British Columbia Minute: Issue 128

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

📅 This Week In British Columbia: 📅

• The Select Standing Committee on Private Bills and Private Members' Bills will meet on Thursday at 1:30 pm, with the main item being a clause-by-clause review of the Motor Vehicle Amendment Act (No. 2), 2025, a private member's bill brought by Juan de Fuca-Malahat MLA Dana Lajeunesse of the Green Party. The bill would let a police officer immediately prohibit a driver from operating any vehicle in British Columbia for 30 days, and seize their licence on the spot, whenever the officer has reasonable grounds to believe the person was driving recklessly. It defines reckless driving broadly, covering stunt driving such as lifting a vehicle's tires off the road or deliberately losing traction, driving more than 40 km/h over the limit where the limit is under 80 km/h, and any speed of 150 km/h or more. The prohibition would take effect on the spot and carry no right of appeal, and it is written as an administrative penalty that does not require a criminal charge. A private member's bill reaching committee stage is unusual, as most never advance beyond first reading. The bill passed second reading on February 23rd and was reinstated this session.
  
  
• The BC Conservative caucus has now shrunk to 28 members, down from the 44 seats the party won in the 2024 election. The exodus accelerated in August, when Abbotsford South MLA Bruce Banman quit to sit as an Independent and called Opposition Leader Kerry-Lynne Findlay "unelectable". There have now been 10 departures since Kerry-Lynne Findlay became party leader, though one of those was a supporter of hers who left to create a by-election for her to run in. The turmoil has also drawn police attention: former Conservative MLA Ian Paton says the RCMP asked to interview him about an allegation that Findlay's chief of staff offered him a two-year party job at an MLA's salary if he would give up his Delta South seat so Findlay could run there. The RCMP have declined to confirm or deny any investigation.
  
  
• Golden, BC, will adopt permanent Pacific time after its final clock change on November 1st, despite strong local support for staying aligned with Alberta and the East Kootenay. The decision means Golden will be one hour behind communities to its south, which residents say could create complications for people travelling for work, school, sports and health care. A summer survey of 1,336 Golden-area residents found 55% preferred remaining on permanent Mountain Daylight Time, while 45% supported switching to Pacific time. Mayor Ron Oszust said council considered health, public safety, and alignment with the rest of BC before approving the change. Residents opposed to the decision are circulating a petition and have until September 9th to ask Council to reconsider.
  
  
• Premier David Eby has called a by-election in Abbotsford-Mission, with final voting day on September 26th, giving BC Conservative Leader Kerry-Lynne Findlay a chance to win a seat in the Legislature. The riding was vacated in August by Conservative MLA Reann Gasper, who stepped down to make way for Findlay and was then appointed the leader's deputy chief of staff. Gasper had won the seat in 2024 by roughly 2,500 votes, taking 55% of the vote. The New Democrats are running Pam Alexis, the former Mission mayor who held the riding from 2020 to 2024 and served as agriculture minister.
  
  
• Energy Minister Adrian Dix confirmed that a series of errors, including a botched currency conversion, led the provincial government to overstate its forecasted natural gas revenues by about $1.46 billion over five fiscal years. The biggest mistake came from a spreadsheet formula that treated figures already in Canadian dollars as if they were in US dollars and converted them again, and Dix called the resulting 44-cent overstatement in this year's per-gigajoule gas price a "serious mistake." Officials say the errors affect forecasting rather than actual revenues, and that corrections will appear in a quarterly fiscal report expected later this month, along with their effect on a deficit last pegged at $7.7 billion for 2025-2026. For the current year, the correction cuts forecasted gas revenue by about 24%, from $1.297 billion to $991 million. The Conservatives' finance critic, Gavin Dew, has called for the auditor general to examine the forecasts, saying the problem is not just an accounting error but "a credibility problem." The errors were first reported by Business in Vancouver and surface as the Province prepares a new natural gas royalty framework to take effect on January 1st.
   

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