Nuanced. - 277. David Eby Called an Election. Here’s My Honest Take.

Episode Date: September 25, 2026

Chief Aaron Pete examines the BC election, David Eby’s mandate, housing affordability, healthcare, DRIPA, Aboriginal title and public finances in a monologue with host Aaron Pete.Send us Fan MailSupport the shownuancedmedia.ca

Election season is upon us again. The signs are coming out, the sleeves are being rolled up, somewhere a communications team is explaining to a grown adult how to look natural while buying groceries. And for the next month, politicians will discover an extraordinary passion for listening. Some may even allow it to interrupt their talking. British Columbia votes on October 24th. And here at Nuanced, we intend to make the time between now and then count.

Today, we're going to talk about this election, the questions every party should have to answer, and the standards we're setting for ourselves as we cover it. We're going to talk about your money, your home, your health, indigenous rights, economic opportunity, and the province we want our children to inherit. And we're going to start with the elephant in the room. In my view, David Eby calling an election now is incredibly opportunistic. His government won a majority in 2024. There were roughly two years remaining before the next scheduled election,

and this call arrives while his political opponents are struggling to organize themselves. You can understand the strategy without pretending you haven't noticed it. If your opponent is still trying to find their shoes, that is a very convenient moment to announce the race has begun. Premier David Eby has pointed to Donald Trump and the trade war as reasons British Columbia needs a renewed mandate. And those are serious concerns. But voters are entitled to ask what a new mandate would allow him to do that he couldn't do with the majority he already had. And that deserves an answer. At the same time, I agree with the underlying democratic principle. The authority

to govern comes from the people. And we can criticize the timing. We can criticize the expense, the political calculation, we can ask whether this serves the public interest. Seeking the public's judgment, however, is something we should take seriously and welcome the opportunity to exercise any time it comes. The Premier gets to make his case. British Columbians get to decide whether they believe it. And if someone calls an election expecting an easy endorsement, the electorate is under absolutely no obligation to cooperate.

And I think that's the beautiful part of all of this. In 2024, when this show was still called The Bigger Than Me podcast, we interviewed David Eby, John Rustad, Sonia Fersenow, and Kevin Falcon. That period changed how I understood the role this show could play. We saw growth, but we also saw an appetite for conversations that people want information explained to themselves and gave us room to ask the next question. because the next question is often where you learn something. The opening answer might be polished, practiced, approved by several people who are all on the same navy blue blazer. But then you ask, how would that work? What would it cost?

Why hasn't it happened already? What would you do if your approach failed? Now we're getting somewhere. Since then, the audience has continued to grow. We've had opportunities to sedent. down with more prominent guests, explore more difficult issues, and reach people who might never have encountered one another's perspective otherwise. And I'm incredibly grateful for that. I also understand that with a bigger platform brings a bigger obligation. A famous guest

can get someone to click. A useful conversation gives them a reason to stay and a reason to trust us the next time. We have listeners who are MLAs, mayors, city council, business owners, frontline workers, parents, and people trying to understand what is happening around them while keeping their own lives together. And your time matters. If you spend an hour with us, I want you to leave better equipped than when you arrived. Better equipped to assess a promise, to recognize an evasion, to ask a candidate something they cannot answer with a lawn sign. And here's what I believe. Better conversations can produce better questions, better questions, make it harder for weak answers to survive. And when candidates know people are

listening carefully, there is more pressure on them to prepare, explain themselves, and follow through. That doesn't guarantee good government, but it improves the conditions for it. And the reverse matters too. When we reward slogans, excuse evasions, and treat every criticism of our preferred party as an attack on ourselves, we contribute to the lowering of those standards. Eventually, we get a campaign full of people saying absolutely nothing with tremendous conviction. I think British Columbians deserve considerably more than that in this election and in every election. So I want to remind you of our principles.

Nuanced is built on five principles. Election season is when those principles need to mean something. more. The first is maturity. We will make jokes, clearly, but the consequences of these decisions are serious, and we will treat them that way. I enjoy the UFC. I understand the appeal of watching two people try to finish each other. I would just like a different standard for deciding who manages our hospitals than that. An interview can be challenging without becoming a shouting match. can be treated respectfully, while being asked a question, they would very much prefer to avoid. Our second principle has been steelmanning. Before we critique a position, we should be able to

explain the strongest reasonable argument for us. Someone who supports public investment may be worried about people falling through the cracks. Someone who wants spending restraint may be worried about whether those services will remain affordable. Someone who prioritizes environmental protection may be thinking about risks that will outlast all of us. And those concerns deserve to be understood. Then the proposed solutions deserve to be tested. If you can only defeat the stupidest version of an argument,

you haven't done much to help our audience. Third, controversy with integrity. We will discuss Strippa, Aboriginal title, private property, taxes, health care reform, the costs of environmental policy, and the costs of environmental damage. We will go where the stakes justify going, and we will do the preparation those subjects absolutely deserve. The fourth is openness. We will hear from people across the political spectrum. We will also remain open to discovering that something we believed was incomplete or wrong.

And that includes me. I have opinions and you will hear them. I'll explain why I hold them and I expect those opinions to face scrutiny too. Being nonpartisan means a party doesn't get permanent ownership of my judge. agreement on an issue doesn't purchase agreement on the next. The final principle we follow is responsibility. We owe you accuracy, context, and honest distinctions between what we know, what we think, and what remains uncertain. An allegation is not a finding.

A forecast is not a result. An announcement is not a completed project. And when we make a factual error, we need to correct it clearly and quickly. We won't manufacture equal criticism just to look balanced if one claim is supported and another isn't. We should say so. Fairness means applying a consistent standard, even when the results are inconvenient to everybody's favorite party. Those are the principles. And here is what they ask us to follow up with.

For DRIPA, Aboriginal title, and certainty, we need a clear answer on the future of the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People's Act. The law requires the provincial government in consultation and cooperation with Indigenous peoples to take measures to bring provincial laws into alignment with the UN Declaration. It also provides for agreements involving joint decision-making or Indigenous consent in specified circumstances. Those are consequential choices about how government works. If a party wants to keep the law, they need to explain how it's going to be implemented. If it wants amendments, they need to identify them.

If it wants to repeal them, they have to explain what follows next. And to be honest about this, Aboriginal and treaty rights have constitutional protections under Section 35. Repealing a provincial statute would not erase the underlying constitutional foundation. So nobody gets to sell us a magic switch. We need to hear how leaders would protect private property rights while lawfully addressing Aboriginal title. What is their negotiation strategy? What protections do they propose for affected homeowners?

How will they involve first nations? And what happens while litigation continues? Saying you will appeal a decision tells us one thing about your legal strategy. It does not tell us your entire governing plan. As Chief of Chihuahawatha First Nation, I care about whether these discussions lead to stronger communities, functioning infrastructure, opportunity, and relationships people can depend on. I also care about a family who worked for decades to buy a home and now wants clear answers about its security. Both deserve to be heard, without having their concerns turned into a caricature. Certainty must mean something practical, who makes the decision,

What process applies? How long should it take? How are rights respected? How are disputes resolved? Investors need answers. First Nations need answers. Municipalities and homeowners need answers. And if your explanation creates more confusion every time you give it, we need to keep asking. On public finances and economic confidence, we need to talk about the budget. The province's September financial update projects a deficit of approximately $13.8 billion for 2026, 2027. And that's a forecast rather than a final audited result, but it gives you the scale of the challenge. These candidates are asking to manage a multi-billion dollar budget through public revenues and borrowing. We should conduct the interview accordingly.

You wouldn't hand someone your debit card because they looked confident beside an excavator. We need to know how each party plans to improve the province's financial position and strengthen its credit worthiness. What is the path for spending, revenue, and debt? Which assumptions depend on economic growth. What happens if that growth doesn't arrive? A government budget differs from a household budget. borrowing can support valuable long-term investments and down-term can justify temporary deficits. But governments still face borrowing costs and limits on what they can sustain.

So if you promise cuts, identify them and their consequences. If you promise spending, identify the funding and expected results. If you promise both lower taxes and better services, show us the numbers and how they fit together. We'll find efficiencies is a starting point for a conversation. Somewhere after that, we need a noun, a number, and a date. And we should ask how British Columbia becomes a place where people want to build businesses and careers. Which provincial taxes discourage productive investment? Could we change them?

What would the cost in the short term be? How would we assess whether the change actually worked? Do permitting process have clear requirements and reliable timelines? Can an entrepreneur understand the rules without hiring someone whose full-time job is to understand the rules? Economic confidence grows when people see a credible path forward. A slogan about being open for business is considerably less useful if the application is still waiting for someone to open their email. and on affordability, this is where people, lives get impacted. Affordability has become one of those words that gets repeated so often, it risks losing contact with real life.

So let's put it back in the real world. Food in the fridge should be a minimum expectation. A stable home should be achievable. Raising children should leave room for something beyond financial panic. And a vacation, sometimes. away with your family should be a reasonable aspiration. I'm talking about the ability to create memories, visit relatives, take your kids somewhere, and come home without spending the next year recovering financially. The Canadian dream needs to be offered to people, more than successfully

renewed line of credit. Provincial governments don't control every grocery price, interest rate, or international shock. That's exactly why leaders should identify the levers they actually control and explain what using them would accomplish. How will they help incomes go further? How will they improve conditions for better paying work? What relief reaches people who need it? What merely shifts the bill somewhere else? Housing needs that same discipline. How many homes would policy help deliver? By when? Affordable to people earning what income? What infrastructure makes those homes possible? How will we support people who need subsidized housing while making it possible for working households to find homes without requiring extraordinary lock?

Private construction, public investment, non-profit housing, zoning fees, financing, and infrastructure all deserve serious examination. Each proposal, should be judged on the problem it actually solves. And we have to ask a politically uncomfortable question. How do we make housing more affordable for young people while recognizing that many older people have built their retirement plans around their homes? A leader should explain how they would navigate that tension, telling buyers that prices will become affordable,

while assuring owners that values will rise forever, requires an explanation longer than trust us. On healthcare, I want to push beyond the size of the spending announcement. Funding matters. Staff need to be paid, facilities need to operate, and equipment costs money. But the public deserves to understand what additional spending will deliver and what changes could make existing resources work better. How will patients get primary care sooner? How will wait times fall? What is the plan for retaining? staff, which administration tasks can be simplified, where could better coordination prevent

patients from being passed between services? Which changes have evidence behind them, and how will, how will we measure the result? If a nurse loses time to an unnecessary process, fixing the process deserves attention, if a proposed cut makes it harder for that nurse to provide care, calling it and efficiency doesn't settle the argument. A hospital announcement isn't an important promise. A patient receiving timely care is the result we need. You cannot treat a patient with a rendering of a future building, even if the rendering contains a reassuring number of trees.

We also need to have serious conversations about ecosystems that make British Columbia extraordinary. In my interview with David Suzuki, we discussed climate change. environmental protection and indigenous knowledge. You don't have to agree with every position a guest holds to engage seriously with the questions they are raising. How do we protect watersheds, salmon habitat, forests and biodiversity? How do we prepare communities for environmental risk? How do we assess a project's benefits, harms, and alternatives? Workers and resource communities deserve credible plans for their futures. Environmental commitments deserve measurable results. Nations deserve to be heard on the opportunities and risks affecting their territories.

If you propose a restriction, explain its effects and the transition you envision. If you propose development, explain the safeguards, oversight, and responsibility for cleanup. British Columbia's beauty cannot be just a background in a campaign advertisement. We need to know what governing choices will keep it that way. Over the coming months, we intend to speak with experts on housing, the economy, drippa, business growth, and the issues affecting your life. We will seek interviews with all party leaders to understand their vision for British Columbia and its place in Canada. An invitation doesn't guarantee an interview. We will tell you who participates and we will prepare seriously for the people who do.

The governing party will face questions about its record, opposition parties, will face questions about whether their alternatives are credible and workable, we will ask what leaders believe, what they intend to do, and what they are prepared to be held accountable for. And we will leave room for honest uncertainty. A leader who says, I need to check that, should have the opportunity to return with an answer. Pretending to know something isn't a qualification for office.

And that standard applies here too. Holding public office myself doesn't exempt me from it. I know how much easier it is to make a promise than to deliver it. That experience should sharpen my questions and my sense of responsibility. Our aim is to help you question your own candidates effectively. Ask them, what specifically will you change? What will it cost? How will you derive the authority to do it?

what should we see as a result and what evidence would make you reconsider? And ask one more, when would you be willing to disagree with your own party? Local representation should require more than forwarding head nods and talking points to a familiar postal code. These people are asking for authority over decisions that shape your family, your neighborhood, your livelihood, and the next generation. They should expect scrutiny proportionate to that responsibility. The Conservatives... We may see the NDP win a commanding majority. The conservatives may surprise us again.

The Greens may exercise significant influence, as they did under Andrew Weaver after the 2017 election. Independence and other parties may matter in ways that earlier conversations overlooked. We don't know the result. It belongs to you, the voters. Our ambition is to make this show a place people turn when they want to think carefully before making that decision. As I've put it before, we're not here to take sides, we're here to take over, to earn a place in your week, to become the conversation you send someone because it helped you understand an issue, to make preparation, fairness and substantive follow-up questions, something you expect whenever a politician sits down for an interview.

The ambition comes with responsibility. regard is sacred, honoring the trust you place in us. Finally, I want to say something to the person listening who is tired, who hears election and thinks again, more promises, more arguments, more people telling me everything will collapse unless their team wins. I understand. When someone says they avoid the news because it's depressing, I don't hear a person who needs lecture. I hear someone who may already be carrying enough. You are allowed to protect your attention. You don't need to follow every clip, every press conference, or every opinion written. But I hope you will reserve some attention for the decisions that shape your future. Learn about the issues

that affect your household, hear a serious argument from someone you disagree with, ask a question, check an answer, and make a plan to vote. Democracy asks us to participate. It doesn't require us to remain permanently furious. And remember, how much it took for people to develop the possibility of voting. People defended democratic freedoms, organized for voting rights, challenged exclusion, and demanded a voice in decisions made about them. Here in British Columbia, indigenous people were broadly enfranchised,

provincially, in 1949. That history is still within living memory. As an indigenous person, I cannot talk about democracy, as though everyone has always welcomed it. Some of our families had to fight to be included. That makes the responsibility of participation deeply meaningful to me. You come from people who endured difficulties. you may never fully know.

Many worked, sacrificed, persevered, so the next generation could have the opportunity that they didn't. One way to honor that is to take your own voice seriously. We have the ability to question powerful people openly, choose our representatives, and change the government peacefully. There are people around the world who risk their freedom for those opportunities. and our system has flaws. We should discuss them and improve it.

We should also recognize the value of what is in our hands. And if you're here, because you want to understand more before you vote, give yourself credit for that. Curiosity takes effort. So does being willing to discover that your first impression may have been incorrect. We're honored to be a part of that process. We will bring the preparation for that. We will bring follow-up questions.

We will bring our principles into the room, including when keeping them cost us an easy clip or a comfortable conversation. And we will continue asking for a clear account of the future these leaders want you to authorize. Because the campaign promise should be specific enough that a year from now, you can ask, did you do it? Did you follow through? This election will end, but the consequences will. remain. So let's take the opportunity seriously. Let's demand answers worthy of the responsibilities

these candidates are seeking. And let's remember that the people asking for power are accountable to the people being asked to grant it. Welcome to election season. Let's make them answer the question.