Q&A with David Eby
David Eby, the presumed frontrunner in the race to replace John Horgan as B.C. NDP leader and premier, spoke to about 50 people Thursday during a campaign stop in Kaleden.
Eby gave Herald reporter Joe Fries an exclusive interview afterwards. Eby’s responses below have been lightly edited for brevity.
HERALD: You angered a lot of people here with your strong-arm approach to siting of the Victory Church homeless shelter in downtown Penticton. Do you still believe that was the right approach and do you have any fences to mend here?
EBY: I felt an obligation as housing minister and certainly feel an obligation as premier to do my best not to send people out into the street. And my intention around housing is to increase the availability of middle-class housing, to increase the supports for people that need it in our social housing and not to use temporary shelters like Victory Church, but rather long-term, appropriate supportive housing…. I would love to have a better relationship with the mayor of Penticton. It’s a city that’s in crisis on a bunch of levels and I think that it’s only through partnership that we can make the best progress.
HERALD: As housing minister, you sacked the board of BC Housing after a disastrous audit and the CEO is stepping down too. Your government has also failed to meet its own targets for building new social housing. How can people have confidence your government actually has the ability to handle the housing crisis?
EBY: “Part of the question I disagree with. We have met and exceeded our targets for social housing in our 10-year plan but it’s not sufficient and part of the reason why it’s not sufficient is there’s huge pressure from people with jobs and resources looking for housing who can’t find it who are bidding up the housing that’s available and low-income people and people on social assistance are falling out the bottom end of homelessness and increasingly that includes seniors, as well…
We also have some significant challenges at BC Housing. They’ve grown really quickly in a short period of time, and as housing minister I wanted to assure British Columbians that, first of all, our investments in housing are accountable to them, that (citizens) are able to see those results, and that BC Housing has the tools to ensure that the highest quality housing and the care by non-profit organizations is being delivered. (BC Housing) didn’t have those controls in place and it was necessary to put in a board that was able to deliver that to British Columbians.”
HERALD: Before you stepped down as housing minister to run for the leadership, you mused about introducing legislation that would force municipalities to speed up the housing approval process. Can we still expect that legislation?
EBY: I don’t know what the planning is for the fall session but it’s certainly my hope that government will introduce legislation to establish minimum standards for municipalities around the housing that we need. That doesn’t mean that it’s all about sticks. It’s also recognizing the communities that are approving the housing we need and providing support to cities that are not meeting the standards that are set out in their housing need studies…. It should not be an option for cities to not approve the housing we need (but) I don’t have any interest – and I’m sure the government doesn’t have any interest — in telling cities where (housing) should be or what it should look like.
HERALD: Public disorder on the streets of Penticton and other cities around B.C. seems to be getting worse by the day. Some, like Liberal leader Kevin Falcon, have called for a new approach to involuntarily committing those with severe mental health issues and addictions problems who are a danger to themselves and others. Where do you stand on this?
EBY: If there’s a piece that’s missing in the system right now, it’s an ability, other than through the justice system, to respond to somebody who’s profoundly ill with a mental health or addiction issue, to give them a chance not just to survive but thrive. For these people who are incredibly sick on our streets, for their own safety and to give them a chance of surviving, as well as for the broader community that’s also suffering the broader impacts of their illness, we need to do better. We don’t want to repeat the mistakes of the past.
The people who suggest we can round everybody up into a bus and drive them to a compound somewhere, that approach is no longer either constitutional or appropriate, but there are definitely people who will benefit from involuntary care, whether it’s health care or drug treatment, to at least give them a chance of survival.”
HERALD: Anjali Appadurai, your only other opponent in the NDP leadership race, has suggested the party has lost its way in government and is more interested in clinging to power than it is in implementing the bold agenda that B.C. needs. How do you respond to that?
EBY: I welcome Anjali to the race. She is a young woman and activist who is speaking for a lot of young people who are the future of our party. I disagree with her on a number of core issues and her assessment of our government’s success, but that’s what leadership debates are all about. It’s a chance for someone to say, ‘I would have done things differently. I didn’t agree with what you did here,’ and I look forward to those exchanges when they happen.