Ted Hughes Budget?

David Schreck as a good take on the BC Liberal Budget today. Of course what the media seem to be missing and reporting on is the Ministry of Children and Families. The Black Night of BC Evening News, BCTV in its promo asked, will their be a tax cut for you? Did they ask if there would be money for kids, did it point out in promos of the budget the to a need to address the problems caused by BC Liberal cuts to childrens services?

Not a chance. That would be negative and everything is set to pave the road to 2010 with gold right?

Enough about that and over to Schreck...

The Campbell government's news release promoted the February 2006 budget
with the headline "Budget 2006 Concentrates on B.C.'s Children". Some say it could be called Sherry's budget, in honour of Sherry Charlie, but she isn't the only child whose name is associated with the Campbell cuts. An alternative is to call it "Ted's Budget" in anticipation of the report that will be released by Ted Hughes on April 7th.

The budget tried to support the claim that it concentrates on children by saying that an additional $421 million would be available to help vulnerable children and their caregivers; the fine print noted that the $421 million is over four years. If that makes budget 2006 the "Children's Budget" then consider what the September 2005 mini-budget should have been labeled; that's when Finance Minister Carole Taylor announced $143 million per year, $569 million over four years, in corporate tax cuts even though not a single word was said about that tax gift during the May 2005 election campaign. When the Campbell government had a choice it put corporate tax cuts a year ahead of restoring cuts to child protection, and it gave 35% more to corporations than to child protection.