David Eby got roasted on CBC the day before the vote. He said DRIPA is “not barely mentioned” in his platform. His platform never names the law that frames decisions on Crown land.

Shortly after eight on Friday morning, the day before Final Voting Day, David Eby sat down at a CBC microphone in Vancouver. The BC NDP leader and premier was the guest on The Early Edition, CBC Radio One’s morning show, and the host that day was Lyndsay Duncombe of CBC News, filling in for Stephen Quinn.^1,2

Twelve minutes in, Duncombe reminded him that in the spring he had called changes to DRIPA, the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act, so important that he was ready to go to an election over them. “Why is DRIPA barely mentioned in your platforms?” she asked. “It’s not barely mentioned.” Eby replied.¹

DRIPA is the law under which the Province now shares decisions about Crown land with First Nations, and provincial Crown land is 94 per cent of British Columbia. It is the land the public hunts, fishes, rides and camps on, by default and for free. The premier’s platform, as his party published it that day, does not contain the word DRIPA. It was the sharpest moment of the interview, and the closest anyone came to asking him about the land itself.^3,4

By 12:30 that afternoon a 212-second cut of the interview was on YouTube, credited to “CBC News” and titled as 200 seconds of “Tough Questions.” It is the version most people have seen. We found the original, transcribed all 17 minutes from CBC’s own audio, and checked what Eby said against the record.⁵

01 CBC gave David Eby 17 minutes on The Early Edition. The viral cut keeps every hard question and about 44 seconds of his answers.

The original runs 17 minutes 41 seconds, and Eby speaks for roughly 11 of them. The cut begins six minutes in, after his answers on SkyTrain for Surrey and on the deficit. From there it keeps Duncombe’s questions almost whole and trims most of Eby’s answers to their first sentence or two. Of its 212 seconds, about 44 are Eby speaking. Within the part it uses, it drops one question entirely, and it is the one he answered worst.^1,5

The cut’s caption says Eby was “REPEATEDLY HUMILIATED.” The full tape is less one-sided than that, and on three points it is worse for him than the cut shows. Here is each exchange, with what he said and what the record says.

02 Eby owned the $1,000 grocery rebate he never paid. Asked what he would cut next, he named nothing.

The record backs the admission. The NDP promised every household a $1,000 grocery rebate in the October 2024 campaign. In February 2025 the government cancelled it before a dollar was paid, calling it a $2-billion expense it could not carry into a trade war. Brenda Bailey, then the Finance Minister, said: “We made it with the intention of doing it, but the world has changed.” On this one he answered the question, and the cut leaves out his reason.⁶

Duncombe then asked the question the cut never shows. If the economy got worse, “what would you cut?” Eby began: “Yeah, that’s a great question.” He went on to say that “it’s always the unpredictable things that show up for governments.” He then spoke about his values and his record on car insurance and rents, and he named no program, ministry or line he would cut.¹

For the backcountry that silence matters, because the backcountry is already where the cuts land. Budget 2026 trimmed BC Parks and Recreation Sites and Trails, and his costed plan has $0 for backcountry roads, rec sites or Target 8, the Province’s own goal for recreation access and resource roads.⁷

03 Asked about a Lions Gate doctor at his breaking point, Eby pointed to a shortage across North America. Duncombe had to ask a second time for his plan.

Duncombe read from a post by Dr. Kevin McLeod, an internal medicine specialist at Lions Gate Hospital in North Vancouver, who had written that he was considering resigning over workloads and patient safety. Eby answered: “Well, there’s a huge challenge that we face in the province, but not just here.” He spoke about recruitment and then turned to the Conservatives’ plan, saying it held $5 billion in uncosted tax cuts; when we checked that figure after the leaders’ debate, we found no published tally that reaches it.^1,8,9

When she pressed, he gave her a plan: more recruitment from the United States, more training spaces and legislated nurse-to-patient ratios. The cut removes that answer and leaves the impression that he had none. The fair reading is that he reached for the opposition first and the specifics second.

04 Eby told CBC that DRIPA is “not barely mentioned” in his platform. His platform never names the law.

Eby defended the claim by describing the partnerships with First Nations that he said the Act enables, and said repealing it, as the Conservatives propose, would bring “economic chaos.” The work, he said, “is core to our economic plan for the entire province.” He closed: “We had a tough court decision. We have to find a path forward and we will find a path forward.”¹

The platform page his party published, which we saved on the morning and the evening of 23 October, does not contain the words DRIPA or Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. It mentions First Nations as partners in major projects and mining. Partnerships are in the platform. The law, and the amendments he promised to it, are not.⁴

Those amendments have a record. On 2 April Eby said changing DRIPA was “non-negotiable,” and: “We have to do it, and we will do it.” Eighteen days later he and the First Nations Leadership Council announced: “The Government of B.C. will not be introducing legislation to suspend or amend DRIPA or UN Declaration-related provisions in the Interpretation Act, in the spring legislative session.” They promised solutions “before the fall legislative session.” There was no fall session. The legislature was dissolved for this election on 22 September with no bill introduced.^3,10,11

For anyone who uses public land, this is the exchange that counts. DRIPA governs how the Province shares decisions about Crown land with First Nations, and the same reconciliation agenda sits behind the transfers his government is planning. Leaked Ministry of Forests documents set out about 400 pieces of Crown land to be transferred under treaties and reconciliation agreements, and across 40 pages they never mention public access. Asked about the law on the radio, Eby promised a path forward on the eve of the vote and did not say what it is.^12,13

Eby said DRIPA is “not barely mentioned.” His platform does not name it, and his amendments never reached the House.

05 Eby called LNG “not everybody’s favourite thing.” He said he did not know he had lost a cabinet minister over it.

Duncombe read a text from a listener, Shirley, who asked why the NDP was sending flyers telling people not to vote Green when it had “done nothing but increase emissions with LNG.” Eby replied: “I know that LNG is not everybody’s favourite thing.” He added: “I’ve got members of my own team that are extremely anxious about LNG and fossil fuel expansion.”¹

Duncombe then named Randene Neill, the Minister of Water, Land and Resource Stewardship, as speaking out against LNG at a forum, and said: “You lost a cabinet minister over these issues.” Eby answered: “I don’t know that I lost a cabinet minister over these issues. But I do understand that we have a big tent in the NDP.”¹

Duncombe did not name the minister. The one who fits is Kelly Greene, Eby’s Minister of Emergency Management and Climate Readiness and the MLA for Richmond-Steveston. In July she publicly criticized FortisBC’s Tilbury LNG expansion, and Eby said he had helped write her statement and that his government is a “big tent.” On 22 September, the day after the Tilbury Phase 2 approvals, she announced she would not run again, in a letter that gave much of its space to LNG shipping risks: “I remain deeply concerned about risks posed by the Tilbury LNG shipping channel and have advocated for better safety standards for a decade.” She did not resign from cabinet, so his words are defensible. They are also a long way from what her own letter says.¹⁴

Neill matters to this site for another reason. She is the minister whose order in June replaced riders’ permits in the South Peace caribou closures with closures that have no expiry date. The cabinet table Eby described as a big tent is also the one that decides who gets onto the land.¹⁵

06 Eby said his government beats its deficit forecasts “every year.” The Province’s own books show a year it did not.

Before the cut begins, Duncombe asked how voters could trust his spending plans with a deficit near $14 billion. Eby said his platform was fully costed, and then: “we’ve exceeded our projections on deficits every year to the good, including last year.”¹

The Public Accounts bear out the last two years. In 2024/25 the deficit came in $564 million lower than Budget 2024 forecast, and in 2025/26 it came in $3.2 billion lower than Budget 2025, a result the government itself attributes largely to a one-time $2.6-billion tobacco settlement. The year before that went the other way. In 2023/24 the deficit was $5.035 billion, $819 million higher than Budget 2023. “Every year” is not what the books show, and the cut leaves this exchange out entirely.¹⁶

07 Asked whether he regrets the snap election, Eby said he “got ahead of British Columbians.” It was the plainest answer he gave.

He said the same on his campaign bus that day, calling the call his “biggest regret” of the campaign. What he regrets is the explanation, not the election.¹⁷

08 In 17 minutes, no one asked David Eby about public access to Crown land. When he raised the land himself, it was to say his government is “protecting wild spaces.”

Duncombe asked about SkyTrain, deficits, the rebate, a doctor at his breaking point, DRIPA, LNG and the snap election. Those are fair questions, and she pressed him on several of them. None was about forest service roads, recreation sites, trail closures or who keeps the right to walk onto land the public owns.¹

Twice he raised the land himself, and both times it was as protection: in his first answer he listed “protecting our wild space” among his priorities, and at 15:27 he said the words above. The record behind those words is thin for the people who use the land. His environment plan pledges to “preserve public access” in its 30 by 30 promise and names no road, budget or rule to do it. The 30 by 30 agreement his minister signed never mentions public access, and his costed plan has $0 for backcountry roads, rec sites or Target 8.^7,18,19

09 In our view, CBC roasted Eby fairly on DRIPA and the rebate. The question it never asked is the one that decides who gets into the backcountry.

The cut makes him look worse than the tape on health care and the rebate, where he gave answers it removed. The tape makes him look worse than the cut on DRIPA and the deficit, and on the one question he could not answer: what he would cut.

The moment that should stay with voters is twelve minutes in, when the premier said a law was in his platform that is not there. That law shapes how the Province makes decisions on Crown land, which is 94 per cent of British Columbia, and his government’s leaked documents on land transfers never mention the public that uses it. Before you vote, ask the candidate on your ballot the question CBC did not: when Crown land is shared, protected or transferred, who writes down the public’s right to get in? Final Voting Day is today, Saturday 24 October, and polls are scheduled to close at 8 p.m.^3,13,20