After four trips to Ottawa, four meetings in B.C. and eight increasingly fruitless phone calls spread out over 19 months in office, Premier David Eby has made up his mind about Prime Minister Justin Trudeau: The guy is neither a friend, nor an ally, when it comes to the BC NDP government in British Columbia.
That was the takeaway from comments Eby made during this week’s meeting of premiers in Nova Scotia, in which he outlined in remarkably candid fashion the slow-motion cratering of the relationship between himself and the prime minister.
Eby publicly likened his relationship with Ottawa to “beating our head against a wall.”
“When I was sworn in as premier, I had the perspective that British Columbia could best be served by being very present in Ottawa, building a lot of relationships, ensuring that they understood our perspectives, that our under-funding on many federal programs was the result of the fact that we're just so physically far away from Ottawa,” said Eby.
“And I've been corrected in that view. We have built relationships. We have done the work. There is no question the federal government understands our frustrations or concerns, our anxieties — direct communications with the prime minister, with ministers, correspondence. It has not mattered.”
The result has been to watch Ontario and Quebec get special funding agreements with Ottawa on priority B.C. files, to have letters and phone calls go unanswered by Trudeau, to get cut out of the loop on major announcements and to languish while waiting for funding commitments on large projects like the Massey Tunnel replacement.
“I started from a place of saying, look, we're going to fly to Ottawa, we're going to be in the federal government's face, we're going to make sure those relationships are strong so they're thinking about B.C. all the time,” Eby told CBC host David Cochrane on Power & Politics.
“We did a lot of work to that end. The results, unfortunately, speak for themselves. It was not a successful approach.”
As if to illustrate his point, on the same day the premiers were meeting in Nova Scotia, Trudeau announced details of a $30-billion, 10-year public transit funding program that could dramatically affect the financial situation of TransLink and BC Transit.
“We've been calling for that for a long time from the federal government,” said Eby, who was blindsided by the move.
“Nobody knows what the content of the announcement is. Nobody knows how the fund will be structured. Nobody knows whether it’s about capital or operating expenses. These are all things we should have been talking about in advance, so that we could help them use those tax dollars that all Canadians pay for in the most effective way possible.”
The stiff-arm to the face from Ottawa is occurring not just in public, but privately too.
Eby publicly complained in June he couldn’t get answers from Ottawa as to why several flood-ravaged Fraser Valley communities were rejected for federal disaster prevention funding. The prime minister wouldn’t take his call, he said.
So he went public. A few days later, Trudeau did call back and asked Eby to put in writing his concerns. Eby sent a letter with six specific requests on June 20. A month later, he said he’s yet to receive any response from the prime minister or any federal ministers.
“It is really weird,” Eby said simply when I asked him about that timeline of events in an interview Wednesday.
“It’s astonishing. And especially on things like the Massey Tunnel.”
It’s one of the reasons Eby said Wednesday he’s not only chosen to back Newfoundland’s legal challenge on the fairness of federal equalization payments to provinces, but he’s also researching whether British Columbia should launch its own lawsuit later this year.
Eby is not the first premier to pick a fight with Ottawa on the eve of a provincial election to try and score votes by looking like he’s standing up for British Columbians.
Nor is he alone in suffering a disappointing journey through the Trudeau administration.
His predecessor, John Horgan, tried to make friends with the federal Liberals in order to advance B.C.’s interests. Horgan ran flak for Trudeau for months in advance of a federal election, loaning him credibility by allowing alignment on popular BC NDP items like Metro Vancouver SkyTrain expansion and $10-a-day childcare.
Horgan’s reward was to be hurled under the bus by the prime minister’s office during a premiers’ meeting on health care, and later to have news of his retirement leaked out to the Ottawa press corps before British Columbians even knew the premier was leaving.
For taking the hits with minimal public complaints, Trudeau eventually appointed Horgan as Canada’s ambassador to Germany.
Eby, though, wants no such patronage post. He’s in the fight of his political life ahead of October’s provincial election, and trying to show progress on key files — many of which require federal approval, funding and support.
“I’m excited to work with you,” Eby said upon meeting Trudeau for the first time in Richmond in December 2022.
That excitement is long since over. Only frustration and bitterness remain.
Rob Shaw has spent more than 15 years covering B.C. politics, now reporting for CHEK News and writing for Glacier Media. He is the co-author of the national bestselling book A Matter of Confidence, host of the weekly podcast Political Capital, and a regular guest on CBC Radio.
