B.C. government defends controversial bill that would give it sweeping powers

Despite pushback from business groups and from across the aisle, the B.C. government is defending its bill, which it says is being tabled in response to the U.S. trade war.

Bill 7 would allow the provincial government to respond in real-time to the trade war and any other threats without receiving approval from the Legislature first.

Housing Minister Ravi Kahlon tells 1130 NewsRadio that the level of uncertainty that the Trump administration presents shows the need to change course at a moment’s notice.

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“The reason for bringing this is so that we’re nimble and able to respond quickly to the Trump administration’s tariffs on Canada. We need to protect workers. We need to protect industries that may be impacted,” Kahlon said.

“What we hear from the Trump administration is changes to tariffs, changes to percentages, every single day,” Kahlon explained. “In fact, multiple times a day, which makes it very challenging to navigate.”

A number of groups have criticized the bill, including the Greater Vancouver Board of Trade, which says that while it appreciates the bill’s provisions to break down interprovincial trade barriers, the NDP government hasn’t demonstrated it needs that massive expansion of power.

When the bill was first introduced, the BC Conservatives called the move “anti democratic”, while the BC greens said they were likely to support it, as long as the right checks and balances are put in place.

“It’s important to keep in mind that we are about to face something that we’ve never faced before, and we don’t know where it’s going to come,” Kahlon said.

Kahlon says a number of measures have been put in place to ensure the power is only used to respond to foreign threats, like tariffs from both the U.S. and China.

“We’ve said clearly to stakeholders that we’ve met with is often the critique we hear is government acts slow when this type of thing happens, we need to be able to move quickly and respond,” he said. “This is what the tool is designed for us to do.”

“I think the public is understanding that we’ve got a massive threat to our sovereignty, a massive threat to workers and their livelihoods coming toward,” he added.

Kahlon says that amongst the critique from stakeholders over the last week since the bill has been tabled, Attorney General Niki Sharma has been “listening to folks that have been sending suggestions.”

“If there are some adjustments to the bill, we’ll certainly be making that public,” Kahlon explained.

“We’ve heard already from many stakeholders that after going through in detail why the bill is being introduced, what the guardrails are, there’s a better understanding of why we need it. Now the question is, are there additional measures that we can consider to both strengthen it but also ensure that there are better guardrails there. That’s the conversation happening right now,” Kahlon added.

If passed, Bill 7 would expire by 2027.

With files from Raynaldo Suarez.