During his oath-of-office ceremony, the new premier talked a lot about his domestic agenda. He touched on the opioid crisis, housing and health care.
British Columbia’s new premier David Eby took his oath of office Friday and immediately set the tone for a domestic agenda replete with commitments to improving housing affordability, access to health care and the transition to a decarbonized economy.
During a roughly 10-minute address to the audience of select dignitaries Eby spoke mostly about domestic social issues that need solutions, including the mental health and interconnected drug crisis in B.C. He also referenced the problems British Columbians are facing accessing proper public health care and the poverty and public safety matters affecting urban centres, especially Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside.
Many of these social challenges have been impacted by several other emergencies since his BC NDP took power in 2017, Eby added: “We did the list: pandemics, wildfires, floods.”“Our big economic challenge is linked to housing and linked to skills training,” said Eby, who hinted at new policies and laws to be announced next week on the housing front to accelerate building more rental housing.
Asked about government revenues to address spending on social programs, Eby avoided answering the question as to whether he would raise taxes on the wealthiest corporations and income earners. Instead, he stated his domestic agenda will depend on economic growth. The B.C. government intends to expand licences for natural gas extraction in the coming decades, with China planning to be a significant buyer of the liquefied natural gas product. The plan pits economic growth against the global environment, an issue that led to the rise of his one challenger for leader of the BC NDP — Anjali Appadurai, who was disqualified in a controversial manner last month.
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