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BIGGER THAN ME PODCAST
169. Premier David Eby: Is The BC NDP on the Right Track?
Aaron Pete interviews Premier David Eby, discussing his political journey with the BC NDP and key issues like housing affordability, infrastructure, carbon tax, government accountability and addressing the opioid crisis in British Columbia.
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Politics. For me, my experience has been you think you're going in to do one job and something else happens. Events take place and the challenge is maintaining the focus on why you went, and for me it's always been housing.
Aaron Pete:Can you reflect on your journey so far in politics in BC? Obviously, housing is a top priority for so many people. As housing minister, what you learned during that time? How do you process during that storm of reaction whether or not you're on the right track or not, or whether or not there's too much political pressure to continue?
Premier David Eby:There wasn't a single new school built in Surrey in the last four years of the BC Liberal government under John Rustad and Kevin Falcon. Recognizing hide a title For the first time outside of a court process for a government to do that in British Columbia. Your message of individual responsibility is a really important one, but I think that government's role is to clear as much of the path as we can for people Having to take that step back and say we have to take a different approach here to recriminalize public drug use really difficult and necessary.
Aaron Pete:Andrew Weaver wrote a pretty harsh piece on you. He criticized the health care under your leadership and your fiscal policies. Can you talk a little bit about that? Today's episode is made possible in part by support from Enbridge, fueling quality of life in British Columbia for over 65 years. Premier, it is an honour to speak with you today. I'm very grateful you were able to take the time First. Would you mind introducing yourself?
Premier David Eby:My name is David Eby. I'm the Premier of British Columbia and really glad to be here. Thanks for having me.
Aaron Pete:It's an honour. I'm hoping first we can start with your past work, because I think it's really important. A lot of people complain that politicians, they say a lot of things, but where's the action going to be? And the action going to be, and you do, in fact, have a track record, and so we're able to kind of start with that. To introduce you to everybody, ndp Premier Glenn Clark once called you the future of the NDP and by 2018, mclean's described your role as handling every live grenade in BC politics. Can you reflect on your journey so far in politics in BC?
Premier David Eby:Yeah, yeah, sure, absolutely. It's been um, it's been um very personally, uh, challenging and fulfilling. It's been, um, the the most interesting job I've ever had and, um, and I hope, uh, lots of other people get the opportunity to, to try politics and to see what it's like. Um, I think a lot of folks are reluctant to step into politics, especially these days. They see, you know some of the harassment online or whatever, and they think, oh, I could never, I don't want to, you know, but it is a very rewarding and very interesting job.
Premier David Eby:Started in opposition, actually started losing you know, I lost three elections before I was elected for the first time. And when I was elected for the first time, I was in opposition and it was a great place to learn. Opposition is a great place to learn. The stakes are a little bit lower and you can kind of find your way. And then I was elected to government for the first time in 2017.
Premier David Eby:And the premier at the time, john Horgan, gave me some jobs that I thought would be challenging and interesting but not particularly controversial Attorney General, responsibility for ICBC and responsibility for the BC Lottery Corporation and I have to say I thought the Attorney General role would be the big and politically significant one, but actually it was ICBC and BC Lottery Corporation, because the Crown Corporation that sells us car insurance was losing a billion dollars a year, it turned out, and BC Lottery Corporation was laundering huge amounts of money through casinos and now not the corporation specifically.
Premier David Eby:Criminals were doing it, but they were failing to address it, and so you know it's been politics for me. My experience has been you think you're going in to do one job and something else happens. Events take place and the challenge is maintaining the focus on why you went, and for me it's always been housing with addressing the issues of the day, and you know it could be anything as recently as the collapse of a tree fruit co-op in the interior, or a wildfire, or a car insurer that's losing money. It's a fascinating job.
Aaron Pete:Your father is actually a personal was a personal injury lawyer, and so I'm just curious did that give you background understanding of how the system worked? Or did that open your eyes to some of the opportunities to kind of improve ICBC? Or was it really when you kind of took on that file that you started to understand the complexities of the system?
Premier David Eby:Yeah, I almost forgot that you and I are both legally trained. It's a huge benefit to have legal training for any aspect of politics, because it's the language of the legislature and it's the language of laws and you can really understand how the written word of the law relates to the policy outcome you're trying to get. So if it says you must do something or you may do something, how just that simple change in the law can make a big difference in people's lived experiences of the law in the community. So a bit of a sidetrack about law. Yeah, my dad was a personal injury lawyer. It made it very personal, the ICPC stuff, because he was actually in Ontario when the then NDP government under Bob Ray brought in some changes to Ontario's car insurance system. It was like a light no-fault system but basically destroyed his practice and he had to rebuild his practice doing other areas of personal injury law.
Premier David Eby:And so I understood the significance of the changes we were making at ICBC in terms of the people who are working in law on the personal injury side. I think it made me a little bit more sympathetic to the concerns that were raised by that side. But at the same time there were changes that needed to be made and they resulted in good outcomes for drivers. Rates were on an unsustainable track. The losses were massive and now we have rates that are $500 lower. They've been frozen for three years in a row. Rebates have been sent back on multiple occasions and ICBC is still adding to their bank accounts to be able to support injured drivers, pedestrians and others. So we're back on track there. No-transcript pay for it.
Aaron Pete:I'm curious that one seems like a good example of like when you make a decision as a political leader, there's a storm that can kind of follow decisions or a direction you choose. Just being on council for my community, like we're choosing to tear down this very, very old building, and then the posts start to come on social media of like oh no, they're destroying a landmark and like we gave the opportunity for people to give feedback before we took it down. But you kind of get that and then you go. Did I make the right call? Are we on the right track? How do you process that? Because obviously there's a huge reaction. Then things start to calm down and now we're all kind of okay, we're seeing those rebate checks, things are okay now Things are moving in the right direction. How do you process during that storm of reaction whether or not you're on the right track or not, or whether or not there's too much political pressure to continue?
Premier David Eby:Yeah, I mean, one of the things that you do see in politics is there's always another side. Even in issues where you think it should be pretty cut and dried and during COVID it's a great example like whether or not you should get a vaccine, it felt to me like a pretty straightforward oh my God, there's vaccines, let's get vaccinated. But there's always another side, and one of the things that we're really seeing is and some of it's just, you know it's in your example Anytime you're making a change, you're asking people to trust. You know we're making a change. What's coming next is going to be better and I don't know.
Premier David Eby:You know I wasn't alive in previous times in human history, but it felt like trust was a lot higher in institutions and government and in neighborhoods and each other, and so this is a time of limited trust. So, whether it's tearing down a building or whether it's taking a vaccine, or whether it's any government policy that's going to change the status quo, people have to trust that you're doing it for the right reasons, yes, but also that it's going to be a positive outcome. And so that's the big challenge of politics, to my mind, and doing politics well or not is your ability not just to communicate where you're going, where you want to go, but that you're actually able to come back after you made the change and say, yeah, we achieved it. Or earn trust by saying, no, we didn't, and maybe we could talk about decrim, but we didn't achieve what we wanted here, and so we have to go back and try again and to have the humility to say, yeah, we thought it was going to have this outcome, it didn't, and we have to keep pushing and changing.
Aaron Pete:Agreed and we will definitely get to decriminalization. I just want to go a little bit back to your record as housing minister and what you learned during that time.
Premier David Eby:Obviously, housing is a top priority for so many people. Just reflect on your time there and what you learned, maybe, and what are the next steps? Well, the housing file is really interesting because the issues have transitioned over. I've been in government and politics now for a decade and housing was an issue when it came into government and it's an issue today. In the early days, in opposition, what we were seeing was international investors coming in, bidding up housing prices beyond local incomes, and it's transitioned and it continues.
Premier David Eby:Investment-driven housing continues to be an issue, but now one of the biggest challenges around housing is population growth. So we added we're adding about 15,000 people every month to the province of British Columbia and that's 180,000 people a year. It's a good size city, new every year. We have to build a huge amount of housing and if we don't, then people are trying to bid up the existing housing that we have. There's just not enough space, and so that shift in the housing, the causes of the challenge and the policy responses that are required has been very interesting because it seems like a very straightforward and consistent issue Housing is too expensive for people to afford on their incomes.
Premier David Eby:But the policy responses of what government should be doing and how to respond to the challenges we're facing has changed over time, has changed over time, and so it's an incredibly complex issue of everything from zoning rules to interest rates and financing, to programs and incentives that governments can put in place, and how we use public land and how we use private land and infrastructure and all these things. Nobody wants to hear it. When they can't find a place that they can rent, that they can afford to rent, they're just like where is that place and how are you going to deliver it? It's a really hairy problem.
Aaron Pete:Agreed, and one of the things I guess I just want to reflect on is I think it's really important that we don't lose faith, and I don't know where this hopelessness is kind of being driven from, but I think I just bought my first house, like a couple of weeks ago.
Premier David Eby:Wow, like a couple of weeks ago. Wow, congratulations, it was a huge step but we're very excited.
Aaron Pete:I bet we move in September.
Aaron Pete:That property transfer tax is going to be tough to swallow, but we've got it all covered and I just I look around at my peers and go like you need to just work harder and try harder and like you need to really push yourselves.
Aaron Pete:Like we've been through a lot as Canadians throughout human history, like we've been through a lot and I think the only message that I didn't like hearing from so many different peers and friends was like I don't know how you're going to do it, I don't know if it's going to be possible, I don't know if you should bother. Maybe it's just a renter society now. And it's like we can rise to this occasion, like citizens can rise up and start to take steps, to work hard, try and find ways to support themselves and grow into these homes and I know there's a lot of challenge. But like that's one of the great things to me about being a Canadian or a British Columbian is like we rise to the occasion, we step up when we need to and we do our best to rise up into those circumstances and I just I want there to be more hope in the atmosphere. Do you know how we kind of bring that hope back to people.
Premier David Eby:Yeah, aaron, your message of individual responsibilities are really important one. And one of the ways that people lose hope is they have that attitude that you have, like I'm ready, I can do it, I'm ready to go, and then they're foiled by some kind of rule or some kind of process they have to go through or some kind of requirement that it's completely deflating. And then, once you lose that momentum, it's really hard to get it back. And I'll just give you an example. If you're looking at being creative and like, how am I going to be able to afford a place? And you're like, okay, well, maybe if I go in with a couple other friends, we could buy a single family home and we could divide it and we could all each have our own living space. And you're like, okay, well, the math works and we figured out with the credit union how we're going to do a mortgage and all these other things. And then you go to the city and they say, well, you need to do a public rezoning process. It's going to take two years. It depends on whether or not the neighbors support a multi-unit on that site. And it's like we can't the thing that we want to do, that we can achieve the kind of housing in the neighborhood where we want to be for our family. You know we can't do it.
Premier David Eby:It's very like I think that government's role is to clear as much of the path as we can for people to be able to to leverage what you're talking about when you have the stars aligned in a way that you're able to take advantage of an opportunity and get into the real estate market or whatever it is, get that training, do that new job. The government's job is to clear the way. We can't do everything, but we can clear the way and make it possible for people to do these things.
Aaron Pete:The last one on housing is just we at Chihuahua we've applied to BC Housing for funds through their Indigenous Housing Fund. We're very excited about that. We're seeing other investments take place through BC Housing and I think affordability is one of those key pieces where we're starting to see investments in co-ops or investments in low-income housing. Can you talk a little bit about that?
Premier David Eby:Yeah, I think one of the things about the housing challenge that we face in the province and it's not just us, it's across North America and Europe, it's a conversation around the world right now is how do we deliver that affordable housing? We have to address the speculation. We have to address people that are buying up homes and converting them into hotel rooms through Airbnb or leaving them vacant as investments and all those other pieces. We have to be building more housing by addressing those zoning rules I was talking about and making it easier and faster to build the housing we need. We have to directly fund more affordable housing as government to bring down some of the barriers for people that can't afford other types of housing. We have to use public land more effectively by building housing on it that's actually affordable and attainable for middle-income people.
Premier David Eby:We need to do all of these things. We need to do everything that is possible in every program, and the thing that is surprising to me is, in the housing discussion we're having politically is I hear from the other parties well, we're not going to do this and we're not going to do that. We're not going to restrict Airbnbs, we're not going to do the speculation vacancy tax. We're not going to allow multiple units on a single family lot. Well, how can you respond to a crisis when it's a? It's an emergency and I think housing is actually an emergency that you have to do all the things. And so we're doing all the things and that's the commitment, and that includes, as you're mentioning, co-ops. It includes the province funding housing on reserve, which is something that the province has never done before. Because we need to do it. We just recognize that it has to be done.
Aaron Pete:We have to do all of the things and we're going to Well, just to comment very briefly to wrap up this discussion on housing. I'm incredibly grateful we put this application in, but explaining the BC housing opportunity in comparison to CMHC and Indigenous Services Canada is far better because the challenge when I joined and took over the housing portfolio is we had 89 homes. None of them had ever been maintained, invested in, there was mold in all of them and I lost a patch of my hair trying to address this issue out of fear of like people live here. I would not live here, I would not be willing to be in this circumstance, so it's unacceptable. So we took Christmas off, we pushed forward, I kept doing applications and trying to prepare, but we'd never had a clear process.
Aaron Pete:Like a lot of people don't know that we're responsible for basically the rent, landlord, maintenance of community and like all of their homes, and we don't have real big resources to pull on.
Aaron Pete:And now we're seeing investments from the federal government. But this opportunity to be supported in this housing investments is is incomparable to any other program because it puts us in the position to work with the third party operator to make sure that people maintain their homes, pay their rent on time and then we actually get to make sure that it's a quality place to live for 40 years, rather than building a two-story place and then not maintaining it for 40 years and looking and going oh no, look at the housing on reserve, it doesn't look good. Like this is a real, solvable issue and like I believe that the investments the provincial government has made is allowing indigenous communities to have housing that's of quality that people can be proud of, because it's not fee simple land. It's not treated in the same way, so it's very difficult to get investments in those communities and I'm just very grateful for the process that took place in the quality of lives.
Premier David Eby:I'm really glad to hear that. I have to admit, when I first heard the proposal and it was when John was Premier I was like why are we as the province doing this? The federal government should be doing this. It's their responsibility squarely. But the more that I was exposed to the reality that it's just not going to happen Like if we just wait for the feds, it's just not going to happen Then it was pretty obvious that this was the right direction. And to see the results now, as you say, see these places open up, people move in it's really quite moving and amazing how it can be transformative in a community especially, you know, a lot of the communities are quite small. So if you have a 30 unit building or a 20 unit building, it can be just a massive change in the community.
Aaron Pete:That's actually quality right, Like we actually get to bring in an architect. They're designing it, they're making sure it's top quality. We're not cheaping out on anything like that. That's just something my community has never seen, so I'm super grateful for that Awesome. The next conversation is fiscal management and credit rating downgrades. Under leadership, we've seen credit rating downgrades. Would you mind talking about that?
Premier David Eby:Yeah, we had. So there are three major credit rating agencies for the province of BC and one of them downgraded us and the main reason given by the agency was concern about our capital expenditure. So that's capital expenditure is the money that's spent on building up the province roads, schools, hospitals, housing, the physical things, not the services and we have a massive capital budget. I'm going to make an announcement today, actually, actually about Highway 1, right out near Abbotsford, and the reason why we're putting so much money into capital and I think we're doing it in a responsible way. Our debt-to-GDP ratio, which is the traditional measurement of whether your debt's sustainable or not, is one of the lowest in Canada and we continue to be very careful about managing that, and we continue to be very careful about managing that. But the reason why we're building up this infrastructure in the province is because of the growth that we're seeing, the number of people. So Fraser Valley, where we are right now, has seen a massive influx of people. The schools are bursting at the seams because people are choosing to move here and we do need those folks to come to help build the future of British Columbia. But if we don't address the fact that the schools are full, that the hospitals are full, that the roads are crowded with traffic.
Premier David Eby:By building transit, by expanding the roads, by building the schools and hospitals, the resulting downgrade in the quality of life for our province will have knock-on effects in the private sector. You won't be able to recruit the employees you need. You won't be able to ensure that the employees that you have decide to stay because the schools aren't good and the hospital is not good and I'm sitting in traffic. I'm going to go somewhere else.
Premier David Eby:People are globally mobile right now, and so this is a time where we take the money, we do the building and we pay it off over generations, just like our grandparents did. That's the infrastructure that we're using right now. We're using our grandparents' infrastructure and there was a long period where government said we're not gonna put the money into that. There wasn't a single new school built in Surrey in the last four years of the BC Liberal government under John Rustad and Kevin Falcon similarly underfunded that critical infrastructure, and so we need to build those schools and it's just not negotiable in my mind. We just have to do it and, like a mortgage, you got to borrow it up front and you pay it off over the lifetime of the infrastructure.
Aaron Pete:Brilliant Reconciliation. Can you talk to us about the Haida Gwaii title agreement, the changes to the Land Act and what's taking place there?
Premier David Eby:Yeah, this was. Have you ever been to Haida Gwaii? No, it's amazing. I went for my first time this year and it was really quite an amazing place 80% Indigenous population, no overlapping claims from other nations, 20 years of Haida governance on Haida Gwaii and a process that started after Gordon Campbell had his realization that he couldn't fight Indigenous title, that he had to accept that this was a reality, going forward, new relationship work that they did, continuing that work to its culmination of recognizing Haida title For the first time, outside of a court process, for a government to do that in British Columbia.
Premier David Eby:Title's been recognized in BC, but only through a decade of litigation or through discrete treaty negotiations, and so this is a new way of doing things. It is a choice. The choice is can we recognize the rights that are here, the rights and title that are here, that we know that a court is gonna recognize it's very obvious or do we battle it out in courts for a decade, paying lawyers a bunch of money no offense to us as lawyers, right, but paying lawyers a bunch of money and then coming out the other end with the same result, except it's been decided from the bench and it hasn't been negotiated between governments. How are we gonna do this? And we've seen both models In the Silcotin 10 years in court crashing into title recognition of the Supreme Court of Canada.
Premier David Eby:It created a huge uncertainty on the land Haida Gwaii decades of negotiation, work, partnership and resulting in the title declaration for Haida Gwaii Businesses, local governments, haida standing together saying this is the right direction. We're all working together For Silcotin. We're still seeing those conflicts that went through the court process and so we just think it's a much preferable way of doing things and I'm really excited about that reconciliation work that we're doing.
Aaron Pete:I agree I think it's one of the leading areas. Looking at all the different reconciliation agreements, I look at Stahelis' and think about that. For my own community of like, how do we move forward in a good way and how do we take on more responsibility so we can start to contribute to the economy and kind of share our culture and language and values in a way where it lifts everybody up? The other piece I'd like to talk about is Métis people as well. I work at Métis Nation, BC and get to kind of understand their culture and their language and their values and one of the areas is the distinctions-based approach and I'm just curious if you could reflect on that and the role perhaps First Nations Leadership Council can play in kind of. I feel like the two are at odds with each other and perhaps that's being inflamed in some ways. Would you mind reflecting on that?
Premier David Eby:Yeah, it's a challenge and it's something I've only really learned about through my work in government about the relationship between Métis people and British Columbia and First Nations.
Premier David Eby:The anxiety, as I understand it from nations and it's best to hear from them directly, but as it's been explained to me is ensuring that Métis people's rights are recognized, while recognizing that they're not land-based rights, that the land-based rights are First Nations rights and that Métis people deserve the recognition around education and other services to make sure they're responsive to the needs of Métis people, but that when it transitions over into land rights, that's when the nations start to get really anxious, because the nation's understanding is, of course, that those land rights come from possession of the land at a certain period of time under the constitution, and so that's where the tension comes in.
Premier David Eby:Anytime it looks like there are land rights discussions being had or recognitions like that, I think that we're really getting to a place where there's broader understanding within government about that. There will continue to be tensions, but I've noticed recently that some of that temperature is coming down. We have been working with Métis Nation BC on a Métis justice strategy, the First Nations justice strategy. They're broadly complementary but they're separate and around education, similar kinds of things, and so finding those paths to be able to support Métis people in the province in the way that they want to be supported and partnered with, and the same for First Nations in the province, while recognizing those critical differences, is really important, I think, to both groups. And all of these things are a learning process. They don't just happen overnight and they come through experience and working together.
Aaron Pete:The next question I have is around the carbon tax. We're in somewhat of a unique circumstance and compared to other provinces, Would you mind reflecting on that and where that's sort of gone? I've spoken to Kevin Falcon who talked about it being revenue neutral and he discussed how that changed under the NDP leadership. Would you mind talking about the carbon tax and what your perspectives are on?
Premier David Eby:it? Yeah, sure. So the carbon tax was introduced in BC under Kevin Falcon and John Rustad I thought they would never. You know, they're extremely reluctant to admit that publicly and it wasn't revenue neutral. Government collected that tax and then said it was neutral because it helped pay for tax credits that already existed, for example for the film and television industry. This was something Mr Falcon did. So those things aren't correct.
Premier David Eby:But the situation is currently with the carbon taxes. The federal government has said you must charge a certain price for carbon in your province and so, regardless of what your provincial government is, everybody is doing that across Canada right now because that's the federal law and there's a lot of discussion about. Well, people don't like it at different provinces and all these different pieces, but they have to do it. It's the federal law and so if the federal government changes that policy, then we'll have a look at how we're doing things right now. Changes that policy, then we'll have a look at how we're doing things right now. But in BC, with that carbon price that the feds require us to charge, we're ensuring that the increase that they imposed on British Columbians is returned 100% actually more than 100% back to British Columbians as best we can and we're using the existing carbon tax revenues that we have to invest in things like transit, driving down emissions and actually reducing emissions. And it's how we've been able to reduce emissions despite dramatic population growth in the province, which is something that's important to a lot of British Columbians, and we see the smoky summers and the extreme heat dome kind of activities in this province in ways they're just starting to see across Canada.
Premier David Eby:British Columbians want to know that we're addressing the emissions but also that we're leveraging our benefits to grow the economy, because we got huge assets here that help us grow a low carbon economy, cheap electricity being the main one, and our timber supply and our mass timber industry.
Premier David Eby:So there are lots of economic opportunities for us in this as well, and we're trying to tie all those pieces together and we're seeing the results of a growing economy and reducing emissions. The thing that I don't understand is how in today's day and age you know John Ross Stead is the leader of the conservative says you know I don't believe in human caused climate change, it's a hoax and that if he's elected he'll ban climate science materials from classrooms and he wants to be the premier of British Columbia. I mean it's bizarre because he's going to miss the economic opportunity that our kids deserve of building a low-carbon economy. Because that's where the world is going, that's where Europe's going, asia's going and the United States hopefully continues to go. But also we'll fail to take the necessary actions to protect our kids too.
Aaron Pete:The other piece I wanted to ask about and this one. It doesn't get as much coverage, but it's something that my communities personally thought about and experienced is contaminated soil being moved on to First Nation communities and different areas.
Aaron Pete:Like I know, some people up in Columbia Valley are dealing with contaminated soil because, if I understand this correctly, it's cheaper for them to kind of convince a person on their CP land to kind of move soil onto their land and say, hey, we'll give you $500,000, knowing that the cost to actually deal with it is far greater. So it's actually worth the cost. And then they disappear and all the forms were kind of forged and they're gone and then we're left holding the bill and we're trying to figure out what to do. And I've heard this with numerous different First Nation communities. I've heard about it with Columbia Valley. I'm just wondering if you have any perspectives on how we go about addressing that, because it seems like the incentive is easier to do it this inappropriate way, because there's not enough accountability there to kind of prevent them from impacting riverways and waterways and freshwater and all of those things. Have you thought about this issue or heard about it?
Premier David Eby:Yes, I have. Yeah, so there's a couple of pieces. One is just fill, generally On farming government, we changed a number of rules around the agricultural land reserve where just fill was being dumped on farmland, making it unsuitable for farming, and there were insufficient rules to protect around that. And then when there's contamination, it's another level. So we've had to revisit how we do enforcement because there are people who have received multiple notices of infraction and fines and appear to be doing the math that it's better to just continue to operate in violation of the law and pay the fees and the fines rather than stop doing what they're doing. So we've had to go to court to get injunctions and we always struggle a little bit with the jurisdictional differences when it comes to reserve land and enforcement on a whole bunch of different issues.
Premier David Eby:But even just on straight up provincial land, we've had to revisit how we do enforcement because these people are highly motivated. Because these people are highly motivated, as you say, there's a lot of money to be made in dumping the soil and where there's kind of a willing partnership to evade provincial restrictions, like I'll take the contaminated dirt and I won't say anything. If you don't say anything, you pay me the right amount of money. It can be hard whether or not it's reserve or not reserve land. No-transcript for reserve land. You know the Ministry of Agriculture and the Ministry of Water, lands and Natural Resources will keep doing that work, and Ministry of Environment, of course.
Aaron Pete:Interesting Healthcare. Yeah, andrew Weaver wrote a pretty harsh piece on you. I don't know if you had the opportunity to see it.
Premier David Eby:No, I haven't.
Aaron Pete:Okay, he criticized the healthcare under your leadership and your fiscal policies and I'm wondering if you can just reflect. Of course, your two governments at one point in time worked together and then he wrote this piece and I'm just curious how you think about those issues.
Premier David Eby:Well, yeah, healthcare is the number one issue, I would say, for many premiers across Canada. It's certainly in our top issues here in British Columbia, and it's a consistent issue, which is we've had a cohort of healthcare workers retire from the system, especially after COVID, in large numbers, and we're also seeing massive population growth across the country, so we see increased demand for healthcare, and so the response from the provincial government has been three parts. One is we're going to train more healthcare workers, new spaces for doctors and nurses. We're opening a new medical school Recognizing the international credentials that people are already trained. They're in British Columbia, they're ready to work, but there are barriers to them practicing in BC. And the third is making sure that infrastructure's in place for them to be able to practice.
Premier David Eby:The physical spaces, the hospitals in this province are falling apart, so we're building new hospitals 13 newer, expanded hospitals right across the province and that also serves as a way to bring in doctors and nurses because they come into these beautiful new facilities. It costs a lot of money, fiscal management. These are deliberate decisions that governments made to open a new medical school. That costs money too. We've reached a new deal with the family doctors 300,000 more British Colombians have family doctors now than they did before. I was sworn in as premier and we reached that deal, and so we're making progress on these issues 7,000 new nurses, 700 new family doctors, and so we're turning the corner on these issues, except the critique. It's not acceptable. It shouldn't be tolerated that people can't access a family doctor, that there's a bypass on their emergency room or the emergency room is closed, and these are issues that are faced across Canada.
Premier David Eby:The way we're attacking this issue is different in British Columbia, because people deserve access to high quality care, and you're not going to get there by cutting the healthcare system, and I guess this will be part of the discussion. I can't believe it, but it'll be part of the discussion. In the election, john Rostad released his healthcare plan, a suggestion he's going to cut $4.1 billion from our healthcare system. Kevin Falcon yesterday announced that he's going to have an unfunded $5 billion tax cut and balance the budget within a year. Plus $10 billion has got to come from somewhere, so he's going to be cutting healthcare too. The results will only get worse. People have longer waits for surgeries. I don't know how you hire nurses if you're cutting $10 billion from the provincial budget, and that's what we desperately need.
Aaron Pete:Right. The one area that has received a lot of feedback from me when I said I had the opportunity to speak with you is this COVID-19 requirements in healthcare workers. Would you mind talking about the decision to change those rules? Was it a little bit late? What are your thoughts on that to change?
Premier David Eby:those rules? Was it a little bit late? What are your thoughts on that? So the provincial health officer, bonnie Henry who, by the way, on COVID, I think had remarkable results saving lives responding to the pandemic declared the health emergency over. Of course the pandemic is over for COVID, at least in the daily experiences of most British Colombians, and the result of that, the emergency measures related to healthcare workers expired as well.
Premier David Eby:We decided not to put a provincial requirement in that extended those emergency requirements around vaccination after she ended the emergency and instead have decided to look at things like measles, mumps, rubella, covid flu, all these other types of infectious diseases, to require all healthcare workers to declare their vaccination status. And if there is an outbreak in a facility, the workers who are unvaccinated can be pulled. So if there's a measles outbreak, we don't have the unvaccinated workers in the pediatric wards where kids can die from measles. They're pulled off the schedule and they're not working, and so it's a broader approach to vaccination. The COVID approach was very specific to one disease, but it felt a little strange to be like you must be vaccinated for COVID, but we don't have anything to say about the fact that you're not vaccinated for measles.
Aaron Pete:Do you have any reflections or regrets? I just I can't imagine your role. Like I think about my community 650 members. I try and keep myself accountable to them. When I ran, I really tried to run on a platform and making clear what I was going to do, and then I've tried to follow through on those things, even though many First Nation communities. One of the things we struggle with is we vote people based on last name and not always based on who has the best ideas or who's actually following through on their track record. I think about my role and then I think about your responsibilities and I just that feels like a lot of pressure. I feel like I'm under a lot of pressure, but yours is at a higher magnitude, and then you have to make decisions. Do you have any regrets or ways you process the decisions that you've made throughout your career?
Premier David Eby:Yeah, let me just start by saying the first race I ran that I lost was a race for local government. I'm very grateful that I lost because I actually think when you're working in a small community and you're the elected representative of, in your case, just over 600 people, you're accountable and available in a frontline way that at the provincial level and the federal level especially, you're more insulated from School board trustees, city councilors, mayors and others, first Nations council members and chairs, chiefs they're all more immediately accountable in the community. So I wouldn't understate the nature of the pressure that you face compared to the provincial government. There are always things and I imagine you've run into a similar situation there are always things that you would do differently in hindsight. That's the amazing and awesome power of hindsight. All you can do is, when you make a decision and you go forward and it's not working out the way that you want and it's not having the results you want, maybe it's having the complete opposite of the results that you want you have to have the humility and the willingness to say this didn't work and here are the reasons it didn't work.
Premier David Eby:And, um, we're going to go in this different direction and I think that that for me, if I can't do that and get reelected, then it's just who. I am right. We're here to solve problems, not to be ideological about it, to force through and say, oh, just wait a few more, it's going to keep working. We need to be able to say no, we're going to try something different, and I think that that actually is something that will rebuild trust in government for people is if elected officials are willing to say yeah, you know, like we used to pick up the newspaper and kind of agree on the issues and now it feels like more and more people have sub issues and they have different perspectives on everything, and I think it's so important that we just keep things about the issues and how we can kind of go about addressing them.
Aaron Pete:Do you have any examples of things you might've done differently or kind of that you look back on and go if I had a chance to do that over again, or maybe you're already doing some of those things.
Premier David Eby:Yeah, just to pick up on your comment, then I'll give you some examples. I actually think it's a sign of strength and not a sign of weakness to be able to say it didn't work, we're going to try something else. And, to be frank, in that way, and there is a culture and a sort of understanding of politics right now that's like you never apologize, you never admit that you were going in the wrong direction. You never and you always insist that it was the right thing to do. And we can see it in a lot of different examples, but the one that and we talked about a little bit earlier, but the one that definitely jumps to mind is decriminalization. You know, here's a scenario where we're working with the police and they're supportive of our approach. The advocates are supportive of our approach. Public health people are supportive of our approach. We say and I am supportive.
Premier David Eby:I have been a drug prosecutor. I prosecuted a young indigenous woman. It was one of the most traumatic experiences of my life. I wasn't even on the stand, I was the prosecutor and I saw that this wouldn't change her life at all and that this whole courthouse had been arrayed against her, that I was getting paid, her lawyer was getting paid, the judge was getting paid, the sheriff was getting paid, everyone was looked after except for her, and she was immediately released. I was a junior prosecutor. It was a minor violation and so she didn't go to jail or anything. There was no consequence and she left worse off, less trustful of the system.
Premier David Eby:And so when the suggestion came forward, like why don't we move away from this model of using the criminal law around people who are addicted? Why don't we move to this model of where instead we're focused on treatment and we use the money around prosecuting and all this other stuff to focus on treatment, get people in treatment and get away and then reduce some of the stigma around using? And the outcome was in many ways heartbreaking for me because you know, it's such a firm understanding that the criminal justice system is not suited to address addiction and I still strongly believe that. But to see that you know people struggling so hardcore with addiction that, in the absence of criminalization, that they're using on the bus, that they're using at the Tim Hortons, they're using at the hospital, they're using in the middle of the public park where the kids are nearby, because the only thing that's driving them in the moment is the addiction and the police saying because you removed our ability to arrest and move people and seize drugs and so on through decriminalization, we don't have a tool to address this anymore, having to take that step back and say, okay, that was not the result, that was never the intention that we wanted.
Premier David Eby:We have to take a different approach here to recriminalize public drug use Really difficult and necessary and I think, also hopefully a measure and a step to increase trust in the public like, okay, we do understand where you're trying to go, we'll give you the rope to be able to try different things, but we want to know that if it's not working out the way that you wanted, that you're going to fix it and you're going to go in a different direction. And so I hope that's what people are saying and that's what I'm sure we'll be talking about in the election as well.
Aaron Pete:Yeah, I was a native court worker for five years and I had the privilege of working with so many different clients and I do think that investments in recovery and treatment are so important. I'd have to send people, in order for them to get bail, into recovery homes where we knew that the person running the home was struggling with drug use themselves, and then I'd have to bring the person back and go. Well, they weren't successful. They ended up doing drugs again. But it was because of these kind of outlying issues that, like we don't control who's running these homes, they're making minimum wage and they kind of promote people up with from within, and so it's not always effective. But I will say, like I know that the court system isn't always the best place, but I have seen such a beauty in how people have approached reconciliation since working with Crown Council, working with judges. I think they really do understand the Gladue decision. I think they understand that we need to support people in a better way. We just need those wraparound resources to help people stay on the right track.
Aaron Pete:But, like one of my favorite stories and then we can start to wrap up here is just this individual came in. They were struggling their whole lives. They had been sexually abused since a child. I walked through their story and their experiences that they had told me. I presented that to the crown and to the judge and told their story, and the judge was just able to look at the person and say, hey, like I know, you've been through horrible things, that, like we wouldn't worse wish on our worst enemy and like I am so sorry and I am acknowledging the things you've been through, but I want you to go reach your full potential, because you're capable of so much more. You're a smart person. You deserve better than this life.
Aaron Pete:And that was incredibly moving, and it's not always a great place to do things in the court system, but there is something about that person sitting up there in a robe, being able to validate the things that you've been through that were wrong, disgusting and horrible, and have that kind of authority figure, give life to your story and respect it and then want you to go into a better direction. And so I do just think the people in that system are so much more amazing than I imagined. When I was in my undergraduate degree and we talked about systemic racism, I was sort of imagining that there was going to be a person being like who cares about these people, and then just seeing all these people want the best is something that gives me real hope as we go into the future. But would you mind telling people how they can follow your campaign, follow your work, so they can stay informed about the issues?
Premier David Eby:Yeah, sure, I'm pretty easy to track down. You can follow me on all the things. I'm on Twitter at Dave underscore EB, I'm on Facebook, instagram and I'm a Google search away.
Aaron Pete:Okay, brilliant. I appreciate you being willing to take the time to have this conversation. I love that we got to do a long form conversation. It wasn't three minutes. We were able to really get into some of these issues and I find that admirable for you to put yourself out. You didn't exactly know what we were going to be discussing today, but you trusted the process and I just really appreciate the opportunity to kind of dive into these things. I felt like you were really transparent and willing to kind of dive into the tough topics. So thank you so much for coming out today.
Premier David Eby:Yeah, thanks for having me, Aaron. It was a great show, and congratulations on your work here too. Thank you.
Aaron Pete:Today's episode is made possible in part by support from Enbridge, fueling quality of life in British Columbia for over 65 years.
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