From carbon tax to involuntary care: B.C. NDP shifts positions
Most recently, Premier David Eby has reversed course on a key pillar of the province’s climate change fight
His rivals are calling him Flip-Flop Eby.
B.C. Premier David Eby's opponents are slamming him for capitulating on issues where he once stood firm, including harm reduction, mental health treatment and now a key pillar of the province's climate change fight — the carbon tax.
Eby has spent the last 22 months defending the carbon tax, saying on Nov. 29, 2023: "Let me be clear. We will not back down. God forbid, if the rest of the country abandons the fight against climate change, B.C. will stand strong."
In March, when federal Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre wrote a letter to Eby asking him to help stop the planned federal carbon price hikes, Eby dismissed it as a "baloney factory" political tactic.
But the levy has become increasingly unpopular with British Columbians struggling to afford gas, groceries and other costs. According to an Angus Reid poll in March, 75 per cent of Canadians supported removing the carbon tax entirely.
Eby was the lone Canadian premier standing behind it.
That changed this week.
During a campaign-style rally in Vancouver with Manitoba NDP Premier Wab Kinew that was supposed to be about women's reproductive rights, Eby made the unexpected announcement on the carbon tax.
"I think it's critical to also recognize that the context and the challenge for British Columbians has changed. A lot of British Columbians are struggling with affordability," Eby told the crowd.
"If the federal government decides to remove the legal backstop requiring us to have a consumer carbon tax in British Columbia, we will end the consumer carbon tax in British Columbia."
Eby blamed the federal government's meddling with the carbon tax — which last year exempted the tax on home heating oil in the Atlantic provinces — for the erosion in public support for it.
"The political consensus we had in British Columbia has been badly damaged by the approach of the federal government to this issue," Eby said.
What he didn't say is that Poilievre has been relentless in his calls for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to "Axe the Tax," a slogan adopted by Rustad's B.C. Conservatives.
Rustad claimed victory, saying it's evident Eby's positions — on the carbon tax and on the approach to the mental health and addictions crisis — are changing because of the pressure he and his candidates are putting on the government.
"This sudden change and the flip flop around, I don't think that the public is looking for a premier who is that wishy-washy and flipping back and forth on its policies," Rustad said during a hastily called news conference in Vancouver Thursday.
Decriminalization and addictions treatment
Eby also changed course on decriminalization and his approach to mental health and addictions treatment.
In April, the province recriminalized drug use in public spaces, 15 months into the NDP's experiment to be the first province to remove criminal penalties for the possession of small amounts of hard drugs.
"We did decriminalization of small amounts of drugs in British Columbia, and it didn't work," Eby told CBC News last week. "We saw people using drugs in spaces where they shouldn't — on transit and in hospitals. We had to regroup and find another path forward."
In August 2022, when seeking the B.C. NDP leadership, and before he became premier, Eby said he supported involuntary care for drug-addicted people with brain injuries.
"I fundamentally disagree with the idea that it is respectful of someone's liberty and human rights to release them into the street to die of an overdose," he told the Vancouver Sun at the time.
He walked back that position after being admonished by the Canadian Mental Health Association and the B.C. Civil Liberties Society, the organization he once led.
But now, after a series of violent random attacks by people with mental health issues, Eby is once again exploring a model of involuntary care that's somewhere in between a forensic psychiatric hospital and supportive housing for people with addictions.
University of the Fraser Valley political scientist Hamish Telford says while he doesn't view Eby's position on the carbon tax as a flip-flop, he does see some "back peddling" from the premier on the issue of decriminalization and harm reduction.
That includes Eby's recent sudden edict that health authorities should stop providing harm reduction items, like clean needles and crack pipes, through vending machines outside hospitals.
The B.C. Conservatives have pounced on this issue as well, pointing to a Facebook post from Nov. 4, 2009, in which Eby, as head of the B.C. Civil Liberties Association, said: "We're in favour of the legalization and regulation of all currently illicit drugs."
As premier, however, Eby has turned down some of the recommendations from Provincial Health Officer Dr. Bonnie Henry, including a call in July to allow people to access safer supply drugs like hydromorphone without a prescription.
Eby said at the time there's a "zero per cent chance" that will happen under his watch.
In an interview with CBC News before his carbon tax announcement, Eby said changing his position on issues like decriminalization and involuntary care shows he's listening to the public and receptive to different ideas.
"I think people have the space to say if you try something and it's not working, have the courage to pull it back and try something different," he said.
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