounds like a very small amount, but this is significant. This is a 10 percent

increase in the lowest tax bracket.

For the lowest earners in the province, this hits their wallets the hardest, and it’s

broad-sweeping. That, in fact, impacts all families, because the lowest tax bracket

includes everyone, as well, at the first levels of their tax, so that’s significant.

This is the first increase in the lowest provincial income tax rate since 2008. For

nearly two decades, governments of different political stripes recognized that raising

the base income tax rate affects everyone and particularly those who can least afford

it. Because the lowest bracket applies to the first portion of income that every taxpayer

earns — that’s what I just referenced — that means this tax increase affects workers,

seniors, young families and new entrants into the workforce.

[3:00 p.m.]

Those young workers are who I’m very concerned about. They’re trying to make it. They’re

trying to afford their first home, perhaps. They’re trying to, perhaps, move out of

their parents’ house, but it makes it much more difficult to do when we’re taxing

them more.

Everyone pays this. It comes at a time when British Columbians are already facing

the most significant affordability pressures in a generation. As I said, groceries

are more expensive. Housing costs still do remain extraordinarily high. Fuel costs

are high, particularly in northern and rural communities, which I represent. Insurance,

utilities, transportation costs — all high costs on families.

The question British Columbians are asking is really a simple one. Why is the government

choosing this moment right now, when British Columbians are struggling, to raise income

taxes?

The income tax changes don’t stop there. Bill 2 also includes a policy that may sound

technical but has consequences. It’s the freezing of the income-tax-bracket indexation.

Previously, income tax brackets rose with inflation. That means as wages increased

to keep up with rising prices, workers were not pushed into higher tax brackets simply

because inflation had increased their nominal income. The indexation was designed

to protect taxpayers from something economists call “bracket creep.”

Bill 2 freezes that indexation. In practice, that means that as inflation continues

and as wages slowly rise to keep pace with the cost of living, more and more income

will be taxed at higher rates.

Workers may receive modest wage increases simply to keep up with rising prices, but

instead of those increases helping them to get ahead, they will increasingly be captured

by the tax system. Even if someone’s real purchasing power doesn’t improve they will

still pay more tax. That’s not tax fairness. It’s simply a quiet way of increasing

the tax burden year after year.

A very glaring tax measure in Bill 2 is one of the most significant expansions of

the provincial sales tax in, I would say, a generation. For the first time, the PST

will apply to a wide range of professional and business services. This includes accounting

services, bookkeeping services, architectural services, engineering services, private

security and non-residential real estate management. All of these services will now

be subject to 7 percent PST. These aren’t luxury services; they’re the cost of doing

business. They’re essential components of operating a business responsibly.

I’ve spoken many times in the House about my own family’s small business, that I grew

up with. My dad still runs Giddens Services, an appliance and electronics repair business.

This will go to the costs that my father and my uncle, the two business owners, pay

for bookkeeping; that they pay for all of their accounting, that they pay for the

things that they need, fundamentally, to run their business.

Engineering and architectural services are required for the construction sector and

real estate development. Security services are increasingly necessary for businesses

facing vandalism, theft and property crime. I’m going to touch on that a little bit

more. These are operational necessities. When the government adds 7 percent tax to

those services, it increases the cost of running a business across the province. This

comes at a time when the payroll taxes and the cost of doing business has been added

on many areas.

I recall the government…. When the NDP first came in, they didn’t run on an employer

health tax, but it hit small businesses very hard, including my own family business.

This is all passed through in higher prices, reduced investment and fewer jobs overall.

I have talked about this in the House before, but before entering public life, I served

as president of the Prince George Chamber of Commerce. I spent a lot of time listening

to small business owners. I know how tight the margins can be, because I’ve talked

to them about it. I know that many businesses operate on very small profit margins

as it is, while trying to keep their employees working and their communities thriving.

For those businesses, the expansion of PST to professional services is something major,

and it has real cost for them.

Consider a business that hires private security though. Because theft and vandalism

have become serious problems in communities, small businesses in Prince George have

had to do just that.

[3:05 p.m.]

Larger businesses in Prince George, like London Drugs, have security present at all

times in their stores. They’re paying this every day and then having to pass that

on. We’ve seen in Vancouver that cost led to the closure of the London Drugs location

in the former Woodward’s building. Those businesses will now pay 7 percent more for

protection for their business and their properties.

The city of Prince George pays for private security in our downtown as a band-aid

solution because of the growing cost of vandalism and theft and challenges that we

have, that we’ve talked about so many times in this House.

Now we’re actually going to be saddling municipalities with that increased cost and

that goes on to people’s property taxes. Those are the taxes that each and every homeowner

is going to pay. Every business pays into property taxes.

Layer after layer of cost is added when we add taxes like this, and it happens at

a time when business confidence in British Columbia is already fragile. When taxes

and costs rise faster than economic growth it discourages investment and it discourages

entrepreneurship. Who wants to start a new business when they know that it’s just

going to be harder and harder to get ahead?

We heard the business surveys from the Victoria business improvement association.

The majority of businesses would actually leave and shut down their business if they

weren’t locked into leases. That’s the dire situation that we are in, in this province

right now when it comes to businesses and entrepreneurship. Ultimately, that’s going

to hurt us in the long run. It’s going to hurt job creation. It’s going to hurt those

opportunities for young people in this province.

These tax measures, as I’ve said, will not only affect businesses. They’ll affect

homeowners. Many strata corporations rely heavily on professional services, particularly

accounting, engineering and property management. Those services are essential to maintaining

safe buildings and properly managed communities.

But when these services are suddenly subject to a new 7 percent tax, the costs of

operating strata buildings rise. We know that can often lead to disputes when strata

corporations are trying to save to make sure that they can afford to pay for improvements

to the building and not just for the basic services that they need to operate as a

strata.

Condo owners in British Columbia will see their monthly costs increase. Strata fees

are going to rise for those who are in those buildings. These folks are not going

to receive any additional services in return for that extra tax that they’re paying.

It’s simply a new tax embedded in their monthly bills.

When we were talking about the budget…. This is an area I talked about already, but

there is a measure in Bill 2 that will have a particularly significant impact on rural

and northern communities. This bill removes distinctions that previously recognized

the realities for northern and rural homeowners under the homeowner grant program.

For decades, those distinctions acknowledged that the cost of living in rural and

northern communities is different. Travel distances are longer. Heating costs are

higher. Fuel costs are higher. Access to services often requires significant travel,

yet under this legislation, those distinctions are removed.

For homeowners in northern communities, including those in Prince George–Mackenzie,

that change will translate into higher property-tax costs. For some households, that

change is going to mean $200 more per year. And $200 might not sound like a lot of

money, but on a household budget, that’s significant when it comes tax time, when

we all pay our property taxes. When you combine it with higher energy bills, higher

grocery costs, higher insurance premiums and the higher taxes elsewhere in the system,

it adds up and families notice.

That’s not to mention…. This is something that needs to be repeated time and time

again in this House. The wealth generated in this province — so much of it comes from

rural and northern B.C. The mines and obviously, the forest sector still contribute

so much to the province.

LNG and natural gas sector. Natural gas certainly did contribute a lot to this year’s

budget and that needs to be recognized. That also should be recognized for the natural

gas workers who get up every single day to make sure we have safe, heated homes in

our province, everywhere in B.C.

[3:10 p.m.]

Bill 2 also expands PST to items and services that many people rely on every day.

The removal of certain exemptions means that services like basic cable and land-line

phone services will face higher taxes. Maybe some people might dismiss this as outdated

technology, but in rural communities, land lines remain an essential form of communication.

Of course, these long-standing services that PST didn’t apply to previously, seniors

rely on them. Nearly all seniors, including those who may be watching at home today,

are watching on a basic cable package. They want access to see what we’re doing here

in the Legislature, and they want access to information about the news and what’s

happening in our province. Is that too much to ask? Rural households rely on these

services as well when cell coverage is unreliable.

Emergency services rely on land lines, and that’s going to have a cost to volunteer

fire departments, for example. When those services become expensive, it disproportionately

affects those who are already on fixed incomes. That is why these budget measures

are such a massive impact to seniors. It’s so challenging to see a demographic and

people who have given so much to our province, to have them on a fixed income being

saddled with these extra costs to their daily budgets.

Of course, what makes these tax increases particularly difficult to justify is the

broader fiscal context. This year’s government revenue is projected to reach approximately

$85 billion. That’s the highest revenue level in the province’s history. Despite all

of that, at all of these tax increases, we have a record deficit. The province is

projecting a deficit exceeding $13 billion, as we know.

British Columbians are being asked to pay more in taxes, and the government finances

continue to deteriorate. It’s a structural deficit. Government is basically trying

to plug holes in the Titanic at this point with these measures. That raises a fundamental

question about the government’s overall fiscal management. Instead of saddling it

on the backs of seniors and small businesses and families, government needs to look

at how it’s managing its fiscal framework overall.

If revenue is reaching record highs and taxes are increasing, why are deficits still

growing? The answer, as many economists have pointed out, is that spending growth

has been outpacing revenue growth for several years. When that happens, deficits become

structural, as I have said. That leads to rising debt, and rising debt leads to higher

debt-servicing costs. Those costs ultimately compete with funding for essential public

services like health care, education and infrastructure. Every dollar spent on debt-servicing

is a dollar that can’t be spent elsewhere.

I want to talk a little bit about accountability. These budget measures also contain

provisions that eliminate something that we have talked about already extensively

in this House, mostly in question period. It’s the elimination of the Office of the

Merit Commissioner and transferring, as the Finance Minister tried to argue, its responsibilities

to the public service bureaucracy within the public service.

The Merit Commissioner played an important role in ensuring that hiring in the public

service followed the merit principle. Not only that, I want to point to the fact that

something else was added to the Merit Commissioner’s responsibilities a number of

years ago. There were, obviously, wrongful dismissals, which were something that were

added to the Merit Commissioner’s responsibility. We need to have just service for

public sector workers. If they are wrongfully dismissed from their job, they need

recourse. The Merit Commissioner reviewing that is a proper check on government accountability.

Indeed, I would say that the Legislature, an all-party committee, did agree with that.

I’ll quote David McCoy, the Merit Commissioner. He said: “A non-partisan multiparty

committee of the B.C. Legislature recognized this in December when they approved a

three-year budget to our office to continue our independent oversight of hiring and

dismissals process in the B.C. public service. The committee expressed appreciation

for the office’s dedicated commitment to upholding merit-based practices in public

service hiring.”

[3:15 p.m.]

That’s how important this was. All parties were involved in this. Members from both

sides of the House made that recommendation. Yet on the same day the budget was introduced,

we had the committee stand up. That’s where this report came from, from that committee’s

important work.

I will also say that the Merit Commissioner’s office, in their service plan, said:

“It is notable that since ’22-23 there has been an increase in merit-not-applied findings

and a decrease in merit findings.” That’s why this is more important than ever. We

can’t run a government based on friends and insiders. This cannot happen. The Merit

Commissioner was a check on that.

I asked the government what they are trying to hide. This is such a small savings

in the budget measures and the overall fiscal framework. What is going on in the government

right now, that they need to get rid of an office and lay off these important public

servants that are doing the work to protect the public interest?

I want to just highlight that point about dismissals again. Mr. McCoy also said: “Our

mandate expanded to include dismissal reviews in 2018. Only recently, a non-partisan

committee, a multiparty committee, conducted a legislative review of that responsibility

and affirmed the importance of this work, and that it remained independent from government.”

That goes back to recommendations that were made by Ombudsperson Jay Chalke because

of wrongful dismissals from the Ministry of Health that happened where health care

workers were dismissed and government was found in the wrong. The Ombudsperson supported

these workers.

The important thing about that is the fact that one of these particular workers actually

took their life because of the wrongful dismissal that actually impacted their mental

health. That’s how serious this is. Removing the Merit Commissioner’s office is something

that is disrespectful in my opinion.

Government is obviously making choices in this budget, and rewarding friends and insiders

may be one of those choices. I sincerely hope not, but there’s a pattern that’s emerging

here. When we step back and look at this legislation as a whole, I want to reiterate

that this bill raises income taxes. It expands sales taxes. It increases property

tax burdens for rural homeowners, it increases operating costs for businesses, and

it does so during a period when affordability pressures are already intense.

British Columbians are not asking for more taxes right now. They’re asking for relief.

They’re asking for stability. They’re asking for a government that recognizes the

financial pressure that they are under, that seniors are under, that families are

under right now.

People in Prince George–Mackenzie understand that governing involves difficult decisions.

They understand that public services must be funded. Yes, we have to have taxes. I’m

not disputing that. But it has to be fair.

They understand that economic cycles change, but in return, they also expect responsible

fiscal management. They expect that when government revenue reaches record highs,

taxes will not continue rising. They expect that rural communities will not be asked

to shoulder a disproportionate burden of the tax burden in this province. They expect

that policies will strengthen the province’s long-term economic competitiveness.

As we’ve seen from what we’re hearing from the business community, that’s absolutely

not the case.

Deputy Speaker : Member, can I just interrupt you just for a moment? I think we’ve got a member about

to seek leave. Apologies.

Sunita Dhir : Mr. Speaker, may I seek leave to make an introduction, please?

Leave granted.

Introductions by Members

Sunita Dhir : It’s my absolute pleasure to welcome another group of students on behalf of the member

for Vancouver-Fraserview. We have 28 grade 5 students along with their teacher, Johanna

Molt, and other staff members.

[3:20 p.m.]

They’re from École Anne-Hébert, which is the first francophone school in B.C., established

in 1983. The school serves 323 students from kindergarten to grade 6.

May we all welcome them to the House again, please.

Deputy Speaker : Very glad to have you here, everyone.

We are debating Bill 2, and we will return to Prince George–Mackenzie.

Apologies, Member.

Debate Continued

Kiel Giddens : Well, of course. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I just want to wrap up my remarks. I am just about at my completion here. I want to

say that, unfortunately, the tax measures contained in Bill 2 move B.C. in the opposite

direction. They increase costs for families. They increase costs for businesses. They

increase costs for rural homeowners.

The demographic that I am most concerned about is the fact that they increase costs

for seniors. Seniors have done so much to build up this province. They’ve paid their

taxes. They’ve done so much to support all of our families.

I think about my grandparents. My grandpa on my mom’s side worked in the mining sector.

He worked up in the Cassiar mine, then at Endako near Fraser Lake. He worked at the

Similco mine in Princeton. He paid his taxes. He contributed so much to the province

and to our health care system by doing that.

The resource sectors, like what my grandpa worked in, in mining — they paid for the

public services that we inherited. So to tax seniors more, that’s the problem I have

the most with this Bill 2, the Budget Measures Implementation Act.

Our seniors deserve better health care. We heard from the budget that, in fact, there

are cuts to long-term-care beds. Seniors are struggling and want to stay at home,

but now that choice is more challenging for them as well. The cost that we’re adding

to their fixed income is going to be more expensive with these budget measures that

we’re implementing under this bill.

I ask that if things are considered within this budget, let’s consider the seniors

that we need to be supporting, and let’s try to make some changes, amendments, to

these budget measures to really focus on what we’re doing and how we can actually

support seniors.

I urge the government, whether that’s the PST increases on cable or land lines, whether

it’s yarn that seniors are using to knit the sweaters for their grandchildren…. All

of that needs to be looked at in the context for what it is.

For all of the reasons I’ve discussed, I can’t support Bill 2. I appreciate the opportunity

to speak to this bill. I look forward to hearing from the members opposite and members

on this side of the House as well.

Hon. Diana Gibson : I rise today to represent the constituents and members across Oak Bay–Gordon Head,

whom it is my great privilege and honour to represent, and to speak today to some

of issues that I know I’ve had questions about from members across the community,

whether that’s such a diverse community of seniors, working families, businesses,

small businesses and young students that are at the university and college.

The issues I hear from them are common, of course — challenges with affordability

in these times of rising prices, concerns about caring for a loved one, a family member,

caring for aging parents. The issues across all of them are really the things that

I carry with me into this House every day, and I’m going to speak to some of the ways

that Budget 2026 helps to deliver for them.

I’m really proud of the ways that this budget does help to deliver for community members

by protecting the programs and services that they need. The budget puts people at

the heart, tackling the challenges that families face, supporting businesses in uncertain

times, and laying the groundwork for a stronger B.C.

[3:25 p.m.]

Budget 2026 prepares us to move forward, to build a stronger economy while keeping

people at the centre of every decision. It invests in communities, strengthens essential

services and ensures that the people in B.C. thrive today and into the future.

To build a strong future, Budget 2026 outlines multiple measures that strengthen our

economy. It’s about making thoughtful choices to protect the services British Columbians

rely on, while we position the province to be resilient and strong in the long term.

I want to start by talking about health care, because that’s a key issue across our

communities. By expanding access, this budget is supporting health professionals and

strengthening mental health and addiction services. We’re enhancing education and

supports for families and children as well, ensuring that young people have their

best start in life.

We’re investing in communities and infrastructure to make schools and hospitals, transit

and local facilities safer and more connected. We’re supporting jobs, making opportunities,

by helping businesses to innovate, grow and create meaningful jobs across our province.

Our government is committed to delivering this for the people of British Columbia.

Since 2017, we’ve been working to strengthen the services that families rely on, expand

the opportunities for our young people and ensure communities are safer, healthier

and more connected. We’re bringing child care costs down and expanding supports that

families need.

Budget 2026 invests $330 million over three years to protect and stabilize the progress

we’ve made in child care. Let me restate that. We are investing more in our child

care because we know how critical that is for women and families. As we come closer

to International Women’s Day, I know the emphasis that we need to be placing on ensuring

women have the supports they need.

At the same time, we’re continuing to strengthen supports for children and youths

with diverse needs. With $475 million in investment over three years, we’re building

a more flexible, more equitable support system to ensure they can access the resources

they need to thrive and live full and happy lives.

Budget 2026 continues the work our government has been doing to rebuild our K-to-12

system after the devastating challenges and cuts under the Liberal government. Our

budget is reinvesting both in building schools and in adequately funding the teachers

and the supports that are needed with $634 million in new K-to-12 funding over three

years, including much-needed investments in the classroom enhancement fund that will

help bring more teachers, more special education supports and more counselors into

our classrooms.

This is something I hear from family members and from teachers across our community

— that it’s so critical that we’re continuing to support these pieces of our education

system.

I want to turn to safety, something else that we hear across greater Victoria. There

have been concerns about safety for community members and businesses. I’m so grateful

to the city of Victoria for their community safety and well-being plan — which, I

have heard from businesses and service providers, is making a difference on the ground

in Victoria.

With $139 million in new funding for justice and public safety, our government, in

Budget 2026, is continuing to support this kind of work, reducing repeat and violent

offenders and supporting timely access to justice. We’ve been lobbying and working

with the federal government to ensure that we have the kind of protections we need

for our businesses and our community members through that justice reform.

On capital, there was a huge infrastructure deficit when we came into government in

2017, a huge infrastructure deficit left by a government that hadn’t built the kind

of investment of schools and hospitals and infrastructure that was needed over those

17 years. We’ve been building the capital, but it comes at a cost, because when you

don’t build for decades and then you need to, it becomes quite a bit more expensive.

Our government is continuing to invest in the capital that we need to support our

student housing, our hospitals, our schools, our transit, across communities from

Vancouver, Surrey and Mission to Prince Rupert, creating jobs, improving lives and

ensuring that we’re building the services and infrastructure people need.

We’re also working to ensure that when people come to get the services they need,

those services are there. In Budget 2026, health care was made a huge priority and

continues to be invested in, with $2.8 billion in new funding over three years to

expand capacity and improve access for people in B.C.

[3:30 p.m.]

This includes $2.3 billion to grow our province’s health care system capacity, hiring

more doctors, more nurses and health care professionals, because I’ve heard across

our community that there are still members not connected to a family doctor or nurse

practitioner. We’re connecting people every day, but we know there’s more to do. That’s

why this investment is in Budget 2026.

We’re advancing planning and development with the operation of more hospitals and

health facilities. And of course, the new training facility for doctors that we opened,

the new medical school, is going to be opening its doors in September.

This year Budget 2026 also introduces new investments into in vitro fertilization

coverage, supporting nearly 1,800 families to help build their families. We’re securing

hundreds of millions in federal contributions, also, to expand essential medications,

including diabetes treatment and enhanced menopausal hormone therapy, which became

covered just last weekend.

Also, we’re improving supports for seniors outside of hospital settings, ensuring

they can receive high-quality care closer to home and in their homes, maintaining

independence in their communities as they age.

I want to turn now to some of the things that are happening right here in our south

Island community of Oak Bay–Gordon Head. In Budget 2026, there are investments in

post-secondary, with the University of Victoria’s Engineering Computer Science Building,

a new building that’ll give space for 500 more students, delivering on the province’s

commitment to new technology seats throughout B.C. It’s expected to support 604 direct

and indirect jobs, and the province is committing $97 million towards the cost of

that project.

Also, Camosun College. Students at Camosun will soon have on-campus student housing

for the first time at the Lansdowne campus. A new six-storey wood-frame building will

combine five floors of student housing alongside additional amenities and services.

Other investments across the south Island that we’re continuing to make in this budget

include long-term care in Colwood. We know that on the south Island, long-term care

is needed, as our population has a high proportion of seniors. That’s why we’re investing

in a new facility in Colwood for a total of 298 residents.

Additionally, our government invested in the new centre for Indigenous law at the

University of Victoria, a groundbreaking investment in a university, the world’s first

joint degree program in Indigenous law. It has a beautiful new building on campus.

Other investments that this government has been making from 2018 to 2025 include schools

like Cedar Hill Middle School and Victoria High School, upgrading and making schools

safer and building new spaces.

I want to speak for a minute about the housing side, because there have been concerns

raised around what this budget delivers for affordable housing. One of the things

that’s really important to note is that since 2017 in this province, our government

has been delivering more than 95,000 homes in communities throughout B.C. — 95,000

homes.

We are seeing rents fall. Asking rents fell 4.7 percent, compared to this time last

year. That’s because our government has been doing the work to ensure that we’re building

non-market and market housing people need.

B.C.’s renter’s tax credit is also part of this, helping renters with up to $400 per

year for low- and moderate-income renters, individuals and families. B.C. also capped

the maximum allowable rent increase and tied it to inflation, at 2.3 percent in 2026,

down from 3 percent in 2025. That rent control, when I talk to students and working

families in our community, has been a critical part of helping them tackle affordability.

We continue to be committed to ensuring that we’re helping with housing affordability

through that rent control.

As part of the federal budget, GST has been eliminated on first-time homebuyers on

homes up to $1 million to help with affordability for home buyers. Of course, there

are thousands of more units still coming, across our province, as we continue to work

on building the kind of housing that people need in terms of affordable, below-market

and market.

In the Oak Bay–Gordon Head area, there have been huge investments across housing and

units that have been built in a range of different types of affordable housing by

our government.

This includes, for example, the Balmoral Road development in Victoria, 56 new permanent

homes with supports. Princess Avenue, 28 units of transitional housing, in partnership

with the John Howard Society. Discovery Street, 94 of the former Capital City Centre

Hotel rooms, 96 in temporary supportive housing units.

[3:35 p.m.]

Nigel Valley housing, 70 new affordable rental homes for people with low or moderate

incomes. The Juniper, 48 self-contained furnished studio homes for people at risk

of homelessness. Meares Street, 48 new permanent supportive homes for young adults

19 to 27.

Kwum Kwum Lelum, 45 homes for Indigenous people experiencing homelessness. Linwood

Court in Saanich, 98 one-bedroom affordable homes for seniors. SȾÁUTW̱ First Nation in Saanich, a five-storey building with 24 two-bedroom suites for working

families.

Across town at Douglas Street, 100 affordable rental homes for individuals, seniors

and families in 54 supportive homes. Burnside Gorge at Cecilia Road, 88 new affordable

homes for low- to moderate-income individuals, families and people with disabilities.

Our government is working to build the kinds of homes people need — working families,

seniors, young people, Indigenous people experiencing homelessness — across the range

of housing, and we’re going to continue to do that work.

I want to turn for a moment to the tax side of this budget. In order to deliver the

programs and services our community needs, we need to see a growing economy, and we

also need to focus on tax fairness. I’ve spent much of my career working on budget

analysis and tax fairness, and I’m proud of the work that this budget does to do both — revenue generation and tax fairness.

The government has been focused on keeping costs down for people, reducing taxes for

middle-income and working people. Global uncertainty is slowing growth everywhere.

High costs, global instability and volatile commodity prices are putting pressure

on public finances.

[The bells were rung.]

Deputy Speaker : Minister, could I just ask you to pause just for one moment.

Hon. Diana Gibson : Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

When I talk about the tax issue here in our budget, it’s really important for us to

recognize that the priorities for our government, in how we structured the financial

side and the tax side of this budget, are to protect public services like health care

and education, while keeping B.C. one of the lowest-taxed provinces for families and

reducing the deficit responsibly over time.

One of the ways we’re working to achieve this is by increasing the base rate in the

first tax bracket by less than 0.6 percentage points and offsetting that for low-income

British Columbians through a tax credit.

Many people don’t understand how this system works in terms of the marginal tax brackets,

but everybody pays, in their first bracket of income, the same tax at that lowest

tax bracket, including anyone from billionaires like Chip Wilson to low-income working

families. Everybody pays that same tax.

What we’ve done is lifted that level up so the wealthier people like Chip Wilson would

be paying a higher tax at that bracket, while we give the money back to low-income

people in a tax credit. That is making our system more fair and more progressive,

while ensuring that we are capturing the revenues we need to support the programs

and services people need.

We’re mindful of the costs for British Columbians and affordability challenges, and

that’s why we’ve ensured that lower-income individuals receive an increased reduction

in their tax credit so that they’re better off. Even with this change, middle-income

British Columbians will continue to have amongst the lowest taxes in the country.

Another question people have asked around the tax system is on the expanding of the

PST. This is an important issue to talk about. I myself am a former small business

owner, and I know how challenging the margins can be for small businesses.

When we’ve got the supply chain challenges and cost escalation, small businesses struggle.

That’s why our budget is focused on ensuring affordability and protection for small

businesses, despite the expansion of the PST, which is important in terms of ensuring

we have the revenue base to support the programs and services we need to deliver for

British Columbians.

When we expanded the PST base to include additional goods and professional services,

it was to help diversify our revenue sources, to prevent cuts to health care, education

and the core services people rely on. It aligns B.C. with how other provinces apply

PST. It’s consistent with the way other provinces are doing it, allowing us to apply

services to a broader base of services.

[3:40 p.m.]

However, we know how challenging it is for small businesses, and that’s why our government

continues to ensure that the action we’ve taken for small business is there. Increasing

the employer health tax exemption threshold from $500K to $1 million in 2024. Enhancing

the film and television tax credit for productions in 2025. Enhancing the interactive

digital media tax credit in 2025. Increasing the small business venture capital tax

credit budget’s annual limit and encouraging investment in eligible small businesses.

Lowering the small business tax rate from 2.5 to 2 percent in 2017. We brought the

small business tax credit below where it was under the Liberals.

Small businesses are the backbone of our economy and our communities — 98 percent

of our businesses are small businesses. Our government is committed to working to

ensure that they can thrive and grow and be a dynamic part of our growing economy

into the future.

I want to turn now to talking a little bit about the ministry that I hold. I’m honoured

to have been appointed the Minister of Citizens’ Services last summer. The work done

by the Ministry of Citizens’ Services impacts the daily lives of British Columbians

from expanding high-speed internet across the province to the important work of building

equitable public services in partnership with the anti-racism data committee.

We have programs on technology. We have all of government technology and innovation

across our government in the Citizens’ Services Ministry, and we’re dedicated, through

our ministry staff, to providing over 300 government services through our 65 B.C.

service centres. We’re focusing on both providing digital services and providing in-person

services to meet every citizen where they’re at with their needs for access to programs

and services across our province.

I want to start with connectivity, because we know that connectivity is critical.

Whether you’re a business in a remote community, somebody working remotely, somebody

looking to study online or connecting with family and community, connectivity is a

priority. Our government has been expanding high-speed internet and mobile services

so that families, students and businesses can thrive in this digital age while being

able to live and invest in their local communities.

As a minister, I’ve had the opportunity to announce new connectivity initiatives that

are making a real difference across our province — projects that are opening doors

in rural communities, strengthening safety corridors along major highways and creating

new opportunities for rural and Indigenous communities.

Today 97 percent of homes across the province have access to high-speed internet,

a remarkable increase from even just a few years ago. In rural areas, access to high-speed

internet has grown from 57 percent in 2017 to 80 percent today. In First Nations communities,

from 66 percent to 88 percent in the same period. Some of those communities include

Bella Coola and the Nuxalk Nation and the Central Coast region, Clinton, Ruth Lake,

Deka Lake in the Cariboo, and many more.

These improvements reflect not only investment but partnership and shared commitment.

We’re not stopping there. We’re on track to ensure that more than 99 percent of homes

have access to high-speed internet through land-based, made-in-B.C. solutions. But

connectivity is not just about homes. It’s also about safety. Connectivity along our

primary and secondary highways is critical for emergency response, access to 911 and

peace of mind for travellers. That’s why we continue to partner with service providers

to build the critical infrastructure that is a priority identified by local governments

and First Nations.

B.C.’s extensive highway network spans remote wilderness and mountains to connect

communities across our province. Delivering cellular service in these areas presents

significant challenges due to high operational costs, limited power, difficult terrain

and severe weather conditions.

But we remain committed to working with our telecom partners to establish mobile connectivity

in every corner of our beautiful province. We’ve demonstrated a strong commitment

to expanding mobile connectivity with funding for public Wi-Fi to 28 rest areas and

five emergency call boxe