Campbell's War on Sustainable Government

Part one

What the heck is going on in BC. Premier Gordon Campbell has pulled the wool over the eyes of the media and the public for eight plus years now.

Lets look at his record so far. He has run the largest three and by the time he is done, four deficits in BC history. He has accomplished this despite coming to office in 2001 with a one billion dollar surplus. Campbell talked about a structural deficit that lead to the huge deficit in 2002. What he did not mention was his move to slash taxes by very large numbers, to the extent that it crippled the government's ability to deliver on services to people, to maintain health-care and education funding.

This manufactured circumstance of lower revenues lead to the Campbell government claiming they had to reign in health care costs. He did this by gutting health care workers rights, reducing wages and benefits by 40 to 50 percent. It was one of the most aggressive attacks on workers benefits in Canadian history.

Cutting health care was not enough with shrinking revenues to balance the budget. Campbell had promised in the election not to raise tuition fees. He kept the promise for one year. The fees have risen every year since. BC went from having the second lowest tuition and post secondary fees in Canada to rivaling those in Alberta, Canada's highest cost education.

Further measures by the Campbell Government like cuts to the Corporate capital tax put another big hole on the revenue side of the ledger. This was a tax that applied to paid up capital in the province and was intended to address the companies that did big business in BC but had corporate head quarters else where. In the case of the banks, BC received nothing in income tax as they are all headquartered in Toronto. Ontario gained the income tax for banks on business done in all the other provinces, including BC.

Premier Dave Barrett was slaughtered in the 1975 election in part due to the Social Credit promise to eliminate the Capital tax. The tax survived and has been place at various levels since 1975, with governments of all stripes relying on it to support government services.

So Campbell managed in 2001 to lay the ground work of undermining the government's ability to fund health-care, education and other government services. This is the first step often employed by right wing governments in the USA and now Canada, to remove government's ability to support improvements to health-care and education.

If government can't support these issues then you pass it onto the individual. The liberals have systematically removed procedures from coverage on MSP. They have drastically reduced the financial support for seniors drug plans and for others.

MSP premiums are going up 6% this year. That's faster than US Health care cost increases! In future posts I will look at each of these items and add more with respect to taxation, or the lack of taxation and how the government agenda is one to privatize BC's public services like BC Hydro, BC Ferries, and the payoff of a big time liberal contributor with the sale of BC rail.

Biggest BC Deficit EVER

The BC Budget is out and its a shocker, the largest in BC histroy. The Liberals now have the three largest deficit budgets in BC history. Not bad for people that promised during the election that they really really could keep to the $495 million deficit set in February 2009.

More in the days ahead... Check out the link below for the latest!

From NBC Dipper

My overall first impression: it seems as this budget is the fulfillment of the idea that one doesn’t waste a crisis in order to make changes. This is a budget that is going to hurt the middle class of BC by slapping on new taxes for them, while rewarding those that tend to vote BC Liberal by reducing taxes for them. Considering that cuts are supposedly supposed to be made, what these cuts are actually going to be is very unspecific, making me rather nervous as to the future.

gg

Fudget Budget Liberal style

How to make a budget look good for a few months....

Forest fires seem to be getting worse in BC. In fact this has been known for many years. Climate change brings warmer temperatures and less rain/snow, increasing urban sprawl into forested areas and more importantly a larger degree of uncertainty. Look at the budget in BC and you will be surprised to see the Liberals were hoping this year would see climate change reverse itself.

The budget projected that fighting forest fires in BC would amount to about 52 million. That is 10 million less than the year before. As we all know, that is likely going to be less than ten percent of the money actually spent in this budget year.

see performance plan (page 12) for the Forest Service...

Strategies
The following strategies are intended to address key Ministry priorities over the next three years:
1. Anticipate and manage impacts on forest and range resources from pests and fire.
2. Manage and mitigate the resource impacts from the mountain pine beetle epidemic.
3. Utilise cross agency collaboration and alignment on First Nations relationships, land use, and research and resource management.
4. Adapt British Columbia’s forest and range management practices

Some folks have been suggesting that the high priced help we have hired, ie all those civil servants at the top making two or three hundred thousand and some make much more than that, should have seen this was a mistake to allot only 52 million to fire fighting. My guess is that they did raise this with those making up the budget. The budget as it was, was going to come in at almost 500 million in the hole. If they allotted a reasonable number to fighting forest fires, like say 300 million, then where would they be with the deficit? It would be much closer to a billion dollars, not the more palatable number of 5 million short of a half billion.

The whole Liberal mantra is based on their perceived ability to manage our money. They had to mislead us in order to assure us they could and do better than the free spending reckless New Democrats.

Just for the record, The Liberals in BC have now had the three largest deficits in BC history and are headed to gain the top five places before they are done.

On a final note, as a former employee of the BC Forest Service and a fire fighter I do know how good they are at fighting fires. Initial attack and early detection have been areas BC has excelled at. This post in no way should be read as slagging the workers in the Ministry, who by in large are very dedicated to protecting and managing our Forest and Range resources.

see more here on the overall budget fiasco

You don't think the Campbell Libcons were lying do you?

The BC Liberals were caught flat footed after the election. Seems the first Campbell and Hanson knew things were going from very bad to down right disastrous was after the election, during which they said the budget deficit would not be more than the budget forecast of almost 500 million dollars.

Perhaps the Libcons should have read the paper, check out these headlines at Northern Insights, that any 'on the ball' government would have seen as a warning.

Now look, the deficit is headed south toward 3 billion!

You don't think the Campbell Libcons were lying do you?