The new BC Conservative government has a strong policy platform. The challenge, as always, is to establish priorities. Where do you start? What do you do first?
Niccolò Machiavelli spent fourteen years as Second Chancellor of Florence and secretary to the Ten of War. When the Medici returned in 1512, they dismissed him, jailed him, and put him to the rope. He then wrote a short book for a new prince and offered it as the only gift a man without a court could give: what he had learned from long experience of contemporary affairs and continual study of ancient ones, and from the actions of great men. A secretary has no throne and no army. He has the habit of telling the ruling prince what the prince would rather not hear, before events tell him more harshly.
British Columbia has a new ruling prince. The BC Conservatives won the October election on a platform that promises to cut regulation to 2017 levels, defend property, open the books, double natural gas output by 2032, and end the experiment with “safer” drug supply. These are the right instincts. They are also a start: even with its plan, the province still runs a $10.8 billion deficit in 2029/30. The house is on fire, and the new owners have promised to install a new sprinkler system.
What follows is a (pretend) secretary’s memorandum, unsolicited, unpaid and, like Machiavelli’s, at some risk of being filed unread, but not persecuted. The Premier and cabinet are its addressees. I have never met the premier. The memorandum covers the first ninety days, the first two years, and the run to the next election, which arrives sooner than every new government expects. So, here I go, a new secretary to princes:
The first counsel: do the hard things at once
Machiavelli’s most quoted advice to a new prince is his most practical. “Injuries ought to be done all at one time, so that, being tasted less, they offend less; benefits ought to be given little by little, so that the flavour of them may last longer.” Every new government possesses, for a few months, a store of authority it will never hold again. The opposition is dumbfounded, the public service waits in terror as it learns the new master’s mind, and the interests that will fight every reform have not yet found their footing. A government that spends that season on consultation, listening tours and framework documents will find, by spring, that the season has passed and the opponents have arrived. Act swiftly on what matters.
Machiavelli warned also that “there is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things.” The reformer makes enemies of all who prospered under the old order and earns only lukewarm support from those who may prosper under the new. That asymmetry does not diminish with time. It grows.
The first ninety days: seize the season
Open the books and publish what you find. The Conservative platform promised an independent audit of the province’s finances and its capital plan within six months. Do it in half the time. A government that inherits a deficit has one chance to establish, on independent authority, how much of it belongs to its predecessor. Machiavelli figured that hectic fever is easy to cure at the beginning but hard to detect, and later easy to detect but hard to cure.
Fiscal disorder runs the same course: caught in the first months, it can be named and treated; left to the second budget, it is plain to everyone and charged to the new treasurer. The capital review belongs with it. Projects such as the Surrey hospital, which the platform promises to hold to $2.88 billion, should now be tested against their original budgets, while overruns can still be stopped.
Rescind the litigation directives. On April 21, 2022, Attorney General David Eby issued twenty Directives on Civil Litigation Involving Indigenous Peoples, which bind every government lawyer in cases touching Aboriginal rights and title. The first directive requires counsel to apply DRIPA; the rest direct the Crown to prioritize negotiated settlement and reduce litigation. One Attorney General directed them; another can rescind them on day one, without a bill. Lightning fast. That should happen before the first session opens.
Introduce the Property Rights Defence Act in the first sitting. The Cowichan title decision unsettled the security of land held in fee simple, and every owner, lender and insurer in the province has noticed. The answer should be a short bill, quickly passed, that guarantees fee simple title and commits the Crown to defend it as part of the fundamental tradition. Order matters here. Pass the property bill before repealing DRIPA, so that the government’s first act on this file is a defence of owners, and so that the later repeal follows a guarantee already in law. The rest of the country will be grateful too. In an age when politicians on the left and the right incessantly talk about insecurity to advance their political purposes, be the guy who brings security and stability.
Freeze the regulatory stock by order. The platform promises a one-in, two-out law and a return to 2017 regulatory levels. Under that rule, a ministry that wants to add one regulatory requirement must first remove two. The law can take effect in a session. Cabinet can make the rule effective in the first month by directive, as it did in 2001, when British Columbia introduced the two-for-one rule that Ottawa later put into law and Washington adopted in its own form. Issue the directive, require every ministry to publish its count of regulatory requirements, and measure each requirement’s cost and number, so no ministry can satisfy the rule by repealing two dead regulations while adding one expensive one.
Cancel the PST on professional services. Taxing the advice businesses buy from accountants, engineers, and lawyers raises the cost of every other decision in the economy. Canceling it requires only a short amendment, and the relief would arrive while the new government still has the public’s attention. Make things more affordable.
Set deadlines on permits. Ministries should receive written instructions to clear the backlog of forestry, mining, and energy permits within fixed periods, with a monthly public report on pending applications and elapsed days. The platform’s statutory timelines will come later. Ministers can impose discipline immediately.
Go to Washington and Edmonton. Appoint the province’s representative in Washington and put softwood lumber at the head of the brief. Meet the Premier of Alberta within the first month on Pacific Link, the corridor from Bruderheim to Roberts Bank that Ottawa designated on October 1 under the Building Canada Act. A new government in Victoria that is seen within weeks as working with Edmonton rather than against it will change investors’ expectations faster than any budget. Offer to eliminate the toll on the new pipeline mentioned in the AB MOU with Carney.
Appoint the tax panel and choose the ministers. The blue-ribbon panel on tax rates has 180 days; name it now so that it reports in time for the first full budget. Machiavelli wrote that a prince’s first judgment of his intelligence is formed by the men he keeps around him. Thank and replace deputy ministers and agency heads who can't deliver on the platform in the first season, as expected, rather than in the second year, when it will look like a purge.
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The first two years: build the new order
If the first season is for decisive strokes, the next two years are for laws that outlast their authors. Machiavelli compared fortune to a river in flood that sweeps away whatever stands in its path. Only the dykes and embankments built in quiet weather can govern it. A government’s quiet weather is typically its first two years, before the polls turn and the next election begins to shape every decision.
A first budget that tells the truth. The first full budget should carry the audited baseline, raise the basic personal exemption from $13,216 to $32,000, and remove the PST from productive capital, as promised. It should also do what the platform does not: name the year the province returns to balance. Fiscal anchors without a date bind no one. A projected $10.8 billion deficit at the end of the term will be an inheritance for the next government, and bond markets will price it accordingly. Of the $11.7 billion in promised restraint, about $7 billion is reallocation; the budget should find real savings.
Repeal DRIPA, and the clause that carries it into the courts. With fee simple secured, the government should repeal the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act and section 8.1 of the Interpretation Act. The second repeal matters more than the first. Section 8.1 directs that provincial statutes be read consistently with the declaration, and it is the channel through which the declaration entered the province’s case law. The first to adopt it will repeal it first! Repeal should be paired with what the platform promises in its place: fully honouring the duty to consult, an Aboriginal Title Transparency Act that tells owners and investors where claims stand, equal access to Crown land, and reconciliation through partnerships that produce revenue, employment, and ownership for First Nations rather than vetoes. Ottawa’s own UNDRIP Act will remain, and the province should prepare for litigation.
Write the regulatory rules into statute. The one-in, two-out law and the legislated approval timelines should pass within the first eighteen months, with an independent office that counts requirements and their costs and reports to the legislature each year. A directive binds this cabinet. A statute binds the next one.
Put the forests back to work. The 45 million cubic metre harvest floor and statutory permitting deadlines should be in law and in practice within two years. Mills that close do not reopen, and communities that lose their mill rarely recover their schools and clinics.
Build the gas economy. Doubling natural gas production by 2032 requires pipelines, power and export capacity approved in this term. The platform permits private off-grid generation; the government should authorize it by regulation in the first year so industrial projects don’t have to wait on BC Hydro. The government should provide nuclear power, which the platform omits, at least a regulatory framework so small modular reactors can compete when they are ready. Prepare to attract varieties of energy investment.
Let the province build homes. The platform cuts construction charges, rewrites the Building Code and returns density decisions to local government. That last measure returns decision-making to the councils that created the shortage. A government serious about supply should permit building by right where zoning allows it, with fixed timelines and no discretionary veto, and replace development cost charges with a transparent levy that funds infrastructure without punishing construction.
Make the health guarantee mean something. The Universal Health-Care Guarantee promises wait-time benchmarks and the right to another qualified provider when they are missed. It will work only if money follows the patient. Activity-based funding, under which hospitals are paid for the procedures they perform, should be phased in within two years, and the government should let independent surgical centres compete to perform publicly insured procedures. Consider Medical Savings Accounts.
Restore order on the streets. Ending safer supply, legislating mandatory treatment for those who cannot choose it, and hiring 1,000 enforcement personnel and 50 Crown prosecutors are measurable promises. A public that can see results will forgive the controversy that comes with them.
Raise the standard in schools. Letter grades from Grade 4 to Grade 9, provincial examinations, shop classes, and limits on cellphones are plain reforms that work and that parents understand. The repeal of SOGI 123 should be accompanied by a clear statement of what replaces it, so the government is seen as restoring parents’ place in their children’s education rather than merely subtracting a program. Consider Education Savings Accounts.
Write a new New West Partnership. The platform is silent on interprovincial trade, which is a strange omission for a government that wants Alberta’s oil to reach the Pacific. The New West Partnership, signed in 2010 by Campbell, Stelmach and Wall, gave the country its most open internal trade agreement, with fewer exceptions than the national one, and it failed its first test in 2018, when Alberta banned British Columbia’s wine, and Victoria answered with a complaint that never reached a panel. Victoria should propose a revised agreement to Edmonton, Regina, and Winnipeg with a corridor chapter that forbids any province from blocking energy products or interprovincial infrastructure, includes monetary penalties that bite, brings liquor under the rule of non-discrimination, and allows labour mobility on a work-on-arrival basis for every regulated profession. The West can lead the way once again.
Give workers the secret ballot. The platform says nothing about labour law. Certification by secret ballot and ending the ban on replacement workers would restore balance between employers and unions. Each is a short bill, best passed early in the term.
Before the next election: make it permanent
A reform a successor can undo with a cabinet order is a historical loan, and the next government will call it. The final two years' work is to make the new order the province’s ordinary condition.
Balance the budget. By the next election, the province should show a balanced budget or a credible, legislated path to one within a year. The platform’s own projection falls short, and the gap should close through spending restraint, a public service sized to its tasks, and growth, not new taxes. The platform assumes growth of 2.5, 2.8 and 3.2 per cent from 2027 to 2029. Those are hopeful figures, and the budget should be built to survive lower ones.
Cut rates once the panel reports. The blue-ribbon panel’s work should lead, before the election, to lower, flatter personal and corporate rates so British Columbia competes with Alberta for capital and people rather than losing both.
Open the insurance market. ICBC can wait until the urgent work is done, but not forever: drivers should be able to buy coverage from private insurers competing under the same rules.
Show the corridor under construction. Pacific Link is federally designated, with a target date as early as September 2027. By the next election, the province should be able to point to steel in the ground and revenue agreements with First Nations along the route. The electoral platform leaves the northern tanker ban in place. A province that wants the Pacific to be its market should at least make the case to Ottawa for reviewing it.
Report to the public every year. Every reform in this memorandum can be measured, from regulatory costs and permit times to surgical waits, overdose deaths and the deficit. An independent office should publish one annual scorecard on all of them, in plain numbers. A government that measures itself in public makes reversal costly for its successor.
Settle the leadership. The party’s constitution bars an interim leader from the permanent leadership unless two-thirds of the members change it. Whatever the party decides, it should decide early: ministers and officials do not give their loyalty to a leader whose future is uncertain.
A last word from Niccolò
Machiavelli closed his book with an exhortation to Lorenzo de’ Medici, who never read it with care and is remembered chiefly as its dedicatee. A secretary’s counsel costs him nothing, and the prince alone carries the risk of acting on it.
The risk of not acting is even greater. British Columbia’s new government holds, for a few months, the authority to change how the province taxes, regulates and builds. The interests that grew comfortable under the old order are already preparing their defence. They have time, money and patience. The government has a mandate, which decays from the day it is won.
The secretary’s counsel, then, is brief. Do the hard things in the first ninety days. Write them into law in the first two years. Balance the books and publish the results before the people judge you again. Righting the BC ship will help British Columbians and help Canada.
A government that does these things will have pulled the province out of the fire. One that waits will find the fire hasn't gone out.