When Premier David Eby swears in his new cabinet on Monday, the new ministers won’t be issued the usual mandate letters.

Instead, they’ll have to learn their portfolios and priorities over Christmas in a more general way, as the NDP and Greens try to hammer out a power-sharing deal.

The premier intends to save his mandate letters until January. On Monday, the ministers will instead get “appointment letters” that repeat, for everyone, the same priority issues of cost-of-living, housing affordability, health care and economic growth (these are, roughly, the same priorities in the last mandate letters, too).

In most cabinet shuffles, the ministers leapfrog out of their appointments with specific marching orders from the premier in the form of the letters.

For example, Housing Minister Ravi Kahlon’s last mandate letter instructed him to establish the BC Builds program for middle-income housing, create a rental housing acquisition fund, legalize secondary suites province-wide, create a flipping tax, speed up development permitting and create transit density zones, amongst other things. And, to Kahlon’s credit, he got almost all of it done in the short time he had.

So,........

© BIV