The British Columbia (B.C.) Legislature resumed last week with the Speech from the Throne, delivered by Lieutenant-Governor Janet Austin. The Speech marks the opening of the fourth session of the 42nd Parliament and is the first Speech delivered as a government under the leadership of Premier David Eby. The Premier himself was absent from the Legislature to attend a Council of the Federation meeting in Ottawa. The Council will meet on Tuesday with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to discuss healthcare and increasing the federal health transfer to the provinces.

Today’s Speech describes the government’s priorities over the next year in a time when B.C. has largely recovered from the pandemic and prepares for potentially turbulent economic times ahead. The Lt.-Governor indicated that a budget surplus anticipated this Spring may not be available again in 2024 and that the government would be spending that surplus now and in several key areas.

“Your government has a proactive plan to deal with these global trends,” Austin said. “It will put this year’s surplus to work for people, to support them now and for the long-term.”

The Speech promised “record new investments” in healthcare, public transit, housing, and public safety and actions to help reduce the escalating cost of living. Many of the investments and measures mentioned in the Speech involve the continuation of programs and polices. Areas where new measures are mentioned include legislation to promote pay transparency, allow the seizure of assets obtained by criminals, crack-down on intimate images shared on the Internet, crack-down on gangs and money laundering, and enforce various environmental and polluter pay measures. The government will also introduce a new Emergencies and Disaster Recovery Act.

Altogether, more than two-dozen new laws are expected to be introduced during the Spring 2023 Legislative session. Other commitments include introducing a “refreshed housing strategy” in the Spring followed by new housing legislation in the Fall. Programs aimed at skills training, more efficient permitting, ESG, and improving goods movement will also be introduced.

The Provincial Budget will be introduced on February 28, 2023 and the Legislature will sit until the second week of May. We can anticipate, given the significant agenda forecasted in the Speech, a busy session with both Opposition BC Liberals (BC United) and Green Party MLAs applying not only scrutiny, but calling on the government to disclose the timing and expected results of its various initiatives.

Key parts of the Speech from the Throne are:

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To help people with rising costs, the government will:

• Implement new measures targeted to help those who need it most, including people with lower incomes and families with children.
• Extend childcare savings to parents with school-age kids, (not just pre-school or daycare).
• To put people who “play by the rules first”, the government will:
• Introduce new pay transparency legislation to highlight the gender pay gap and move closer to equal pay for equal work.
• Go after organized criminals, rich tax evaders, and corrupt officials. The government will seize their homes and profits and use the proceeds to support British Columbians.

To strengthening public healthcare, the government will:

• Work against healthcare privatization and bring healthcare workers back into the public system.
• Invest in new hospitals, a new medical school at SFU, an expanded medical school at UBC, and a new deal that will help more people find a family doctor.
• Get more internationally trained doctors, nurses, and health workers into hospitals and clinics to provide care.
• Work to get an agreement on health care funding with the federal government.
• Expand treatment and recovery services.
• Invest in cancer care by enhancing access to screening and early detection, diagnostic imaging, and treatments.

To make communities safer, the government will:

• Introduce legislation to crack down on gangs and money laundering.
• Implement new response teams made up of police, prosecutors, and probation officers to track, arrest and jail repeat violent offenders.
• Invest in the RCMP to ensure it can operate to its full capacity, especially in rural British Columbia.
• Strengthen the B.C. Prosecution Service bail policy.
• Work with all provinces and territories to press for urgent reforms to Criminal Code bail rules.

To address the current mental health and homelessness crisis in the province, the government will:

• Expand mental health crisis response teams into more communities, to free up police and get people in crisis help from mental health experts.
• Create a new model of addictions care that moves people from detox to treatment and fills the gaps between services where people might relapse and fall through the cracks.
• Take urgent action in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver to move people from dangerous encampments to more secure housing.
• Develop a long-term plan with every level of government and the community to address the ongoing crisis in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver.
• Develop strategies across the province to move people from encampments to decent homes.

To support strong and inclusive communities, the government will:

• Invest in local government to make their growing communities stronger and more liveable for families.
• Fund enrolment growth in classrooms, recruit new teachers, and build new schools in fast growing parts of the province.
• Continue development on the Broadway Subway project in Vancouver and the Surrey to Langley Skytrain.
• Develop a rural community strategy that will respond to the unique needs of a growing rural British Columbia.
• Maintain and build roads, bridges and childcare centres across the province.
• Take action to combat hatred and racism to ensure communities are safer and more inclusive.
• Work in partnership with Indigenous, Black, and other people of colour to release data to help identify and address systemic discrimination and barriers in government programs and services as part of the Anti Racism Data Act.
• Introduce new legislation to address the malicious and exploitative non-consensual sharing of intimate images.

To further Indigenous reconciliation, the government will:

• Invest in on and off reserve housing.
• Work with Indigenous Peoples to close the gap in access to primary health care services.
• Address the over representation of Indigenous people in the justice system through work on the BC First Nations Justice Strategy and build new Indigenous Justice Centers.
• Use a rights based partnership approach to decisions respecting land, water and resource stewardship with First Nations Communities.
• To advance a clean economy, the government will:
• Introduce Future Ready, a skills training action plan to make education and training more accessible, affordable, and relevant to help prepare British Columbians for the jobs of today and tomorrow.
• Develop a Goods Movement Strategy to ensure goods are moving as efficiently as possible so businesses can scale up.
• Expand the province’s low cost, clean energy potential through electrical generation and hydrogen.
• Expand high-speed internet access to rural and remote areas by 2027.
• Work with the forest sector to ensure a sustainable industry going forward to retool mills and manufacture value-added products, including those that replace plastics made from fossil fuels.
• Work with farmers, ranchers and producers to ensure sustainable local food systems while creating opportunities that boost the economy and strengthen food security.
• Promoting innovation in food production through new technologies and the B.C. Centre for Agritech Innovation in the Fraser Valley.

To meet its climate targets, the government will:

• Strengthen the government’s ability to ensure polluters pay the cost of environmental cleanup on abandoned sites.
• Improve access to electric vehicle charging stations in condo buildings.
• Implement the new Emergency and Disaster Management Act to better improve B.C.'s ability to respond and recover from whatever might be in store.
• Work with Indigenous Peoples, the federal government, industry, workers and communities to protect 30% of our land and water by 2030.
• Accelerate the government’s plan to protect more of B.C.'s old growth forests in partnership with First Nations rights holders.
• Work with First Nations, communities, and stakeholders to help protect the province’s watersheds.