British Columbia’s provincial election is just three days away.
Ahead of the vote, we sat down with each of the three major party leaders to ask them their vision for the province’s economy.
Here’s what they said.
BC Conservative Leader John Rustad
The business community has expressed concerns that big investments aren’t coming to the province due to uncertainty. How would you change that, especially in the resource sector?
Let’s use mining as an example. You go to Sweden, it takes two years to get a permit. You go to Australia, it takes two to three years. You go to Chile, it takes five years. You come to B.C. it’s 12 to 15 years if you are lucky, it can often take longer than that. When there is that kind of uncertainty, capital goes to where it is easiest to go. So if we are making it impossible to actually get things done here, nobody wants to invest in B.C.
When it comes to things like our forest sector, we are by far the most expensive jurisdiction in North America, companies are fleeing this province, we have seen a two-thirds reduction in our forest sector under the NDP. We need to be able to cut those costs down and get their feet back underneath it. With all of those things in the resource sector, but even with things like technology, AI, any sort of investment you can look at in the province, you need to simplify permitting.
Right now it can take years to get through a permitting process. Just a single cut block can take three years to get a permit. We need to do a single project-single permit process so we can have that confidence that people can come here and actually get something done in a reasonable time frame.
One of your candidates has suggested a Conservative government would give tax cuts to the top two per cent of earners. Is that true?
We have been very clear in what we are doing for taxes. Getting rid of the carbon tax is going to help the middle class, it is going to help everybody across the province. When you look at the Rustad rebate, it’s potentially capped at $250,000, so families making over that they don’t qualify.
We have not planned, and we will not be planning to do any other tax cuts than what we have announced, with a few exceptions, we’ve got a few more little adjustments we want to make.
Highlights from the BC Conservative Party’s platform on the economy include:
- One of BC Conservatives Leader John Rustad’s first announcements in the campaign was the “Rustad Rebate,” a plan to exempt $3,000 a month of rent or mortgage interest costs from income taxes, beginning with $1,500 monthly in the 2026 budget.
- Eliminate B.C.’s carbon tax
- Reduce small business tax by 1 per cent
- The party says it will exempt tips from provincial income tax
- Conduct reviews of core government revenue, B.C. capital plan, mining regulations
- Streamline major project permitting to a “one project-one permit” model
BC NDP Leader David Eby
Business leaders have said about a quarter of businesses have either left or are considering leaving the province, that more than 80 per cent of businesses say they feel like there are too many regulations, and 75 per cent say public safety issues are making business harder. What do you say to them?
It’s vital obviously for our government to work closely with business leadership to create the conditions for business success in the province. One of the ways we do that, I think, is by recognizing that British Columbians, if we are investing in the people in our province, we are giving them the opportunity to develop their skills, they will be able to take the jobs that are being created.
We have, among big provinces, the fastest GDP growth in Canada. It doesn’t matter if you look at last year, since the pandemic, or since we formed government, we have the fastest wage growth in Canada. But until people feel that at home they are not going to feel like our economy is successful for them.
So it’s people like Gord, who was moving boxes around in a warehouse for $20 an hour, and now he’s getting $62 an hour as a welder, giving people like Gord the opportunity to do apprentice training, to get into that job, where he can support a family. That also supports business because they get that welder they need, and they are not left turning down the job because they can’t find the workers.
What would you do to create more economic certainty in the province?
My impatience and my desire for our province to address all the big challenges people are facing means our government has been moving very quickly, and I think we need to bring the business community along. So one of the things I have committed to with the business community is an ease of doing business review in the province.
Highlights from the BC NDP’s platform on the economy include:
- Scrap B.C.’s long-standing carbon tax if the federal government dropped its requirement for the tax, and would instead shift the burden to “big polluters.”
- Exempt $10,000 of individual income from taxes every year, which translates to an annual tax reduction of about $1,000 for most households and $500 for individuals.
- Double Speculation and Vacancy Tax.
- Conduct an “ease of doing business” review to identify barriers to investment and entrepreneurship.
- Double trades apprentice training spaces
- Create “Clean Economy Transition Fund” with oil and gas revenues
- Create an industrial land reserve
BC Green Leader Sonia Furstenau
What do you see as the pillars of a thriving economy that would help support your plans for innovation in health-care, expansion in education, and other core service delivery?
You cannot have a thriving economy without thriving people. The pillar, the strength of the economy is really in the people. And we have had for so long this idea that the economy is somehow separate from people. No, the economy is people.
The economy is people moving goods and services and wealth around in that economy. What we have had for the last 40 years is governments that have said we will allow the economy to move money up into fewer and fewer hands. We now have a class of billionaires that collectively have more than $14 trillion in wealth and we have a deepening poverty in too many of our communities.
A thriving economy is what happens when governments invest in people, in education, in excellent public services, in transportation, and then look to the sectors that are actually serving the economy. That’s like high tech, that’s film.
Highlights from the BC Green Party platform on the economy include:
- Tax the wealthy, with proposals to double property tax rates for homes valued at $3 million or more and to implement an 18 per cent tax of corporate profits over $1 billion.
- Invest on a number of climate action, renewable energy and infrastructural fronts, including $650 million annually for municipal infrastructure to support new housing and $250 million to expand child care.
- Maintain the carbon tax with or without federal mandates, “introduce a windfall profits tax on oil and gas companies,” and redirect revenue from industrial carbon pricing to fund community climate action.
- Form an all-party committee for sustainable transport funding
- $20 million per year for skills training in the renewable energy sector.