About this consultation
BC Policy Solutions prepared a written submission as part of the annual budget consultation highlighting three key priorities Budget 2027 must address—and how.
The recommendations centre around addressing austerity and serious social, economic and environmental issues through expanded public investment—particularly in areas like affordability, housing, rural-urban gaps in health care access, child care and more.
To fund these investments we propose key tax fairness reforms to increase provincial revenue and reduce inequality.
Read the full submission below for details.
Policy recommendations
1. Take urgent action to address the affordability crisis.
At a time when major trade and geopolitical tensions are causing economic uncertainty, a slow economy and growing employment precarity, the BC government should take urgent action to address the worsening affordability crisis, rising poverty and the collapse of youth employment in the province.
BC families are squeezed—wages are not keeping up with the cost of living, young people can’t find work and food bank use is up 79% since 2019, including a shocking rise among people who are employed. High prices for essentials, especially food and shelter, have hit lower-income households the hardest, forcing many to turn to charities to make ends meet. The affordability crisis will only worsen this year with food and transportation price increases exacerbated by the war in Iran.
BC has the highest poverty rate of all provinces and territories except for Nunavut. Despite modest increases since 2017, BC’s income assistance and disability benefits leave recipients with incomes far below the poverty line. To reduce deep poverty, the province should increase social assistance and disability benefits to the poverty line and index them to inflation.
To strengthen income support to lower-income households, Budget 2027 should index all income-tested benefits to inflation. In addition, the government must ensure benefit amounts are large enough to move people out of poverty and meet their housing needs.
BC must reverse the Budget 2026 decision to slow the pace of investment in affordable housing, reactivate the Community Housing Fund and commit to creating 25,000 new units of non-market housing a year. The BC government should also develop housing projects itself at a much larger scale, either through BC Housing or a new Crown agency.
Budget 2027 must increase funding to the Employment Standards Branch to effectively enforce worker rights without massive backlogs. Many low-wage workers continue to experience wage theft and work unpaid hours and timely enforcement of their rights would boost their incomes.
To prevent poverty and homelessness, BC should also enhance housing and financial assistance for people fleeing violence, invest in youth employment initiatives and develop a cross-ministerial affordable food strategy.
2. Expand public investment in social and physical infrastructure.
Expand public investment in social and physical infrastructure to address urgent social needs with a focus on reducing BC’s large rural-urban gaps in access to health care, transit, child care and other key services. Recognize that failing to invest adequately comes at a steep long-term economic cost.
BC faces urgent social and environmental deficits: health and seniors’ care services under strain, an underfunded K-12 system, an existential funding crisis in post-secondary, lack of access to child care, climate disruption and a toxic drugs crisis. Public services are stretched beyond capacity with inadequate access in rural communities. Many of these challenges have roots in earlier austerity and budget cuts in the 2000s under the then BC Liberal government.
Public services are foundational to a strong economy. Boosting investment in key public services creates good, family-supporting jobs, provides an economic stimulus during an economic slump and reduces out-of-pocket spending for households on things like child care and transportation. Every dollar invested in public services returns two- to threefold in economic activity.
Budget 2027 should significantly increase investment in affordable child care spaces that enable more young parents—especially mothers—to fully participate in the labour force. BC must also invest in expanding public transit, including new public inter-urban transit routes, free transit for youth under 18 and a low-income transit pass.
Health care resources must be refocused on prevention-oriented team-based primary care models that can increase timely and equitable access to quality primary care and simultaneously rein in escalating health care costs. These models should be funded to address the growing mental health crisis through wrap-around community-based services.
Budget 2027 must substantially increase funding for public post-secondary education to resolve the sector’s existential funding crisis triggered by the federal cap on international students but rooted in decades of underfunding and marketization.
Additionally, the government should follow through on its promise to create a new infrastructure fund for municipalities, making funding conditional on ending apartment bans in BC’s biggest cities.
Failing to make these key social and physical infrastructure investments now would hurt BC families and damage our long-term economic growth and productivity.
3. Implement tax fairness reforms and other mechanisms to fund public investment.
To fund these investments in healthy people and communities, implement tax fairness reforms that reduce income and wealth inequality, increase provincial revenues and ensure the public and First Nations get a fair return from the profits generated by our shared natural resources.
The province should build on the tax reforms introduced in Budget 2026 to create the fiscal room for the critical investments outlined above.
As a start, Budget 2027 should increase the tax rates on the top four provincial tax brackets by two points and the next two by at least 0.5 percentage points; increase the corporate income tax rate from 12% to 13%; and tax high-value land wealth by further increasing provincial property tax rates on value above $3 million and adding a new bracket above $7 million. Corporate tax credits and subsidies should be reviewed and streamlined to ensure they generate public benefit for BC, not just private profit for investors (many of whom are outside BC and Canada).
BC should also review provincial royalty regimes for natural gas and critical minerals and increase rates for industrial water use to ensure the public and First Nations receive a fair return on our publicly owned resources.
BC’s current fiscal challenges stem from the fact that the province is collecting far less revenue than it did 25 years ago. BC’s own-source revenues—i.e. all taxes, fees and royalties the Province has control over—have plummeted from 19% of GDP to 15% of GDP over the last quarter century. This represents $18.7 billion in foregone revenues annually, enough to eliminate the current deficit with money left over.
Tax reform is a powerful tool to curb BC’s high levels of income and wealth inequality and fund the public investments our communities need. To add further revenue options and build trust in the tax system, BC should convene a Citizens’ Assembly on fair tax reform, where everyday people selected by lottery can deliberate on how best to pay for shared priorities, with access to experts who can help inform the deliberations.
