Before Another Mandate, Show the Kept-Promises Ledger

David Eby is asking British Columbians for a new mandate on October 24, 2026. Daily Hive’s October 19 audit asks the necessary prior question: what happened to the promises from the 2024 campaign?

The audit reviewed nine BC NDP commitments across affordability, transit, forestry and environment, housing, renters’ rights and health care. Its answer was mixed at best. The NDP told Daily Hive it had taken action in public transit, health care, education and housing and argued there was more to do. That is a defence voters can weigh. But it does not erase the receipt trail.

Start with affordability. In September 2024, the BC NDP said Eby would deliver a middle-class tax cut worth more than $1,000 for households and more than $500 for individuals, with a 2025 direct rebate so people would not have to wait. Daily Hive reports that promise “did not bear fruit” after the government cancelled it in 2025, citing the economic impact of U.S. trade threats.

Transit tells a similar story. The 2024 pitch included UBC SkyTrain, West Coast Express expansion to Chilliwack, Fraser Valley rail, Highway 1 widening with bus service, and Bus Rapid Transit routes. Daily Hive found almost none had been fulfilled except Highway 1 widening work. The unfinished list matters because several of those items were not vague aspirations; they were voter-facing campaign commitments.

The forestry and environment ledger is also not clean. Daily Hive reports the NDP has not fulfilled its promise to phase out glyphosate use in B.C. forests. It also says the government has not met the promise to plant more than 300 million trees every year. The party’s own response to Daily Hive said it is on track for nearly 234 million trees in 2026 — a large number, but still below the benchmark voters were given.

Housing is where the gap between headline and delivery may be most visible. Daily Hive says the down-payment/attainable-homeownership expansion to 25,000 homes was not fulfilled, with the NDP pointing to the Heather Lands model of about 2,600 homes. BC Builds’ current public page describes a rental-housing program meant to speed middle-income homes from concept to construction in 12 to 18 months and leverage underused public land, but that is not the same as showing the 25,000-home ownership expansion completed.

There were areas of progress. Daily Hive reports movement on health-care staffing, including the first SFU medical-school class and new nurse-training seats, and cited the NDP’s figure of 32,000 full-time-equivalent health-care workers added between 2022 and 2025. But even that progress sits inside a broader ledger where multiple promises were cancelled, delayed, narrowed or left unfinished.

That is the hard-hitting but fair conclusion. Before asking voters to trust another binder of 2026 commitments, Eby should be judged on the 2024 receipts. A campaign promise is not delivery. A pilot is not a provincewide result. A future model is not 25,000 homes. And a government that wants more time should first show exactly what it did with the time it already had.