DT 21 Budget advancer

The Daily Twigg  Vol. 1 No. 21  Feb. 21, 2012

In this issue
1. Budget Day portends more fiscal posturing
2. Small opinion polls shed light on trends

B.C.'s strength in resources
should preserve credit rating

By John Twigg

Today is Budget Day in B.C. and this afternoon we will see the latest twist in the road to what surely will be a pivotal election in 2013.

Though we can't say for sure until we see the details, which I'll be doing in the media lockup, it's pretty clear that B.C. will have a huge deficit due to what the government claims will be temporary exigencies, there will be only a few tax changes, there will be no new money for public-sector wages as per the so-called net-zero mandate and there will be lots of spin from the B.C. Liberal Party government about how much worse the B.C. New Democrats would be if elected.

In a way it's regrettable that B.C. politics have descended into such blatant posturing with verbiage substituting for genuine action but it is what it is and in many ways has always been that way.

Finance Minister Kevin Falcon even wrote an op-ed piece about the importance of "fiscal prudence" which on one hand is a simple truism but on the other hand is an outrageous misrepresentation given the Liberal government's skein of big deficits and disgraceful false economies such as hundreds of millions of dollars being wasted on overtime pay for hospital staff because the government can't get the health regions to deal sensibly with anesthesiologists, more multi millions wasted by inefficiencies in the courts, more wasted because the lack of adequate social programs drives up health costs, more wasted in advertising campaigns and partisan gimmicks, more jobs lost because misguided cuts in the resource ministries have delayed project starts, and on and on.

The mismanagement by the Gordon Campbell Liberals was legion, especially in how he foisted the Harmonized Sales Tax on the province in order to try obscure how badly he had misrepresented the province's finances such as in the abuse of B.C. Hydro's deferral accounts, but the work done since his departure by Premier Christy Clark has been less than stellar so the outcome of the next election looks bleak for the Liberals regardless of what they do with this budget and the next pre-election one.

It appears from the Liberals booking all of the $1.6-billion HST rebate cost in the just-now-ending fiscal year that the Clark Liberals are planning to telescope all of the bad news into the current and coming fiscal years and thereby leave room for a big good-news budget just before the May 14, 2013 election and politically that is probably a smart thing to do but whether or not it is prudent fiscally is debatable. The voters ultimately will decide that question.

Meanwhile we all should realize that British Columbia is not in any danger of becoming a debt-burdened basket case like Greece and nor is it akin to Ontario which has put off spending restraints for years and thus has run up a huge chronic deficit that will take years to remove.

Instead B.C. has an ultra-low debt burden of only 18 per cent of GDP and a plethora of very large resource developments in the offiing to bolster its economy so the province thus could retain its pretty-looking triple-A credit rating even though its historical double-A-plus rating would still give it about the lowest borrowing costs that any government can get these days.

Let's face it: British Columbia has a huge treasure trove of resources waiting to be developed and if a budget crunch did really hit hard for several years in a row it thus has plenty of assets it could sell so really the fiscal outlook is not dire regardless of what the politicians say in the coming hours and days.

For example, did you notice that Canadian National Railway recently announced it will spend $1.75 billion this year to upgrade its network? Maybe not, because it made only a small headline in the Saturday paper, but it includes about $1 billion to be spent mainly on expanding the capacity of its line from Edmonton to Prince Rupert! So are they going to begin carrying tar sands oil by rail as we alone have suggested??

What B.C. really needs now is inspired management, clever co-operative solutions, thinking outside the box, new approaches and measures that not only raise revenues for improved social programs but reduce waste and eliminate false economies, and measures that encourage investments in private enterprises but which also move towards full employment - not only in megaprojects but in green microprojects too.

While B.C. Liberals such as Falcon and Justice Minister Shirley Bond try to argue that the NDP if elected would have only two options, to raise taxes or cut services, in fact there are many many other options beyond those, such as reducing false economies, eliminating wasteful practises and encouraging or directly enabling job creation and work experience for low-skilled workers, not to mention starting up whole new industries such as bulk water exports and decriminalizing and taxing marijuana, among others.

So there are lots of good solutions out there but what we may be missing is politicians able to find them and then articulate them to voters.


B.C. Politics Trendwatch

New results from small pollsters
shed more light in existing trends

By John Twigg

There's never a dull moment in B.C. politics, it seems, and that was the case again with news that Vancouver businessman Rick Peterson has bolted from the B.C. Liberals to become deputy chair of fund-raising for John Cummins and the B.C. Conservative Party.

It's big news because Peterson was a major backer of Finance Minister Kevin Falcon's leadership bid and as a self-described red Tory or Lougheed Tory he is exactly the sort of person B.C. Premier Christy Clark would need to keep inside the Liberal coalition.

But he has jumped to the Tories because "a strong majority of British Columbians are looking for change" and he wants to give them a choice that is not the New Democratic Party, he told Bill Good this morning on CKNW.

That must be a big relief to Cummins after his interview on the weekend with Global TV, which featured reporter Jas Johal badgering Cummins into admitting that he is "pro-life" or anti-abortion and against homosexual marriage too, which many such as blogger Alex Tsakumis saw as a terrible blunder by Cummins even though Cummins insisted that those are personal issues he will not be pushing and which are not of interest to his party or to voters.

Meanwhile some lesser-known opinion pollsters have produced results which tend to explain why Peterson and others have been jumping onto what is looking like a bit of a Tory bandwagon.

Most interesting was one by Glen Robbins of Robbins Sce Research which found the NDP at 45%, the Conservatives second at 25%, the Liberals third at only 22% and the Greens disappearing at 7% and undecided at only 19%.

Mainstream media pundits and other pollsters might tend to dismiss the mercurial Robbins' finding but his previous polling has been close to outcomes, his methodology is consistent and he claims to have surveyed more than 1,000 people between Jan. 28 and Feb. 8. A key point to note is that he focussed his sampling in four areas - Vancouver, Surrey, the Okanagan and Kamloops, the latter of which is clever because it has been the best bellwether in provincial elections.

Interestingly in Kamloops-North Thompson he found NDP at 40.7%, Liberals at 38.3%, Conservatives at 12.7%, Greens 9.1% and undecided 16%, which even with a margin of error of 6% or so is still fascinating for what is now a Liberal seat.

And in Port Moody-Coquitlam, site of an impending byelection, the results were NDP 41%, Conservatives 40.5%, Liberals only 18.5% and others including undecided at 33%.

So now we see why Peterson or someone like him is NOT running in Port Moody, where blogger Tsakumis has been suggesting the Clark Liberals have already made some terrible campaign blunders.

The other poll of note was commissioned by the Independent Contractors and Business Association from NRG Research Group which found NDP at 42%, Liberals at 36%, Conservatives at only 13%, Greens at 10% and undecided 20%. That pattern is similar to earlier findings by established pollsters Angus Reid and Ipsos-Reid though NRG had Liberals higher and the Conservatives lower.

That poll also reported on the favorable impressions of the leaders with Liberal Christy Clark at 43%, NDP leader Adrian Dix lagging at 30% and Cummins almost off the chart at only 13%, which were quite different from findings by Angus Reid.

Thus one must take the NRG poll results with some grains of salt because it appears the results may have been a bit "salted" to the taste of the piper calling the tune, with ICABA having donated some $345,000 to the Liberals in recent times and president Phil Hochstein clearly still supporting the Liberals as the best or only way to stop the NDP.

I am not suggesting that NRG fudged its numbers but I am suggesting that its methodologies may have skewed its findings, which is hinted at by the only partial disclosure of what it found.

Note too that that is probably the source of Clark's claim on Good's show last Monday that she still had a "huge" lead over Dix in the leader preference question, which was not really reflected in any of the other polls.

Once again, the impending byelections in Port Moody-Coquitlam and Chilliwack-Hope probably will be called later this week or more likely early next week (the writ is 28 days now?) and the outcome will shed a lot of light on B.C.'s future political directions.