Vaughn Palmer: Who’s bluffing? The B.C. NDP or Atira?

VICTORIA — Premier David Eby says he was taken aback by the response of housing provider Atira to the damning report on its relationship with B.C. Housing.

“I’m a little disturbed to see their press release that says that things don’t need to change, because they do,” declared Eby on the morning after Atira’s dismissal by news release of the Ernst & Young findings.

“Anyone reading that report knows that things have to change over there,” Eby told Simi Sara on CKNW radio Tuesday. “When you enter into agreements with government to do certain things and not do other things, you’ve got to honour those agreements. And that’s not what happened.”

The New Democrats concluded “there is a need for a change of leadership at Atira, because of, frankly, the disappointing response to what certainly I see as a crisis of government confidence in that organization.”

The Atira board seemed to regard the Ernst & Young report as a vindication because no specific findings of wrongdoing or financial benefit were attributed to the organization’s executive.