Cabinet ministers sworn in at Government House

There was an air of celebration as a white bus unloaded soon-to-be-announced cabinet ministers outside of Government House yesterday. Of the 47 NDP caucus members, 23 were named ministers, four were named ministers of state. It was a good day for women MLAs who were appointed to key and powerful cabinet roles such as finance, infrastructure, labour, and education. It was also a good day for MLAs from Vancouver Island and the CRD.

All designates wore white roses in memory of John Horgan, as they did at their swearing-in ceremony last week. They were welcomed into the ceremonial space by Lekwungen traditional dancers.

Outside Government House, members of Gitxsan and Wet’suwet’en Nations, along with their allies, were holding a protest of the NDP government’s ongoing support for the Prince Rupert Gas Transmission pipeline. The pipeline was sold by TC Energy in 2024 to the Nisg̱a’a Lisims Government and Texas-based Western LNG and is slated to move fracked LNG from gas reserves in the province’s northeast to the West Coast.

The room rose for the ministers designate led in by singers and dancers from the Esquimalt Nation. The ceremony was presided over by the King’s representative in BC, Lieutenant Governor Janet Austin.

A moment of silence was held for former Premier John Horgan, who passed away last week after succumbing to a third bout with cancer. Austin acknowledged the Songhees and Esquimalt peoples in the spirit of good will and friendship then proceeded to install members to their selected roles in the executive council.

Austin described public service as “grueling, often thankless and demands one’s whole self.” Once she reaffirmed David Eby through his oath of allegiance to the King, his oath of office and of confidentiality, Austin did the same, en masse, with all the ministers designated before Eby assigned them their cabinet roles, one by one.

The new cabinet includes 23 ministers and four ministers of state, including Eby. The returning and newly-assigned cabinet is as follows:

• Minister of State for Local Governments and Rural Communities: Brittny Anderson
• Agriculture and Food: Lana Popham
• Attorney General and Deputy Premier: Niki Sharma
• Children and Family Development: Grace Lore
• Citizens’ Services: George Chow
• Education and Child Care: Lisa Beare
• Minister of State for Child Care and Children and Youth with Support Needs: Jodie Wickens
• Emergency Management and Climate Readiness: Kelly Greene
• Energy and Climate Solutions: Adrian Dix
• Environment and Parks: Tamara Davidson
• Finance: Brenda Bailey
• Forests: Ravi Parmar
• Health: Josie Osborne
• Housing and Municipal Affairs: Ravi Kahlon
• Indigenous Relations and Reconciliation: Christine Boyle
• Infrastructure: Bowinn Ma
• Jobs, Economic Development and Innovation: Diana Gibson
• Minister of State for Trade: Rick Glumac
• Labour: Jennifer Whiteside
• Mining and Critical Minerals: Jagrup Brar
• Post-Secondary Education and Future Skills: Anne Kang
• Public Safety and Solicitor General: Garry Begg
• Minister of State for Community Safety and Integrated Services: Terry Yung
• Social Development and Poverty Reduction: Sheila Malcolmson
• Tourism, Arts, Culture and Sport: Spencer Chandra Herbert
• Transportation and Transit and House Leader: Mike Farnworth
• Water, Land and Resource Stewardship: Randene Neill

Notable challenges for new and returning ministers

This was a promotion for Sharma to Deputy Premier in a possible preview of where the party may look for a leader in 2028 or beyond. Sharma faced some controversy last year after her office tabled Bill 21 that put lawyers, notaries, and paralegals under a single regulator.

Wickens will have her hands full trying, in the NDP’s fourth majority round government, to finally achieve universal access to $10-per-day childcare across the province.

Ravi Parmar’s constituency’s proximity to old growth forests in the Westshore may help him in a hands-on way with his new position. Torrance Coste, the associate director at the Wilderness Committee, told Capital Daily the NDP is “way behind on its promises to implement the paradigm shift it committed to. A healthy industry requires healthy forests and the reality is logging companies have cut too much too fast in too many places”—long before Parmar was even born. He’s got a lot of work to do to instill confidence and get the province’s forest management back on track. Forestry in BC Coste says, has been “captured by industry—a handful of logging companies get what they want and workers and ecosystems don’t.”

“I hope Minister Parmar is up to it,” said Coste.

Davidson, the newly minted Minister of the Environment will have to decide if she will approve the environmental certificate for the PRGT pipeline which is currently meeting significant resistance in Gitxsan territory and is being challenged through a Gitanyow-Nisga’a land dispute currently moving through the provincial courts.

Josie Osborne will have her hands full with the challenge of the ongoing opioid crisis which has badly impacted Vancouver Island, the city of Vancouver and Prince George, on the mainland. In April, the province promised to open safe sites at every hospital in BC, but those did not materialize. Yesterday, frustrated doctors set up two unsanctioned overdose prevention centres—one in Nanaimo and one in Victoria.

In response, Island Health stated that “Ensuring the safety of our staff, medical staff, patients, volunteers and visitors is of paramount importance. Operating unapproved clinical service or demonstration on Island Health property cannot be supported.”

In his speech following the ceremony, Premier Eby said “We’re going to work hard. Ours will be a government that listens, and ours will be a government that delivers. I can't wait to get started, to build a province where no one gets left behind, where everyone is included, where we work together every single day, and build a British Columbia every person deserves.”