Northern B.C. Gets the First-100-Days Receipt for the NDP’s Resource Ledger

Northern B.C. just moved from campaign backdrop to governing test. The question is no longer whether Victoria can say the word “resource.” The question is whether the province can repair the forestry, natural gas, health-care and fiscal files the NDP leaves behind.

In the Prince George Citizen, Bob Mackin reports that premier-designate Lorne Doerkson said Northern B.C. is “top of mind” economically and socially for his first 100 days, with all three local Conservative MLAs returned as members of a majority government. The article points to Council of Forest Industries outreach, forest-industry “supercharge” language, LNG and natural-gas opportunity, and first-100-days expert-panel work on health care, security and frontline support for the North.

That is a useful receipt because it ties local priorities to the provincial ledger. Canadian Press reporting carried by Journal of Commerce says Doerkson’s early list also includes raising the basic personal exemption, promising no new taxes, launching an independent review of provincial finances, working on the Pacific Link pipeline and repealing DRIPA. Those are not small housekeeping items. They are the files that now define the handoff after David Eby’s snap-election defeat.

The NDP record makes the northern promise harder, not easier. The government’s own First Quarterly Report forecasts a $13.8-billion deficit for 2026-27, $450 million higher than Budget 2026. The same report says natural-resource revenues are forecast $289 million below budget, with natural gas royalties down $531 million. About $306 million of that gas-royalty gap is tied to corrected calculation errors in the Budget 2026 price forecast. Forest revenue is also forecast $49 million lower while the sector faces higher operating costs and tariffs.

Those numbers matter in Prince George, Quesnel, the Cariboo, the Peace and every community where mills, hospitals and highways are not local abstractions. When rural emergency rooms struggle, when forestry is squeezed by costs and tariffs, and when natural-gas forecasts miss by hundreds of millions, voters are entitled to ask what years of NDP “stability” actually bought.

Doerkson’s agenda will have to be judged by delivery, not slogans. But the starting point is clear: Northern B.C. is being handed a resource-economy repair job with a red-ink fiscal file attached. The NDP cannot separate the two. The same government that asked voters to trust its management left a deficit larger than projected, a corrected royalty forecast and a forest sector still under pressure. That is the ledger now sitting on the northern desk.