OPINION David Eby was 2018’s big newsmaker

OCharlie Smith

rdinarily in provincial politics, the premier attracts the most media attention and exercises the greatest power. But in 2018, John Horgan cannot be considered B.C.’S newsmaker of the year.

That goes to Attorney General David Eby. That’s because he was at the centre of many of the biggest stories of the year. On the legislative front, he introduced a whopping 18 bills in the house. Some were housekeeping measures making changes to the enforcement of family-maintenance payments and laws around class proceedings, civil-resolution tribunals, and the registration of lobbyists.

Other bills had much more profound ramifications, such as restoring the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal, setting the rules for B.C.’S recent referendum on electoral reform, and clearing the way for the province to recover health-care costs from manufacturers or wholesalers for actions that “contributed to an opioidrelated wrong”.

Unlike some American states, however, Eby hasn’t included distribution companies, such as trucking firms, in his list of legislated targets.

But these aren’t the only reasons why the lanky attorney general is B.C.’S newsmaker of the year. His continued crusade against moneylaundering kept him in the headlines all year, most notably when he released the Dirty Money report in June. Written by lawyer and former RCMP deputy commissioner Peter German, the document claimed that more than $10 million per year in illicit cash was washed through B.C. casinos—about the cost of two Shaughnessy mansions. And it was released with a splash: lots of videos featuring gamblers showing up at these establishments with hockey bags full of money.

From there, Eby conflated the casino money-laundering with the fentanyl crisis and the sky-high price of housing in Vancouver. But just as media coverage was reaching a crescendo, the bottom started falling out of the residential realestate market. The November statistics from the Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver indicated that the average sale price of detached homes in Eby’s constituency of Point Grey was down 17.9 percent from the same month in 2017.

Homeowners blamed Eby, an eager cheerleader of Finance Minister Carole James’s surtax on homes valued at more than $3 million. That led to protests in two West Side parks by placard-carrying homeowners.

Eby also applauded the NDP government’s decision in February to increase the foreign-buyers tax from 15 to 20 percent and extend it to other areas of the province. Now there’s talk of a recall campaign against the attorney general, who nevertheless remains popular with many tenants, Ndp–voting Point Grey residents, and younger voters because they feel he’s played a major role in driving down the cost of homeownership.

All of this is aside from his role as the minister for ICBC, which made headlines in January when he said there was a “financial Dumpster fire” at the Crown-owned insurer. That was when it was headed toward a $1.3-billion loss by the end of the fiscal year on March 31, 2018.

ICBC introduced several reforms—including capping awards for pain and suffering for minor injuries and charging higher rates for newcomers to the province. Eby’s legislation also established an independent tribunal, which enraged many trial lawyers. But even after that, ICBC still lost $582 million in the first six months of the current fiscal year.

Earlier this month, ICBC applied to the B.C. Utilities Commission for a 6.3-percent average hike in basic insurance rates for motor vehicles. It’s expected that collision and comprehensive insurance rates will increase by a larger percentage.

Expect Eby to remain in the news in 2019 as more legislative measures come forward to focus on moneylaundering. And if federal NDP leader Jagmeet Singh is replaced after next year’s election campaign, don’t be surprised if some New Democrats start urging Eby to run as his replacement.

That just might be enough to make him next year’s newsmaker of the year as well.