It has been quite a week in the B.C. Legislature.
I was certainly proud to see Williams Lake First Nation (WLFN) in our provincial capital to make an incredible presentation to the elected officials and staff of our building.
Members of WLFN were warmly greeted by many in the Legislature Hall of Honour. It was amazing to see youth from our community participating in this delegation!
Aside from that highlight, my B.C. Conservative colleagues and I have been consumed with stopping Bill 7.
The NDP government’s Bill 7, the Economic Stabilization (Tariffs Response) Act, originally proposed to give their 23 cabinet ministers and four ministers of state total parliamentary power. They wanted to completely do away with debate and voting for two years so they could respond to tariff threats however they saw fit. Apparently, opposition voices in the legislature are just too much of an inconvenience to the government, and they sought to sideline us – even though we were sent to the legislative assembly as representatives of the electorate.
After major push back from policy professionals, opinion leaders, former politicians, and the business community, the government temporarily pulled the section of the bill that would give them total authoritarian powers.
But make no mistake, Premier David Eby noted his intention to “retool” that part of the bill and re-introduce it. And once he does, who knows what kind of extra provisions the bill will contain, or what kind of language will be couched in.
As it is now written, the bill still empowers the government to collect and share citizens’ personal information, with no clarity in regards to who the data will be provided to and under what circumstances. The bill also states the government can impose new road tolls and exercise increased control over procurement contracts.
Bill 7 was proposed as a measure in case the government needs to respond to tariff threats.
But it occurs to me the government should be fixing the things they already have complete control over, instead of demanding extraordinary powers to respond to hypothetical situations that they can actually already respond to quickly.
We urgently have to fix our broken permitting system, permanently erase trade barriers that exist between our provinces, strengthen our agricultural sector, expand trade missions to other countries…
If only the same effort the government is putting into expanding their powers under Bill 7 was directed to those files.
