B.C.'s debt nearly doubling under Eby as public-sector spending balloons

British Columbia's provincial debt is on pace to more than double under Premier David Eby, climbing from $89.4 billion when he took office in November 2022 to $180.9 billion in under four years, with over $45.4 billion of the new debt coming from operating expenses like salaries and government day-to-day operations.

The province has undergone five straight credit downgrades. Economists say the fiscal path is unsustainable, with few easy options to correct course.

Ujjal Dosanjh, NDP premier from 2000 to 2001, said the party risks being swept from power if it doesn't fundamentally shift its spending approach. He expressed particular concern about the growth in the public sector under Eby, with much of the operational spending increase going to worker wages. "The engine of growth can't be the public sector jobs, because it seems to me that in the last few years, the public sector has grown disproportionately, and of course the deficit has just ballooned after Horgan," Dosanjh said.

Mike de Jong, B.C. Liberal finance minister from 2012 to 2017, said surpluses exist to pay down debt and position a province to weather economic shocks like COVID-19 or U.S. tariffs. "The government went into COVID having inherited the strongest set of books in the country," de Jong said. "The problem was in the aftermath."

Jock Finlayson, chief economist for the Independent Contractors and Businesses Association, said government will likely have no choice but to raise taxes and cut spending. He estimated it would take half a decade of stringent austerity to eliminate the deficit and return to a balanced budget, calling a more realistic near-term goal cutting the deficit in half. De Jong said the government has no choice but to reduce services, noting the province extended PST to services like bookkeeping and security to raise additional revenue.

Premier Eby, speaking Wednesday at Simon Fraser University's new medical school site in Surrey, said money is required to build the infrastructure the province needs.