ICBA.CA EXCLUSIVE OP-ED: British Columbians Have Seen Enough of NDP’s Spending

British Columbia’s provincial budget isn’t just bad. It’s historically bad on every single measure.

The NDP government’s Budget 2026, released last month, delivers a staggering $13.3 billion deficit this year, $12.2 billion next year, and $11.4 billion the year after that. That’s $36.9 billion in red ink over three years. When David Eby became Premier just over three years ago, our provincial debt stood at $91 billion. Today it has ballooned to $154 billion – and under this budget, it’s on track to hit $235 billion by the end of the decade. Let that sink in.

Premier Eby inherited a surplus and then turned it into the largest structural deficit in B.C.'s history. And what does this government do in the face of a fiscal crisis of its own making? It raises taxes on everyone.

A Tax Grab That Hits Everyone

The NDP hiked the bottom personal income tax rate from 5.06% to 5.60% – the first increase in that bracket since 2008. Every single taxpayer in B.C. will pay more.

And that's before you get to the rest of the hit list – jacking up property tax deferral interest rates on seniors trying to stay in their homes, gutting autism funding for families, and quietly eliminating the merit commissioner, because apparently the last thing this government wants is someone ensuring public sector hiring is done on merit.

But the real gut punch for the construction industry is the expansion of PST to professional services. Starting October 1, the government will slap a 7% sales tax on engineering, architecture, accounting, security, and other professional services. This is a hidden construction tax, and every project in this province will cost more. Contractors will price it in but make no mistake: the people paying for housing, hospitals, schools, and roads will ultimately foot the bill.

And here’s the kicker: while they’re making it more expensive to build, they’re also delaying and “re-pacing” billions of dollars in capital projects – hospitals, student housing, critical infrastructure. This at a time when layoffs are rippling through the construction industry - our members aren’t scrambling to find workers anymore. They’re scrambling to find work.

The Public Verdict Is In

We didn’t just want to express our own frustrations with this budget. We wanted to know what regular British Columbians think. So ICBA commissioned an exclusive province-wide poll, conducted February 21 to 24, asking residents for their impressions of Budget 2026.

The results are damning (see crosstabs HERE).

Among all respondents, 46% have a negative impression of the budget, compared to just 26% positive. Strip out the undecided and it’s even starker: nearly two-thirds of decided British Columbians – 64% – view this budget negatively, versus just 36% who see it positively. Those with a “strongly negative” impression outnumber those “strongly positive” by a ratio of seven to one.

The rejection is broad and deep. On Vancouver Island, a devastating 58% rate the budget negatively. In the Interior, it’s 47%. In the NDP’s urban base of Metro Vancouver, negative impressions outpace positive ones by 43% to 29%.

Here’s the number that should keep David Eby up at night: among people who say they voted NDP in the 2024 election, the budget is underwater – 36% negative, 35% positive. When you can’t sell your budget to your own supporters, you’ve lost the room.

Among currently undecided voters – the people who will decide the next election – the picture is a blowout: 49% negative versus just 11% positive. Homeowners reject the budget by more than two to one. British Columbians over 55, the people with the highest propensity to vote, oppose it by roughly three to one.

British Columbia Is Waking Up

These numbers confirm what I hear every day from contractors, small business owners, and working families across this province: people have had enough. They’re tired of a government that spends like there’s no tomorrow and then sends them the bill. They’re tired of watching the debt clock spin while their own cost of living soars. They’re tired of a Premier who inherited a healthy balance sheet and lit it on fire while so much in our province seems broken – timely access to health care, chaos reigning on too many of our streets, and the dream of ever owning a home has turned into a nightmare.

And they’re paying attention. After the budget dropped, ICBA posted a two-minute video laying out what this budget means for real people and real businesses. Over the weekend, that video hit more than 150,000 views on Facebook alone. That’s not a typical policy video audience. That’s people across B.C. who are engaged, angry, and looking for a better path.

ICBA represents hundreds of thousands of men and women who build this province – literally. They dig holes, pour the concrete, pull the wire, hammer the nails, put up the steel and install the pipes. They need a government that sees the people, builders and entrepreneurs as partners, not as piggy banks.

The poll numbers are clear: public frustration is real. British Columbia is waking up, and it wants a government that will stop digging the fiscal hole and start building a future worth investing in.

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Polling Methodology

This poll was conducted exclusively for ICBA with a sample of 1,005 British Columbia residents, between February 21 and 24, 2026. The margin of error is ±3.1 percentage points, nineteen times out of twenty. Results have been statistically weighted to reflect the demographic composition of British Columbia.