Every British Columbian gets the same 168 hours a week.
The premier gets them. So does the forestry worker in the Cariboo whose mill has closed, the nurse in Nanaimo working overtime to care for her patients, and the young couple in Coquitlam wondering whether they will ever have enough to afford a home of their own.
About a third of our weekly hours go to sleep. Forty or more go to work, plus the commute. Then come the groceries, the laundry, the kids' practices, and the parent who needs a ride to an appointment, and the patient who is waiting to get a test that will tell them if they are ok.
What's left is the part of the week that is truly yours: the hours where you decide what matters, whether that's time with family, a second job to get ahead, a class, a business idea, or simply relaxation.
The real question in this election is who controls those hours.
Premier David Eby asked for your vote in a speech that was truly enamoured with the words Donald Trump. Any government in Victoria should, of course, stand up to outside bullying, but the best way to do that is to give British Columbians every opportunity to succeed at home.
Many challenges we face here emanated from policies that create uncertainty and that weigh the economy down. Eby doesn't mention the $13.8-billion deficit his government is running this year. He never mentioned the tax increases in his own budgets. When a premier talks about everything except his own record, we should ask ourselves why.
That tax increases add to the cost of living and reach every taxpayer. This year the rate on the first $50,000 or so of income went up, the first increase to that rate in decades. Starting next year, the tax brackets are frozen until 2031. A raise that only keeps up with prices will push you into a higher bracket, so you'll pay more tax and be no better off. Bracket creep is a tax increase that never shows up as a new rate. In plain terms, you will work more of your 168 hours for the government and fewer for yourself.
These are not the first tax increases under the BC NDP. By the BC Chamber of Commerce's count, the party imposed 29 new or increased taxes between 2017 and 2023. The three budgets since the have added at least nine more. That's nearly forty tax increases from a government that now says it's worried about your cost of living.
For most of nine years, the BC NDP's message was that someone else would pay: high earners, businesses, owners of expensive homes. With Budget 2026, that pretence was dropped. It’s very clear.
This happened, more quietly. In 2017, the BC NDP repealed the legal requirement to return carbon tax revenue to taxpayers. Until the consumer carbon tax ended last year, billions of dollars that used to come back to you was taken by government and spent.
For most families, the hours they work go into one thing above all: a home.
When the Cowichan case went to trial, the province's lawyers were under orders, issued by Eby himself as attorney general, not to argue that private land grants had extinguished Aboriginal title. That was the strongest argument there to protect property owner. The government that was supposed to defend them your property rights and protect them walked away from that responsibility. Only after the court ruled did the premier discover the importance of private property.
On Haida Gwaii, his government recognized title over the entire archipelago, including the land under people's homes. It chose not to exclude private property, relying instead on promises that legal experts say may not hold. If you own a home in British Columbia, you deserve a government that fights for your title before the verdict, not after it.
On October 24, I hope you'll spend a few minutes of your 168 hours in that week in a voting booth. What you decide there will help determine your family’s future and the future of BC. This is a truly generational election and we are fortunate to live in a place where our votes matter. Your vote matters.
Think hard about what you hope for and what you expect — then vote for what you think is best.
Hon. Gordon Campbell was British Columbia's 34th premier, holding the highest office in the province from 2001 to 2011. Prior to winning a seat in the legislature with the BC Liberals in 1994, he was elected mayor of Vancouver three times in a row, overseeing much of the urban development that defines the city today.
