BC Chamber Policy Wins: Three Years of Advocacy Progress for British Columbia Businesses

In this line of work, I am learning that the standard measure of success is the advocacy win. You had a position phrased in the form of a policy, you pushed for a change, and the change happened as you drew it up. But how often does that happen? Is it realistic for a list of recommendations to all land at once? And what would it look like if we started to take a less binary approach to our win/loss column?

As I dug in on the policies we have adopted over the years to understand more about what matters to our network, I was struck at just how much progress there has actually been along the way.

Our Policy Manual holds more than a hundred active positions, built and voted on by chambers and boards of trade across the province. Policies hold as active, and then can be renewed again through the same process. Against that book, we can now point to 36 files where we have meaningful enough progress that much of the outcome we sought was won. The most accurate term would be 'significant' progress.

This is why we want to showcase our policy work as a process. A living system that is constantly evolving. We are going to claim the 'win' when we see progress that feels meaty enough to report, but that doesn't mean the work stops. In many cases, policies we deem a win come back to renew, to continue expanding on the momentum already achieved. A win in the manual is rarely a closed file. It is a foundation the next position builds on.

The other element to discuss is credit. Rarely will a file move because one organization asked it to. It moves when the reasoning is sound and enough voices are pointing the same direction that government can act with confidence. Whether we are driving or adding weight to the position, we are participating in moving toward the outcome together, and we will celebrate that progress.

Three years of progress explained

As advocacy efforts are more often than not organized by sector or ministry, we have used this as the most logical way for us to categorize our positions. Below is our take on the policy wins earned in the past three years.

Energy, resources & permitting

For years, chambers from Prince George to Surrey have been sending us versions of the same story. Projects that made sense on paper were waiting years for a decision. The positions they brought were practical: give BC a critical minerals strategy, give proponents one window instead of six, put timelines on permits, weigh what a project means for a region's economy alongside everything else that gets weighed. A quarter of our progress record sits here (8), the largest share of any realm.

And the movement has been very meaningful. A provincial critical minerals strategy now exists. Renewable energy projects now go through a single regulator. Permitting timelines that businesses once described as open-ended are being shortened and made public. And an emerging 2050 national energy strategy is taking shape alongside a commitment to major projects in this sector in our province.

When trade pressure turned building things into a national priority, and the BC Government launched its Look West strategy, movement started to gain momentum. The measures government reached for were the ones this network had been describing for years.

Workforce, skills & labour

The book is full of workforce positions because our members feel this one every day. It is the job posting that sits open for a year. The internationally trained professional working below their training because their credentials count for less here. The community that cannot attract a physiotherapist, or a veterinarian. And even more painful is the remote, rural or resort community that is struggling to operate in general as they cannot fill the day-to-day jobs we need to keep the community working. The positions asked government to recognize credentials people already hold, to train the people already working keeping them skilled, to consider immigration as a pathway for acute challenges, to map education to workforce needs and so on. This one has many different pathways to success, and the chamber network is certainly not short of perspectives on this foundational issue. This is the second largest share of the record (7), and it is where progress compounds most visibly.

Legislation in 2023 required regulators in eighteen professions to drop unfair barriers and justify their fees and timelines. This spring, a second act built directly on that foundation to fast-track licensing for allied health professionals, an ask that started with a policy from Williams Lake about rural communities. Physician assistants can now practice in BC. Working adults can get funded short-term training without quitting their jobs. Veterinary training seats doubled (and yes, we are back looking for more).

Trade & transportation

The rules that govern how goods and services move beyond our borders, provincial or federal, have been a perennial focus for the chamber network.

Everyone agreed it made no sense that a BC winery could ship to Europe more easily than to another province. Then tariffs arrived, internal trade became a national conversation almost overnight, and the ground moved. BC helped establish a mutual recognition agreement for goods across provinces in November last year, cut back its own exceptions under the national trade framework, and premiers put barrier removal at the centre of their table. A file that crawled for ten years travelled further in twelve months than in all the years before. The network did not create that moment, but our positions were highly relevant and met the moment.

The relationship between trade and transportation is tangible in the movement of goods, and therefore central to our economy as a remarkable amount of it travels. The channels that move them, whether that is a highway connecting BC and Alberta, a rail line to a terminal, a port connection, or a rural northern bridge not constructed with a view to future trade capacity in mind. These channels can be bottlenecks that cost businesses near and far, which is why our book is dense with positions on these issues, more than a dozen live today.

Months after a position on much needed upgrades to the vital Fraser Valley corridor of Highway 1 was adopted, the province committed $2.34 billion to its construction, now well underway. The Massey Tunnel, a position this network first adopted in 2020 and kept renewing, secured $3 billion just recently as part of the Canada-British Columbia Cooperative Prosperity Agreement with the Federal Government. And we are still pressing on 97 and 16, where the response so far has not matched the traffic those highways carry. The transportation system that enables us to succeed both inside and outside of our borders will be a key focus to take advantage of the momentum we are seeing here.

Housing & development

Housing shows up in our book from two directions. Development is a business in its own right, and chambers brought us the problems of that business: approvals that were slow and unpredictable, and development fees due years before a project earns a dollar. Housing is also the lifeblood of a working community, and chambers brought us that side too: businesses that could not hire because workers could not live anywhere near the job. The positions reflected both, asking for faster and more predictable approvals, more homes allowed on ordinary lots, and fees timed so builders are not financing government charges up front.

When the province rebuilt its housing rules in 2023 and 2024, several of those positions landed at once. Public hearings are gone for projects that already comply with a community's own plan. Ordinary lots can now carry three or four homes without a rezoning fight. And as of this January, development cost charges are paid mostly at occupancy instead of years before a sale closes. That is the pattern with system fixes: nothing for years, then everything in one package.

The cost of doing business

While this is not a sector, it lands on one desk and is a clear category that has clear structure around it. What chambers describe is not any single tax but the layering. No individual charge breaks a business, but the stack can.

On cost, the network comes with precision. The positions here are specific by design: raise the payroll threshold where the health tax kicks in, fix the tax treatment for craft distillers, exempt a charity's fundraising from sales tax, stop taxing the machinery a business buys to become more productive. Each one is an attempt to thread a needle, finding the adjustment that eases real pressure on business without asking government to walk away from revenue it depends on. These positions arrive from every corner of the province, and more are mounting on our books each cycle.

The wins have been fewer here. But with more than a dozen live positions in our manual today, among the largest concentrations in the book, it is worth noting where we are seeing the needle move. Budget 2024 doubled the Employer Health Tax exemption threshold from $500,000 to $1 million in payroll, real relief for smaller employers, and our current position asks for the next step: indexing the threshold so inflation does not quietly claw the win back. Budget 2026 introduced a refundable tax credit on the machinery and equipment businesses buy to manufacture and process here, the first real movement on the input taxation our sales tax positions have pressed for years. Federally, the capital gains exemption for business succession moved past what our own policy had asked. We have some movement, with an ask for much more on the books.

Every file mentioned here, and the full policy book behind it, is available on our site. You can search our live policies and take a look through our wins by sector. Click here to view the policy progress updates.

To sum up some of these insights

1. Our focus will be more on the outcome than the journey. We will articulate what we seek to achieve and be open to collaborative solutions to meet them.
2. We celebrate momentum and drive forward for it to accumulate. We will look for movement and treat our files as living instruments.
3. Patience and persistence will be rewarded. A 'no' is often a data point, not an ending.

Just like the policy process, this will be always-on. Expect us to continue to report on the status of our positions, with more transparency and partnership across our chamber network and corporate partners, in service of a British Columbia where every business community is resilient, healthy and connected.