AMIR: David Eby might be the luckiest premier in Canada

BC Premier David Eby is having a terrible year — yet his political fortunes are only getting better.

At the end of 2025, Eby’s BC NDP government ranked among the worst in the country on the Angus Reid Institute’s Government Performance Index, which tracks public dissatisfaction with provincial governments. 

A majority of British Columbians disapproved of the Eby government’s handling of all five of the province’s top issues: cost of living, health care, housing, the economy, and public safety. In other words, Premier Eby entered 2026 facing broad dissatisfaction with his government.

Things would, seemingly, only get worse.

In February, the BC government projected the largest budget deficit in provincial history at $13.3 billion that pleased neither the fiscal hawks nor doves. The government was spending far too much money that it did not have, while also hiding austerity behind the “re-pacing” of capital infrastructure projects and a pause on expanding social services like child care.

By April, Eby had flip-flopped his government’s position on the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act multiple times in a matter of weeks, culminating in a panicked backpedal on a confidence vote that could have triggered an election.

By early summer, the political damage was evident. The Conservative Party of BC surged to an 11-point lead over the BC NDP in a June Angus Reid poll, while Premier Eby’s approval rating sank to an all-time low.

The damage only accumulated. In July, Prime Minister Mark Carney left Eby holding the bag on a controversial rent-to-buy condo program proposal that would see the province purchase new, unsold, and empty condos. Derided as a “bailout” for real estate developers, the premier appeared ready to abandon the half-baked idea just days after it was proposed.

Politically wounded, Eby desperately needed a lifeline. Fortunately for him, the BC Conservatives were under new management. 

Before Kerry-Lynne Findlay shocked the establishment class by winning the Conservative Party of BC leadership race, interim leader Trevor Halford had spent months professionalizing and disciplining a party still recovering from the chaotic reign of John Rustad. Halford – with his chief of staff Allie Blades – handed Findlay the keys to a credible government-in-waiting.

What Findlay did with her inheritance, however, was a remarkable gift for David Eby.

Rather than preserve the government-in-waiting that Halford had built, Findlay took it apart to rebuild in her own image.

Well-respected and experienced staff resigned, including executive director Angelo Isidorou – largely credited for the party’s rapid ascent in 2024 – and director of political operations Mark Robertson, who warned Findlay’s new team not to “squander” what had been built. Party president Aisha Estey and vice-president Sharon White resigned soon after.

Findlay’s own staffing choices made the party’s new direction unmistakable. Former BC Unity leader Chris Delaney was appointed chief of staff; former Alberta Republican Party executive director Apollo Chung took over political operations; and former Juno News writer Cosmin Dzsurdzsa became the caucus communications director after urging the party to “shut out” establishment media.

While the party’s policy platform remained largely unchanged, Findlay wrapped it in a more combative brand of culture-war politics: She declared victory over “radical gender ideology”; a leaked directive allegedly from her office urged MLAs to stop using the term ‘First Nations’; and her social media feeds churned out a bizarre AI-generated video depicting Eby as a strongman dictator waging war against British Columbia. 

In the span of a dozen days in August, four Conservative MLAs walked out. Peter Milobar, Ian Paton, Rosalyn Bird, and Teresa Wat each cited similar concerns about the party’s direction under Findlay. Milobar and Paton announced their intention to create a new party.

Paton also alleged that Findlay’s chief of staff had offered him a paid position roughly equivalent to his MLA salary if he vacated his seat for Findlay to contest in a by-election. Findlay denies the allegation. (The Canadian Criminal Code prohibits accepting or agreeing to accept a benefit in exchange for resigning from an elected office.)

In less than three months, Findlay had given Eby two things he desperately needed: she diverted attention away from his dismal job performance and she fractured the centre-right coalition that came within a few hundred votes of defeating him less than two years earlier. 

Even before the major Conservative MLA defections, the BC NDP had regained its lead over the BC Conservatives in August polling conducted by Research Co. More tellingly, Eby commanded an 18-point lead (37 to 19) over Findlay on the question of who would make the best premier. 

That disparity, juxtaposed with Eby’s low approval ratings just months earlier, illustrates how voters could be dissatisfied with Eby’s government but still vastly prefer him to the alternative.

But as if a favourable comparison with his opposition was not enough for the premier, US President Donald Trump gave Eby even more of a political advantage by changing the terms of comparison altogether.

As Trump escalated his trade war with Canada, Eby had an opportunity to shift the political focus away from his own job performance to who British Columbians could trust to stand up for the province (and the country).

Eby eagerly and loudly embraced the moment, presenting himself as an unequivocal Team Canada premier fighting to protect BC workers and industries from an increasingly hostile American administration. It was a deliberate posture from Eby that seized on his good fortune of how Findlay chose to respond.

Her response was more muddled. Her messaging focused heavily on the failures of domestic governments. She reiterated a leadership campaign promise to establish a “Western Alliance” that would strengthen Western Canada’s leverage over Ottawa, which is an oddly regionalist message for a moment defined by national unity and the defence of Canadian sovereignty. 

Further complicating this message, Findlay’s director of political operations Apollo Chung previously served as the executive director of an Alberta political party that advocated for separation from Canada in order to possibly join the United States.

None of this makes Findlay pro-Trump. However, at a moment when American economic aggression has rallied Canadians around the flag, Findlay has made it extraordinarily easy for Eby to own the uncomplicated and seriously popular ‘Team Canada’ lane.

While many BC industries were already struggling under Eby’s premiership before the escalating trade war with the US, the political blame for that hardship can increasingly be assigned to an external threat. The focus shifts from why so many BC industries are struggling under Eby to who can be trusted to protect those industries (and the province) from an aggressive Trump administration.

Findlay could argue that BC NDP policy has weakened the provincial economy and made it more vulnerable to an American trade war, while also unequivocally opposing Trump. But instead, her criticism of the American president has been strangely muted.

Consequently, Eby has been allowed to claim the mantle of BC’s defender-in-chief, uncontested.

This is the paradox of Premier David Eby in 2026. The issues that made his government deeply unpopular as recently as July have neither disappeared nor been resolved. Housing is not suddenly affordable, hospital emergency rooms still face long wait times, and the province’s finances are not in any better condition.

What has changed is the alternative.

Eby’s opposition is imploding in real time, coming apart at the seams – organizationally and optically – at precisely the political moment when British Columbia needs stability and serious leadership.

The premier's luck is simple: his record has not improved, but his opponents just keep making him look better.

Mo Amir is the host of “This is VANCOLOUR”, British Columbia’s bonafide culture and politics TV talk show, now in its sixth season on CHEK-TV, Thursdays at 9 p.m. He is also a prolific political commentator across several outlets.