Fort St. John housing shortage.

An August 02, 2025, CBC News article, "B.C. Housing vacancies raise concern for Fort St. John, B.C., councillor after release of FOI docs," mentions in passing that "Fort St. John is the largest city in northeastern B.C., and a key service hub for the province's oil and gas industry."

It quotes Fort St. John city councillor Trevor Bolin, who stated, "As industry gets busier and the town gets busier, we're going to see more pressure on the housing market."

What is missing from the article that would help a reader decide whether the oil and gas industry is contributing adequately to BC Housing's budget are a few basic numbers:

• BC royalties, resource taxes, and tenures paid by the oil and gas sector from 2022 to 2024,
• BC government subsidies to BC's oil and gas sector from 2022 to 2024, and
• BC oil and gas sector after-tax profits from 2022 to 2024

A clear picture of how BC Housing in general and Fort St. John renters in particular wind up holding the bag once BC's hydrocarbons are extracted and transformed into dollars would help explain why BC's housing sector is so egregiously lacking in excess capacity.

This is becoming an increasingly important question now that FIRE (Finance, Insurance, and Real Estate) sector actors, having driven housing prices across Canada, on a 21-year wave of near-zero BOC overnight interest rates, to the maximum renters and "end-users" are able to pay, are leaving Canada's housing sector for greener pastures.