BC Spent $164,900 on 1,000 Cups of Coffee in Seattle. That’s $165 a Cup. The Province Is Running a $13.3-Billion Deficit.

In a province running a projected $13.3-billion deficit — the largest in British Columbia history — Premier David Eby’s government spent $164,900 on a two-day coffee truck promotion in Seattle. The stunt handed out 1,000 cups of “free” coffee and tea to American health-care workers as part of a recruitment campaign. The arithmetic, calculated from freedom-of-information records obtained by the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, works out to roughly $164 per cup.¹

That figure became public only because the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner had to force disclosure. The BC government and its consulting firm initially refused to release the receipts. Two BC government employees signed off on the spending: Blaine Ferguson, an executive director in the Ministry of Health, and Kyla Kelch, a marketing director for Government Communications and Public Engagement.²

The Health Ministry has defended the expense as part of a broader recruitment marketing campaign. A ministry spokesperson told Global News the campaign was “money well spent,” pointing to more than 500 health-care professionals who have been hired from the United States since the recruitment effort began. The coffee truck — described in news reports as “colourful” — was one component of that effort.³

Trevor Halford, interim leader of the Conservative Party of British Columbia, asked the obvious question. “My question would be: what did this result in? How many applications, but more importantly, how many jobs were confirmed by this spend with this specific truck and this massive coffee order?” The government has not publicly broken down how many of the 500 hires can be traced to the Seattle coffee promotion specifically — as opposed to the rest of the recruitment campaign, which includes online advertising, in-person job fairs, and direct outreach to American hospitals.

The cost has to be set against the province’s fiscal context. BC’s 2026 budget projects a $13.3-billion deficit — the largest in provincial history. Total provincial debt is projected to reach $183.4 billion this fiscal year, double what it was in 2022/23 when David Eby took over from John Horgan. Multiple credit rating agencies downgraded BC’s credit rating ahead of the 2026 budget. The province has raised the lowest personal income tax bracket from 5.06% to 5.6%, paused tax bracket indexation from 2027 to 2030, expanded the provincial sales tax to professional services, and increased school tax rates on homes valued over $3 million.⁴

$164,900 is, in absolute terms, a small line item in a $94-billion provincial budget. As the Canadian Taxpayers Federation’s BC director Carson Binda put it, the bill for the coffee delivery cost “more than the entire provincial tax bills for thirty British Columbia families earning $100,000 a year.” Thirty families. Two days. One thousand cups.⁵

The bigger problem is what the spending says about how the BC government prioritizes. The province has a 277-day average wait time for a long-term care bed for seniors. The Seniors Advocate has documented a shortage of 2,000 long-term care beds today, projected to grow to 16,000 over the next decade. Budget 2026 contains no plan to fast-track new long-term care beds — and instead pauses some previously planned public long-term care homes. The wait list for Ontario-style core services has grown across multiple categories. Family doctor access has continued to decline, despite increased spending on doctors as the largest line increase in the health care budget.⁶

Meg von Haartman / Unsplash — The promotion handed out 1,000 cups of free coffee and tea to American health-care workers in Seattle. The BC Health Ministry says more than 500 health-care professionals have since been hired from the U.S. — the government’s defence that the stunt was ‘money well spent.’

None of those problems would be solved by $164,900. But every line of provincial spending is a choice — and the choice to spend $165 per cup of coffee in Seattle while the seniors’ wait list grows is the kind of decision that reveals what a government considers “money well spent.”

The disclosure process is its own story. The Canadian Taxpayers Federation filed a freedom-of-information request for the receipts. The government and its consulting firm refused to release them. The CTF appealed to the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner, which forced disclosure. Only then did the public learn that 1,000 cups had cost $164,900.⁷

The Health Ministry’s framing — “money well spent” — was the public response. The receipts were the private response. The gap between the two is what taxpayers paid the CTF and the OIPC to close. “It’s hard to imagine how the BC government could possibly justify spending $164 per cup on coffee,” Binda said. “How would the premier feel about door-knocking a whole neighbourhood and telling those families he spent their whole tax bill to give away coffee for a day?”⁸

The stunt arrives in a context that should make every BC taxpayer skeptical. The Eby government’s job growth between 2019 and 2024 — 232,900 new jobs in the province — was overwhelmingly concentrated in the public sector, with 141,200 of those jobs (60.6%) added to government payrolls rather than the private sector. Public service positions are now scheduled for a 15,000-position cut over three years as part of an expenditure review designed to claw back the spending growth of the past five years. The 2026 budget added a $4-billion contingency line to cover “potential spending pressures.” The deficit will not return to balance under the current fiscal plan.⁹

In that context, $164,900 for 1,000 cups of coffee is not the biggest waste in the BC budget. It is, however, the most legible. It is a number that any voter can calculate and any voter can compare to their own grocery bill, their own coffee budget, their own annual property tax bill. And it took an FOI battle and a privacy commissioner ruling to make it public.

If the campaign worked — if 500 American health-care professionals were hired and a significant fraction of them came from the Seattle coffee promotion — there is a defensible argument for the spending. The province has a real health-care worker shortage. Recruiting from American jurisdictions is a legitimate strategy. A two-day stunt that generates dozens of qualified hires might be worth the cost.¹⁰

But the government has not produced the numbers to support that argument. It has produced a total — 500 hires across an entire campaign — without breaking out which channel delivered which results. It has refused to disclose the cost-per-hire for the coffee stunt specifically. And it tried to keep the receipts hidden until the privacy commissioner intervened. A government confident in the value of its spending does not refuse to release the receipts.

The BC government spent $164,900 on 1,000 cups of coffee in Seattle. That works out to $165 a cup. The bill exceeds the entire annual provincial tax bill of 30 BC families earning $100,000 a year. The government tried to refuse to release the receipts and was forced to disclose them by the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner. The province is running a $13.3-billion deficit — the largest in BC history. Total provincial debt will hit $183.4 billion this year, double what it was in 2022/23. Personal income taxes have been raised. Tax brackets have been frozen. The PST has been expanded. School taxes have been hiked. And the Health Ministry’s defence is that the campaign was “money well spent.” The receipts say otherwise. If the government can’t tell the difference between recruitment and a publicity stunt, the next thing taxpayers should ask for is not better coffee. It is a better government.