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The quick read: Campaigning on Vancouver Island, NDP Leader David Eby promised new tax brackets on high earners — up to 24.5 per cent on income over $1 million — to raise an estimated $1 billion for health care. The Conservatives say it will drive doctors out of B.C.; the Greens say it misses the real wealth entirely.

Eby is reaching for the oldest lever in the NDP toolbox: someone else's paycheque.

Campaigning in Comox over the weekend, the NDP leader unveiled a plan to raise B.C.'s top personal income tax rates — 22.5 per cent on income between $265,545 and $1 million, and 24.5 per cent on everything above that, up from 20.5 per cent today.

The party says the hike would apply to less than four per cent of earners, only on income above each threshold, and would pull in an estimated $1 billion to, in Eby's words, "fund healthcare and lower costs."

"As we face an unprecedented attack on our economy and rising costs for working families, we'll ask the wealthiest to chip in a little more," Eby said.

Here's the problem for the Okanagan: the people in those brackets are not all Bay Street tycoons — they are surgeons, specialists and senior engineers, the exact professionals Interior Health and every Okanagan community are begging to recruit.

The Conservatives made that point immediately, warning the plan would tax the doctors and specialists every community is fighting to recruit — and drive them out of the province.

Their broader line stings more: "There is no problem the NDP don't think can be fixed by raising your taxes."

The Conservatives, for their part, are campaigning on a promise to never raise taxes — a contrast this election keeps sharpening.

But the sharpest critique of the plan didn't come from the right at all.

Green Leader Emily Lowan argued that taxing high paycheques misses the point, because the ultra-wealthy don't get rich on paycheques — their fortunes grow in stocks and real estate.

"His plan doesn't touch a cent of that," she said.

She has a point worth sitting with. A specialist working 60-hour weeks in a Kelowna operating room pays the new rate; a billionaire living off unrealized capital gains does not.

This is also the same premier whose government promised a $1,000 household rebate in 2024, then cancelled it in early 2025 when the deficit got ugly — a pattern the Conservatives keep returning to.

The millionaire tax joins a growing list of campaign-season promises: a temporary 10-cent fuel tax cut, price guards on groceries and gasoline, and a new tax on empty condos.

Before October 24, Okanagan voters should ask the practical question: will a new tax bracket fill an operating room — or empty one?

Sources: Global News; Canadian Health Policy, October 2026.