B.C. Premier David Eby walks back to his office after the throne speech at the legislature in Victoria on Feb. 18.CHAD HIPOLITO/The Canadian Press
B.C. Premier David Eby has given his government powers that would make Donald Trump envious. The question is: why?
Last week, shortly after introducing Bill 7 – benignly called the Economic Stabilization (Tariff Response) Act – Mr. Eby tried to assure the public that the legislation did not confer on his New Democratic Party government “sweeping powers.”
Ah, but it most certainly does.
While we may be at war, it’s an economic battle we face with the United States and its President. There are no tanks assembling at the border. There is no talk of getting our young men and women to enlist in the name of defending our sovereignty. We are facing the threat of tariffs, not bombs.
Yet for some reason Mr. Eby felt it necessary to introduce a bill that allows him and his cabinet to override almost all provincial laws, authorities and regulations – and if so desired, even the legislature itself. “In extraordinary times we need extraordinary powers,” Mr. Eby said in defending the legislation.
This is akin to the federal War Measures Act.
There are plenty of words around the bill that are intended to reassure British Columbians that it can’t be used arbitrarily or for anything less than a full-on emergency. For instance, the bill only gives cabinet the power to make regulations “supporting the economy of B.C. and Canada.” Cabinet can request regulatory authorities to amend regulations in keeping with government objectives. But if that doesn’t occur within 60 days, the government will go ahead on its own and change the requisite laws and regulations as it sees fit.
Editorial Board: Premier Eby, please practise democracy
It can authorize executive orders based on “anticipated challenges” that the government foresees from a foreign jurisdiction. That is a pretty expansive authority Mr. Eby has given his government with very few, if any, guardrails to prevent gross abuse.
There is language about what happens in the event of a conflict between existing laws, regulations, programs and policies and Bill 7. And the answer is, Bill 7 prevails.
The bill seems to have been crafted in such haste that not even the Premier was sure about the powers held within. As Vaughn Palmer of The Vancouver Sun recently observed, Mr. Eby said on three different occasions in one news conference about the law that any cabinet orders passed under Bill 7 would be subject to approval by the legislature. However, when Mr. Palmer asked the Premier’s office to point him to the clause in the legislation that specified that orders under the new bill would be subject to ratification by the legislature, they were unable to.
That’s because it does not exist.
In reality, any orders issued under the act only have to be presented to the legislature après le fait.
It’s astonishing that Mr. Eby would be so ignorant of the broad authority held within a bill for which he’s responsible. Such a power grab is all the more remarkable given Mr. Eby’s past fighting against such government overreach in his roles as a social justice lawyer and executive director of the B.C. Civil Liberties Association.
A bill such as this is unheard of in my more than four decades observing B.C. politics.
Mark Mancini, an assistant professor in the faculty of law at Thompson Rivers University in B.C., said on X that Bill 7 contains the “broadest Henry VIII clause I’ve seen in some time. These extraordinary clauses allow cabinet to amend a primary law via regulation. The bill is even broader – it permits cabinet to amend almost ‘any’ primary law.” He said he sees absolutely no justification for it.
Because there isn’t any.
It certainly is a bold gambit for a government with a one-seat majority and which relies on a partnership with the two-seat Green Party to give it some breathing room in Parliament. The Greens are already signalling they want amendments to Bill 7 – the details of which will come out soon. One of the Green Party’s MLAs, Jeremy Valeriote, has said the amendments they seek could, for instance, narrow the broad powers the legislation extends to government. Amen to that.
We all understand governments will need to be nimble and respond quickly to the economic challenges the U.S. will pose through tariffs and other means. But usurping the power of the legislature to do so is wrong. At least, it’s wrong at this stage of the economic war with our southern neighbours.
Mr. Eby should hold off on pushing this bill through. It’s not necessary now, and may not be necessary later. It’s a gross overreaction and an insult to our parliamentary traditions.