Opinion: Premier backpedals again on changing DRIPA after NDP MLA decides to vote no. Now what?
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VICTORIA — Since narrowly winning the 2024 election, Premier David Eby has made unprecedented use of confidence votes to corral NDP MLAs into supporting his legislative agenda.
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With previous governments, confidence votes were confined to the budget and throne speech, matters on which it was widely understood that the government would and should stand or fall.
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Eby has expanded the practice to include legislation in support of resource development, infrastructure projects and expedited environmental approvals, sometimes with no clear indication for why the designation was necessary.
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This time last year the government introduced the Infrastructure Projects Act to provide “accelerated” approval of “provincially significant projects that provide economic, environmental or social benefits to B.C.”
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This was said to be of “urgent” importance and therefore worth designation as a matter of confidence.
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It was duly passed into law with all 46 NDP MLAs voting to support it against 46 “nays” from the opposition parties and independents. Legislative Speaker Raj Chouhan then cast the tiebreaking vote to ensure passage.
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Thus the real reason for the premier’s use of the confidence designation: ensuring NDP MLAs and ministers turn out to support his latest policy whim while providing the Speaker with a rationale to break the tie and ensure the government lives to fight another day.
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In short, it is a tool for managing the government side of the house.
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But the aforementioned exercise in whipping the vote wasn’t half as urgent or essential as the premier made out.
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One year later, the Infrastructure Projects Acts is largely not in force. Its provisions have yet to be used to expedite even one infrastructure project. Nor has cabinet approved a single regulation to define what would constitute a “provincially significant project.”
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Instead the legislation and regulations are bogged down with Indigenous consultations. The government initially skipped those in defiance of its own commitments to the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
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For those on the irony watch, the premier lately finds himself nearing the brink of a showdown over his UNDRIP commitments. He’s been mulling yet another “confidence designation” to bypass a showdown of the related Declaration Act.
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But it has been challenging to keep track of the premier’s ever-changing positions on the fate of the Act.
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First he was going to amend it. Then faced with overwhelming opposition from Indigenous leaders, he was going to suspend the offending provisions.
