Less than two weeks after Prime Minister Mark Carney and BC Premier David Eby announced a federal-provincial plan to convert more than 2,200 vacant condo units into affordable homes, the premier appeared in Chinese-language coverage of a recent meeting with Song Youchun, China’s deputy minister of housing and urban-rural development.
The meeting was framed around housing construction, modern wood buildings, green construction and lower building costs.
He reportedly referred to himself as David Yin but this might be just a mere nomenclature consistency. Chinese-language sources commonly refer to Eby as 尹大卫, a Chinese rendering of his name that can be read as Yin Dawei or David Yin. Chinese state-linked diplomatic coverage have used 尹大卫 for Eby before.
The more material question is why a BC premier was meeting a Chinese housing official during a trade mission that the province had publicly sold as a push for forestry, energy, tourism and agriculture. The BC government said Eby’s June 27 to July 3 China trip would include Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, and described China as the province’s second-largest export market. In 2025, China accounted for nearly $11 billion in BC goods exports, almost 20% of the province’s commodity exports, according to the province.
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Housing enters through wood. BC has been trying to move more of its forestry sector away from commodity dependence and toward higher-value building products, including mass timber and prefabricated wood construction. The province said Forestry Innovation Investment helped secure a memorandum of understanding between China’s Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development, Natural Resources Canada and BC’s Ministry of Forests to get BC wood products into China’s construction sector.
Canada Wood said Canada-China cooperation on wood construction began in 2010 through an earlier five-year agreement among Natural Resources Canada, BC’s Ministry of Forests, and China’s housing ministry. It said the framework supported policy dialogue, technical collaboration and pilot projects tied to green buildings, prefabrication and lower-emissions construction.
Chinese real-estate media reported that Song and Eby discussed housing construction, modern wood-structure promotion, building energy savings and carbon reduction. The same report also said Eby expressed willingness to learn from China’s green-building experience and expand technical exchange in wood construction.
The domestic tension is that Eby is not only selling building materials overseas. He is also trying to explain why BC and Ottawa should intervene in a frozen condo market at home.
On June 18, Carney and Eby announced a wider infrastructure and housing package that included more than $5 billion in federal investment over 10 years for BC local infrastructure. The package included nearly $1.6 billion over 10 years from Ottawa, matched by BC for up to $3.2 billion, to reduce development charges for multi-unit housing by up to 50% in priority communities. It also included a one-time $284 million transfer to BC to reduce barriers to new construction.
The flashpoint was the condo conversion plan. Ottawa said Build Canada Homes and BC Housing would use “innovative financing tools” to convert more than 2,200 vacant condo units in priority growth areas into affordable homes. The federal release called it one of the fastest ways to increase supply. It did not spell out yet purchase prices, affordability rules, eligible locations or how risks would be shared.
Eby’s defence is that the program would not rescue high-end developers from bad bets. According to The Tyee, he said the opportunity was to buy below construction cost and make units available through rent-to-own for British Columbians. He also said the economics did not work in Vancouver itself but could work in places such as the Fraser Valley, Vancouver Island, and the Okanagan.
Critics see a different risk. Opposition voices warned that public funds could subsidize developer profits, distort price discovery or prevent units from repricing naturally.
There is no verified evidence that Song, China’s housing ministry or Chinese officials are involved in the Carney-Eby condo conversion plan. Still, the optics are loaded. At home, Eby is asking voters to trust a yet-to-be-finalized financing model for unsold condos. Abroad, he is photographed with a Chinese housing official discussing construction systems, building costs and green housing.
