Eby’s Growth-Fairy Budget: Even Friendly Experts Say the Deficit Math Does Not Add Up
The government’s own fiscal update says the deficit is getting worse than budgeted. The campaign answer is to trust future growth, tax hikes and project approvals.
The receipt is not coming from an opponent’s attack ad. It is coming from the Province of British Columbia. The First Quarterly Report for 2026/27 projects a $13.8-billion deficit, which the finance ministry says is $450 million higher than Budget 2026. Revenue is forecast at $86.3 billion, up $789 million from budget, but the deficit still grows because spending pressures keep outpacing the story the NDP sold voters in the budget.
That is the problem with Eby’s campaign pitch. CityNews Vancouver reported Thursday that whoever forms government inherits a deficit of nearly $14 billion. The same report says the BC NDP platform promises to reduce the deficit by about $2 billion over two years, using higher taxes on high-income earners, economic growth and approved resource projects including LNG Canada Phase 2.
Those are not accounting tricks by themselves. Taxes raise money. Projects can create activity. Growth matters. But British Columbians are being asked to trust assumptions after years of NDP government have already delivered a deficit larger than the budget forecast. A plan that depends on future growth is only credible if voters can see why this government’s next forecast should be trusted more than the last one.
CityNews also put the NDP and Conservative platforms to UBC Sauder professor Thomas Davidoff. His warning was not partisan comfort food for either side. He said both major parties’ fiscal projections rely on wishful thinking, criticized the reliance on growth assumptions, and called the NDP grocery-price-cap pledge “very troubling.” That matters because Eby’s problem is not just the size of the deficit. It is the pattern: announce relief, assume growth, promise discipline later, then ask voters to accept another red-ink landing.
The NDP’s official release says Eby’s plan would build B.C. strong and keep the books on a better path. But the province’s own quarterly update says the path is already worse than budgeted. That is the hard number voters should carry into the final stretch: $13.8 billion, not a slogan; $450 million worse, not a rounding error; higher revenue, yet still a deeper hole.
No one should pretend global tariffs, wildfire costs or economic uncertainty are fake. They are real pressures. But governing is the job of making choices under pressure. After nearly a decade of NDP rule, Eby is asking for another mandate on the promise that the same fiscal machine that widened the gap will now shrink it. Voters do not owe that machine applause. They owe it scrutiny.