FEATURED HEADLINE
In 2019, while David Eby served as Attorney General and held responsibility for gaming, the provincial government under the NDP created a permanent statutory diversion of seven percent of the BC Lottery Corporation’s net income away from the consolidated revenue fund that finances health care, education, infrastructure and other services available to the general population of British Columbia. This diversion was first announced in the February 2019 provincial budget, formalized through an interim agreement signed on August 2, 2019 that transferred an immediate lump-sum payment of 194.84 million dollars covering the 2019/20 and 2020/21 fiscal years, locked into law by Bill 36, the Gaming Control Amendment Act introduced by Eby and given Royal Assent on October 31, 2019, and then extended through a long-term agreement signed on September 16, 2020 by the Province of British Columbia, the BC First Nations Gaming Revenue Sharing Limited Partnership, the First Nations Summit, the British Columbia Assembly of First Nations and the Union of British Columbia Indian Chiefs. The long-term agreement runs until March 31, 2045, creating an obligation that continues for roughly twenty-five years from the start of the arrangement and cannot be altered without legislative change and mutual agreement among the parties.
Under the legislation and the agreement, the BC Lottery Corporation is required each year to pay, through the government, seven percent of its actual net income to the First Nations-controlled limited partnership. Recent figures show that in the 2024/25 fiscal year this amounted to 97.6 million dollars. Cumulative transfers under the long-term arrangement have already reached 628 million dollars as of mid-2026 reporting. Projected totals over the full term stand at approximately three billion dollars. These sums are removed annually from the provincial revenues that would otherwise support services for all residents and are instead directed into a separate vehicle controlled by participating First Nations, distributed according to a formula of fifty percent equal base shares, forty percent by population and ten percent for remote communities. The funds are restricted to categories such as health, housing, economic development, education, culture and governance, with no mechanism for individual per-capita payments, yet the ultimate allocation decisions rest with the partnership and the recipient communities rather than the provincial government.
The effect is a fixed, multi-decade claim on gaming profits that operates independently of the province’s overall fiscal position, budget deficits or competing demands for public spending. Because the entitlement is embedded in statute, reversing or reducing it would require new legislation and the consent of the signatory First Nations organizations, creating a structural barrier to any future adjustment. The scale of the diversion, roughly one hundred million dollars in a typical year, represents a permanent reduction in the resources available for general provincial programs at a time when the government has faced rising deficits and increasing debt.
LIKE OUR WORK?