Premier Eby Breaks Promise That Budget Will Not Be “On the Backs of Families”
By Sharon Small
A month before Premier Eby announced his budget, he promised not to “balance the books on the backs of families”—that his budget cuts would target “administrative costs and bureaucracy,” a sound policy when balancing the books. His budget, however, preserves bureaucratic bloat—at families’ expense.
Budget Decisions Affecting Low- and Middle-Income Families
Education: K–12 frozen below inflation; teachers, EAs, counsellors, and special needs support cut; Autism Funding Unit reformed—leaving families with no guarantee of continued funding to cover equivalent care; 177 post-secondary programs eliminated; 1,000+ faculty fired; $4,000 Access Grant for low- and middle-income students frozen since 2023; 510-bed student housing at UVic already funded and delayed to 2034—cuts leading to students spending more time and money before graduating, or dropping out.
Healthcare: Hospital construction halted; 12,500 positions unfilled; rural emergency rooms closing; 2,000 long-term care beds needed with no funding for new facilities; no funding for improving physician access—leaving 1.2 million British Columbians without a family doctor, the worst in any province.
Housing: $1.4 billion withdrawn, stalling shovel-ready projects for low-income and senior renters on fixed incomes—guaranteeing more homelessness and pressure on emergency services.
Income Taxes: Raised only on the first $50,000 earned—affecting 60% of BC’s lowest-income taxpayers, not the wealthy or corporations.
Jobs: 15,000 public sector positions cut over three years—civil service workers, teachers, counsellors, nurses, and care workers—not the managers above them.
Not revealed to the public is how the above essential family services will continue to erode due to Moody’s 2025 credit rating downgrade, the lowest in decades, which cited the province’s “weakening governance” and “structural deterioration.” Present interest of $5 billion is projected to soar to $8.7 billion by 2028, not expected to improve until there is a “visible timeline for governance reform.”
Had Premier Eby kept his promise to target bureaucracy rather than essential family services, his budget choices would align with fiscal expert advice to first cut management layers, executive salaries, and severance agreements that don’t reward success—and would provide Moody’s with a “visible timeline” for reform to qualify for a higher credit rating. One target should have been BC Ferries, a damning example of the bureaucratic bloat that drives escalating provincial debt, but preserved in his budget.
Subsidized by massive tax infusions ($500 million in 2023) and carrying its simultaneous record-breaking and ballooning debt, BC Ferries is seeking significantly increased government funding to avert 30% fare increases by 2028—not to improve service and accountability, but to maintain an unsustainable status quo that accounts for critics across the political spectrum demanding that executives get off the “gravy boat” and return the failing corporation to the Crown where its disproportionate drain on the public purse can be audited.
What BC Ferries’ Expenses Taxpayers Continue to Fund
Executive compensation: Eight vice presidents earning between $355,000 and $452,000 (CEO: $530,000)—including a 28.95% salary increase over four years—plus $10,000 vehicle allowance and generous expense allowances, all approved by the BC Ferry Authority, which has yet to pass a single resolution “in the public interest,” as mandated by the Coastal Ferry Act.
Executive severance agreements: Standard agreements include a “without cause” clause and 24-month salary and benefits continuance that exceeds both public and private sector severances. Former CEO Collins, fired for declining service, hiking fares, and rising debt, received $1.3 million—a 24-month salary continuation of $534,589, benefits, and $88,269 in accrued vacation, kept secret. If his successor, after three years as CEO, retired or were fired today amid escalating leadership failures, his severance would reach $1.4 million—including a bridge pension for 120 months to compensate for leaving his previous ICBC CEO position.
Expenses due to low worker morale: A 1.65% arbitrated wage increase has produced low morale, a 52% increase in turnover, and BC Ferries’ largest recruitment campaign to date—costs never disclosed to the public. Ballooning overtime expenses due to staff shortage cancellations—exemplified by ships’ officers logging nearly 20,000 overtime hours in nine months, with exact costs kept hidden.
Vessel repair costs: Not only for an ageing fleet, but undisclosed hundreds of millions for recently procured Coastal Class, Island Class hybrids, and the Baynes Sound cable vessels—deployed with design failures due to BC Ferries accepting low foreign bids rather than accurate ones that defer repair costs to the future, kept hidden, and revealed by the leaked 2023 Seaspan Shipyard’s Shirocca Report, withheld from the federal Transportation Standing Committee examining the $1 billion loan for purchasing four Chinese-built vessels.
Advertising Expenses: Critics claim that the tens of millions spent on advertising, hidden from the public, function to present a false reality—a successful corporation—not one that 35 coastal leaders representing the BC Union of Municipalities characterized in 2025 as an “existential threat” to coastal communities due to a lack of accountability for chronically unreliable service, hiking fares, and deploying defective vessels that break down right after launch—or one that Marine Workers Union President Eric McNeely claims wages “psychological warfare” on workers.
Increased interest on spiralling debt: BC Ferries’ core debt has already ballooned to $1.5 billion—excluding the $1 billion federal loan for Chinese-built vessels, terms of payment kept secret, but likely to be paid from federal tax reserves when the corporation defaults.
Premier Eby’s funding cuts are not “predictable” as claimed, or prudent—they will continue to increase debt paid on the backs of workers and middle-income taxpayers who see their quality of life and opportunities for getting ahead diminish. His broken promise in two elections to help workers and middle-income families “get ahead” accelerates the erosion of the post-war social contract assuring all residents have access to essential services, not just the wealthy. His budget, therefore, is a profound betrayal of public trust.
