Dallas Brodie sat down with New Westminster Times editor David Brett and described British Columbia as a place in “incredible disarray.”
Kerry-Lynne Findlay had just been forced out as Conservative leader. Peter Milobar and other MLAs had walked. Lorne Doerkson, a former B.C. Liberal, was named interim leader—and Brodie said he was in Africa when the job landed. Rumors of a snap election sat on the table. Municipal races were already burning volunteer hours. Brodie called the Findlay episode a coordinated hit. She said the center-right is now talking about a temporary alliance so it does not split the vote against Premier David Eby’s NDP.
That is the soap opera. It is not the investment file.
The investment file is whether B.C. is a jurisdiction you can underwrite. On that question, Brodie and the Fraser Institute are closer than they look. Brodie says land is being carved up in secret, DRIPA and court decisions have fused culture with tenure, and the books are “beyond broke.” The Fraser Institute, in a Sept. 21, 2026 commentary, said the province is on a path to “economic and democratic oblivion,” and that the damage could be hard to reverse.
The investor opportunity is not picking a winner in a Conservative family fight. It is treating B.C. as a high-political-risk resource province until title, permits, and credit stop moving every week. Capital that needs certainty will stay underweight. Capital that can buy dislocation—on assets with clear tenure and a path to ship—gets paid for waiting.
What the Fraser Institute already marked
Jason Clemens and Tegan Hill did not need a leadership dumpster fire to write their note. They wrote it because the numbers were already ugly.
They said B.C. had the slowest inflation-adjusted growth among provinces in 2024 and remained a laggard in 2025, with TD marking it near the bottom again in 2026. They said Statistics Canada estimates more than 60,000 private-sector jobs lost so far this year, and more businesses closing than opening. After inheriting a small surplus when Eby took office in 2022, the government is on track for a record operating deficit near $13.8 billion. Provincial debt is projected around $180.9 billion this year, more than double the $89.4 billion they cite from the start of Eby’s tenure.
They counted five credit-rating downgrades during that tenure. Other tallies of “negative actions” across agencies run higher. The direction is not in dispute. Lenders want a fatter premium to hold B.C. paper. That premium is a tax on every hospital, highway, and Crown guarantee the province still wants to sell.
Brodie told Brett the province has taken six downgrades in three years under a “financially illiterate” premier. Use her count as a political line. Use the Fraser count as the credit file. Both say the same thing to a mining analyst. The sovereign-style risk of the province is rising while the opposition cannot form a single sentence.
Fraser’s Sept. 21 piece even named the Conservative mess as one reason the public is not watching the books. Tariffs are the other excuse. The institute’s point is that the fiscal hole opened before the latest trade fight, and that an election without a policy pivot still leaves a lost decade on the table.
Why the family fight is the tenure fight
Brodie’s hardest claim is not about gossip accounts or a Mercedes in Calgary. It is that “culture” and “economy” are now the same file.
She said resource jobs—mining, oil and gas, pipelines, forestry—sit under DRIPA, the Cowichan decision, and looming land claims. She said Eby is an ideologue who treats B.C. as a historical mistake and is handing territorial rights to bands in a land-back program the voters were not sold. She said Chinese counterparties then talk “nation to nation” with those bands and try to step around ordinary Canadian investment rules. She said the province needs a full audit before it promises more.
Those are her words, not a court finding. Investors do not have to accept the motive. They do have to price the result. Title risk is the reason capital already discounts B.C. juniors versus similar rocks in friendlier rules. A Business Council survey cited in national commentary this year found members cutting investment plans over DRIPA. Ninety-eight percent in that survey were “very concerned.” That is a cost of capital, not a culture-war slogan.
Findlay’s collapse matters only because it tells you the alternative government cannot yet hold a caucus, let alone repeal a statute. Brodie says Milobar’s camp wants to talk jobs and skip the land file. She asks what “reconciliation light” even means if the legal stack still blocks a mill. She wants a 100% rollback until the province knows what it can afford. Center BC and the Conservatives, in her telling, will offer a trim. The NDP offers the current path. A muddled center that will not touch tenure still leaves the Fraser Institute’s oblivion chart in place.
Doerkson as interim face does not close that gap. John Rustad invited back does not close it. A shotgun alliance of OneBC, Conservatives, and whoever still answers the phone does not close it. An $80-million-plus snap vote, which Brodie called reckless while autism and seniors programs are cut, does not close it. Only a government that can sell a permit that survives the next court term closes it.
Stabilize or basket case?
Short answer: basket case until tenure is priced as law, not as a weekly leak.
Eby still has a thin majority and two years on the clock if he does not roll the dice. Brodie thinks he may regret a snap writ. She also knows NDP governments have imploded before—Glen Clark’s collapse is the ghost she named. That is hope, not a model. The left bottles dissent. The right leaks. Fraser already treats the policy path as the threat, with or without a Conservative resurrection.
For investors, a chaotic opposition is not a buy signal on B.C. paper. It is a reason the discount stays. Credit spreads do not care who won a fourth ballot in May. Mines do not pour because an interim leader is a “lovely man.” They pour when a mineral title can be financed.
The opportunity, stated as a filter
Do not buy the province as a turnaround on a headline about uniting the right.
Buy, if you buy at all, assets that can live inside the current rules: clear private land or settled agreements, hydro power, existing permits, and offtake that does not need a new DRIPA interpretation next winter. Treat exploration stories that assume a friendly Victoria as options, not as core. Treat a snap election as volatility, not as a thesis.
If the center-right actually locks a single slate and wins a mandate to freeze land-back by press release, that is a re-rating event. It has not printed. Until it does, the Fraser Institute’s frame is the working map: weak growth, record red ink, serial downgrades, and a public distracted by the circus.
B.C. rock is still real. B.C. politics is the premium. The opportunity is getting paid to wait for title—or refusing to underwrite a basket case at a safe-jurisdiction multiple. That is the only question that survives the next resignation letter.
Disclaimer
Commentary based on a New Westminster Times interview with OneBC leader Dallas Brodie and on Fraser Institute commentaries dated September 2026, including “B.C. on path to economic and democratic oblivion.” Political claims about land transfers, China, and internal party motives are Brodie’s opinions. Credit-downgrade counts differ by agency and period; Fraser cites five during Eby’s tenure. This is not investment advice and not a recommendation to buy or sell any B.C. mining stock, bond, or political outcome. Do your own work.