$155 Billion and Counting: BC's Total Debt Is Set to Double as a Share of GDP Under Eby

The conversation about BC's finances usually focuses on the annual deficit — the $9.6 billion hole projected for 2025-26, climbing to $12-13 billion over the following three years. That number is staggering on its own. But it captures only part of the picture.

The larger story — one that will haunt BC taxpayers for a generation — is what those annual deficits have done to the province's total accumulated debt. And what that debt means for BC's long-term ability to pay for anything at all.

According to a new analysis by the Independent Contractors and Businesses Association (ICBA), BC's total provincial debt is fast approaching $155 billion. And under David Eby, debt measured as a share of the entire BC economy — what economists call the debt-to-GDP ratio — is on track to more than double before the end of the decade.

The Numbers: Before and After Eby

When David Eby became Premier in late 2022, BC had a substantial operating surplus and a debt-to-GDP ratio of 22.3%. That figure — while not small — reflected years of relatively disciplined fiscal management under John Horgan, who posted balanced or near-balanced budgets for most of his tenure outside the COVID years.

What has happened since is without precedent in BC's fiscal history.

Fiscal Year	Debt-to-GDP Ratio	Key Event
2022-23 (Eby takes over)	22.3%	Inherited surplus
2025-26 (current)	~35%	Record $9.6B deficit
2027-28	~42%	$12-13B projected deficit
2028-29 (projected)	46%+	Debt more than doubled vs 2022

By 2028-29, the province's debt-to-GDP ratio will have more than doubled from where it stood when Eby arrived in office — and Budget 2026 contains no credible plan to reverse this trajectory. The ICBA analysis describes it plainly: "the stunning growth in the provincial debt since 2022-23 is evidence of extraordinary fiscal recklessness on the part of the current Premier."

$32 Billion in Operating Debt Added — Just in Year One to Three

Premier Eby inherited a budget in surplus. By the close of the 2025-26 fiscal year, he will have personally added almost $32 billion in operating debt to the government's total debt burden — debt driven not by infrastructure investment but by running government operations on credit.

That $32 billion figure is projected to climb to almost $58 billion by 2027-28. To put it plainly: in roughly five years as premier, Eby will have added more operating debt to BC's books than accumulated over the entire previous history of the province.

Debt Servicing: The Budget That Crowds Out Everything Else

The most immediate and concrete consequence of BC's debt explosion is what it costs to service. According to The Hub's March 2026 analysis, debt servicing is now the province's third-largest expenditure — behind only health care and education.

Every dollar spent paying interest on debt inherited from past spending decisions is a dollar that cannot go to a new hospital, a new school, or a seniors care bed. As debt grows, servicing costs grow with it. And as servicing costs grow, the government has less and less room to address the very problems — healthcare waitlists, housing affordability, infrastructure — that it justified the debt to solve in the first place.

Economists have described BC's deficit as "structural" — meaning the gap between revenues and spending is not the result of temporary economic weakness that will self-correct when times improve. It is baked into the government's spending commitments and tax structure. The Ministry of Finance itself has estimated the structural deficit at $12-13 billion per year.

How Did BC Get Here?

The Vancouver Sun laid out the trajectory in detail. When Eby took over in 2022, BC was on track for a $5.7 billion surplus. He chose to spend it — on housing initiatives, homelessness programs, and priority social spending — rather than use it to pay down existing debt. By the time that fiscal year closed, the surplus had been spent down to just $704 million.

That was the last time BC posted anything resembling a positive fiscal result under Eby. The next year produced a $5.6 billion deficit, then a record $7.3 billion, then the current projected $9.6 billion — climbing to over $11 billion and then $12-13 billion in subsequent years.

The causes, as the Vancouver Sun reported, are dual: large-scale government spending has grown faster than revenues, while revenue growth has slowed as investment has weakened. Business groups warn that BC's approval timelines, DRIPA-related land uncertainty, and regulatory layering are actively discouraging long-term capital investment. As investment slows, so do the resource royalties, property transfer taxes, and corporate activity that fund provincial services.

The government's public sector hiring — up substantially since 2017 — has also created a fixed cost base that does not compress easily. The NDP expanded headcount during good years, locked in wage settlements, and added program spending. Now, with revenues falling short, those commitments are immovable.

No Plan to Fix It

Perhaps most damning is what is absent from Budget 2026: a credible path back to fiscal balance. The ICBA analysis notes that Budget 2026 "forecasts a string of hefty deficits over the rest of the decade, and there is no hint of a plan to get back to a balanced operating budget in the foreseeable future."

The government's approach — described by The Hub as "a mixture of tepid industrial policy, tax increases and mild spending restraint" — has not satisfied economists or business leaders, who argue BC still lacks a coherent economic strategy capable of growing its way out of the structural deficit.

Vaughn Palmer, writing in the Vancouver Sun, put it bluntly: Eby is "not a fiscal manager of John Horgan's ilk." Under Horgan, BC ran balanced or near-balanced budgets outside the extraordinary COVID years. Under Eby, the province has run consecutive and escalating deficits with no end in sight.

The $155 billion debt total is not an abstraction. It is the accumulated result of spending decisions made in the name of British Columbians, by a government that chose to spend rather than manage, year after year after year. The interest payments on that debt are already crowding out public services. The debt-to-GDP ratio — set to more than double by 2028-29 — will constrain every government that follows, NDP or otherwise, for decades to come.

BC's next generation will be paying this bill. And the NDP — the government that created it — has no plan to stop adding to it.