Shaw: Bill 15 was born of political bluster, but 2025 ends with it still on the shelf

Waiting on infrastructure bill

Photo: Flickr/Government of British Columbia

Premier David Eby speaks during a November 2025 press conference about B.C.'s Look West plan.

It was Premier David Eby’s most important legislation of the year, a law to fast-track critical infrastructure projects so vital to the province’s future that the NDP government threatened an election to force it through.

And yet, after all that bluster, 2025 ended without Bill 15 being used once. In fact, the controversial Infrastructure Projects Act was never even enacted. The enabling regulations, which would give the law its teeth by allowing cabinet to designate certain projects in the provincial interest, remain stuck in consultation purgatory.

First Nations leaders, who decried the move to ram the legislation through without consultation, are now being asked by the government to sign off on its enabling regulations.

Seven months after Bill 15 passed, the province now says it has consulted with 53 of B.C.’s more than 200 First Nations, as well as two Indigenous leadership organizations. It had listed “spring 2026” as a possible date to get agreement. But even that is questionable.

“We have extended consultations with First Nations on the criteria for provincially significant projects and the Qualified Professional Framework regulations based on their requests for additional time to provide meaningful feedback,” the Ministry of Infrastructure said in a statement.

The government has proposed “possible eligibility requirements” for consideration on what it could qualify as a “provincially significant” project, thereby unlocking a host of new powers for cabinet to automatically approve permits, rewrite environmental assessment criteria and steamroll municipal roadblocks.

Projects could qualify if they fall into high-priority areas such as mining, energy security, ports, disaster recovery or housing, exceed $100 million in capital costs, and secure First Nations consent.

What all that actually means in practice is now being worked out behind closed doors, through regulations that will determine how (and how often) those extraordinary powers are used.

It’s possible Bill 15 never actually becomes usable for the Eby government. Or it might take so long to get First Nations buy-in that the urgency of the moment — ostensibly to respond to U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariffs threats — will have passed.

Even if it does one day launch, Bill 15 will remain controversial for the very reason that it allows politicians to pick and choose which private projects get special treatment, effectively creating a two-tiered system of winners and losers.

Still, the B.C. government was not alone in this move. Ontario passed a similar law in 2025. And Prime Minister Mark Carney ended the year declaring certain projects (including an Alberta-B.C. oil pipeline) in the “national interest” as part of his new Major Projects Office.

Yet B.C. was notable in 2025 for attempting to push the boundaries far further than anywhere else.

The precursor to Bill 15, called Bill 7, would have allowed the Eby cabinet to bypass the legislature for two years, changing any law or regulation without a vote in the house by MLAs, public debate or legislative oversight.

It was the most extraordinary concentration of executive power proposed in British Columbia since the Second World War.

Eby briefly threatened an election over the matter in March, then two weeks later backed down. Bill 15 was born from that bungled attempt. More election threats followed. This time, however, the premier refused to budge.

The backlash was immediate, and heated.

“Mr. Eby is a snake oil salesman,” then-Union of BC Indian Chiefs vice-president Don Tom said in May.

“Premier Eby and his government have chosen to ignore our voices, dismiss our rights and trample on the very reconciliation framework they helped create,” added BC Association of First Nations Regional Chief Terry Teegee.

“The damage to our relationship will be profound and lasting.”

Throughout the year, the premier remained unrepentant.

“Now, I know, given the history of this province, why there is anxiety from some corners about an abandoning of commitments around reconciliation, around the environment, but that is not where we’re going with this,” he told the legislature in May, during Bill 15 debate. “In fact, just the opposite.”

In a year-end interview in December, Eby said the province still needs the power to act quickly to respond to events such as American tariff threats.

Still, as 2025 closes, it’s hard to escape the conclusion that much of the political brinkmanship surrounding Bill 15 amounted to empty bluster.

The premier sold Bill 15 as an emergency tool for an emergency moment. Yet the year ends with those emergency powers unused, the moment cooling, and a law that, despite the controversy, has so far changed absolutely nothing on the ground in the real world.

Rob Shaw has spent more than 17 years covering B.C. politics, now reporting for CHEK News and writing for BIV. He is the co-author of the national bestselling book A Matter of Confidence, host of the weekly podcast Political Capital, and a regular guest on CBC Radio.