British Columbia Minute: Issue 118

British Columbia Minute - Your weekly one-minute summary of British Columbia politics.

📅 This Week In British Columbia: 📅

• Prime Minister Mark Carney said developers did not "directly" ask him to pursue a federal-provincial plan to buy empty condominiums in British Columbia and convert them into affordable housing, insisting the program started with Canadians rather than industry. The initiative, announced alongside Premier David Eby, is one piece of a deal under which the federal government would invest more than $5 billion in BC infrastructure over 10 years, and would leverage financing tools to turn more than 2,200 vacant condo units into affordable homes. Carney said his government would aim to provide about 10% of the roughly $1.4 billion in overall cost involved, with any purchases made "at a discount at the right time," and acknowledged the rollout had not been explained well, with details not expected until the fall. Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre called the plan a "bailout" that should be cancelled, arguing Carney "wants to privatize the profit and socialize the losses" for developers who built during a housing bubble and now cannot sell. Housing experts have raised similar concerns. Recent federal housing data showed 4,376 completed condos sitting empty in Metro Vancouver as of last month, a 76% increase from a year earlier. The agreement also includes funding to cut the development charges builders pay municipalities by up to 50%, which the Government says could save up to $40,000 per unit.
  
  
• Public Safety Minister Nina Krieger announced a new Chronic Property Offending Intervention Initiative that will see the provincial government spend $16 million over two years targeting 420 repeat offenders it says are responsible for a disproportionate share of street disorder and property and retail crime. The program will create 12 regional teams of police, prosecutors and probation officers, among other staff, to identify offenders who need additional supervision and support based on their criminal history and risk. It builds on pilot projects running in Kelowna, Nanaimo and Nelson since last November, and the Government said police in Kelowna have credited that work with helping stabilize property crime trends, including a decline in break-and-enter offences. Krieger said retail theft and street disorder undermine public safety and place added pressure on local businesses. Jess Ketchum, co-founder of the advocacy group Save Our Streets, welcomed the initiative but questioned the cost of spending $8 million per year to supervise fewer than 500 people and warned the underlying drivers of mental health and addiction must still be addressed. He also asked what will happen once the two-year program runs its course.
  
  
• The community of Okanagan Falls, a settlement of 2,300 people south of Penticton, received its letters patent from the Ministry of Housing and Municipal Affairs and will incorporate as the District of Okanagan Falls while keeping its current name. The decision ends more than a year of uncertainty after the Province said last summer it was exploring whether the community's name could be changed during incorporation to better reflect the area's original language and culture, following talks with the Regional District of Okanagan-Similkameen and the Osoyoos Indian Band. Housing Minister Christine Boyle said engagement showed the existing name was important to many residents. Okanagan Falls is BC's first community to incorporate in 16 years and the only one to do so since the Province passed the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act in 2019, which states that Indigenous people have the right to designate and retain their own names for communities and places. Matt Taylor, an electoral director for the regional district, said the possibility of a name change and boundary adjustments was raised only after residents had already voted to incorporate, information he said they should have had before the referendum. The new district will include two areas held by the Osoyoos Indian Band and will require Indigenous consultation on matters such as conservation, land use and infrastructure. Residents will elect their first mayor and council in the October municipal elections, with full incorporation possible at the first council meeting scheduled for November 6th.
  
  
• As British Columbia nears the five-year anniversary of the deadly 2021 heat dome, activists are calling on the Province to strengthen its workplace heat exposure regulations. University of Victoria researcher Susanna Klassen said the existing thermal exposure rules are "not well understood, not widely known and not well enforced." WorkSafeBC documented 315 heat-related injury claims between 2020 and 2024, concentrated in transportation, public works, construction, food services and the film industry. A report makes seven recommendations, led by a call to set specific "trigger" temperature thresholds that would require employers to provide shade, water or breaks, a model Klassen said most US states already use but BC does not. It also urges better protections for migrant farm workers. WorkSafeBC said it currently requires employers to conduct heat-stress assessments and advises monitoring once temperatures top 23 C, and noted it is in the preliminary stages of a regulatory review that will include public consultation.
  
  
• The United States, Mexico and Canada are set to meet in about a week to review CUSMA, the continental trade agreement, in a session that will determine whether the three countries formally extend it for 16 years or continue under annual reviews. The review lands as July 1st marks six years since the deal took effect, and as US President Donald Trump has said the United States would be better off without the agreement and would like to see it terminated. Premier David Eby described himself as more of a spectator to Prime Minister Mark Carney's trade talks, saying it is hard to know what is happening from outside the negotiating table. Trade lawyer William Pellerin of McMillan LLP warned the US appears to be seeking a "wholesale renegotiation" rather than a routine review, with the threat of exiting altogether if its terms are not met. The US remains by far BC's top trading partner, and sectoral tariffs are already hurting industries such as forestry with no real relief in sight, while Laura Jones of the Business Council of BC predicted a "bumpy ride" with the US over the next six months. A report from the US-based Tax Foundation found that removing tariff exemptions on Canadian and Mexican goods could cost US households roughly $300 each in 2027. Eby said that if the Americans walk away from CUSMA, governments will have to devise some new trade structure given the scale of cross-border activity at stake.

🚨 This Week’s Action Item: 🚨

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