SURREY, B.C.: The B.C. NDP government has failed to address extortion in British Columbia with the urgency it has demanded from day one, say Conservative Interim Leader Trevor Halford and Steve Kooner Critic for Attorney General, responding to Premier David Eby’s announcement of a new provincial advisory group.
“Communities have been calling for action for nearly a year,” said Halford. “Business owners, families, and workers have been living in fear while the NDP failed to provide the resources necessary to confront these brazen acts of violence.”
Halford noted that it took the City of Surrey publicly calling on the federal government to declare a federal emergency before the NDP finally moved to get more boots on the ground. “Leadership is not reacting after the damage is already done, it’s preventing harm before communities are pushed to the breaking point,” he said.
The Premier has now committed to ‘listening’ to the community, but Halford said that commitment comes far too late. “They should have been listening from the very start,” he said. “Instead, they ignored dozens of cases, the repeated pleas from business owners, and the cries from communities who were warning that this crisis was escalating.”
Halford said today’s announcement shows the Premier still doesn’t understand the seriousness of the situation. “This announcement doesn’t change what’s happening on the ground,” he said. “There’s nothing new here that actually stops extortion, interrupts organized crime, or protects people who are living in fear.”
Steve Kooner warned that creating an advisory body without real enforcement risks giving false hope to communities already exhausted by violence and intimidation.
“People are scared,” said Kooner. “They want to know what is being done right now to protect their families and their livelihoods. An advisory committee doesn’t put offenders behind bars, and it doesn’t shut down criminal networks.”
Both MLAs stressed that honesty with the public matters, especially in a crisis.
“We don’t want to offer comforting words without real results,” said Kooner. “Being honest means acknowledging that listening alone is not enough.”
Halford said the path forward is clear: “We need to see criminals in jail and foreign nationals involved in organized crime deported. Full stop,” Halford said. “Anything less is failing the very people this government claims to stand with.”
The Conservative Caucus of B.C. is calling on the government to immediately pair any community engagement with visible enforcement outcomes such as arrests, prosecutions, and coordination with federal authorities, so British Columbians can see that action is finally being taken, not just discussed.
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Francesca Guetchev, Press Secretary
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