B.C. budget reveals a tawdry mess

BC Budget analysis #2

B.C. budget intended to cover up govt's ugly scandals

By John Twigg

It took a while but now the word is getting out about exactly what was in the B.C. government's latest budget, namely a bunch of ploys designed mainly to help the B.C. Liberal Party regime get re-elected and only minimally to help more people live better lives.

Some outrages against some budget moves arose towards the end of last week and over the weekend, as groups with negative impacts went public about them (e.g. handicapped people losing free bus passes) and more came out this week as the leading pundits and Opposition politicians put the many flaws in the budget into a clear pattern, namely that the government was saying one thing while doing another, giving with one hand while taking with the other, doing far too much fiddling around with phony funds and various other fiscal gimmicks, and generally doing dis-services to the broad public interest.

One of the best critiques of the parsimonious inequalities in the budget was by Paul Willcocks on the Tyee on Feb. 19, viewable here .

Sun columnist Vaughn Palmer skewered the government on Saturday (Feb. 20) for how it is deferring action on a series of issues until pre-election time next year, viewable here .

Another good overview of the budget's moves was by the Tyee's Andrew MacLeod, who on Feb. 19 showed how low-income people in B.C. are worse off than similar people in other provinces, viewable here.   
Also see "Disability rates won't alleviate poverty," by UVic scholar Michael J. Prince in the Feb. 19 Times-Colonist.

A scathing and detailed analysis of that shockingly cold approach of the B.C. Liberals' government's abuse of disabled people appeared this morning on the Tyee by pundit Bill Tieleman, viewable here . The gist is that tens of thousands of disabled people have been knowingly impoverished by the Campbell-Clark Liberals for about 10 years now and that this has been happening even though the province supposedly can now afford a so-called Prosperity Fund (those are my words based on Tieleman's facts and stats).

And "Budget an insult to vulnerable people of B.C." by Rick FitzZaland, executive director of the Federation of Community Social Services of B.C., in the Times-Colonist on Feb. 20.

Or "Budget shows Clark is out of touch" by NDP finance critic Carole James in the Vancouver Sun on Feb. 19 (adapted from her speech in the Legislature).

And finally, IntegrityBC's Dermod Travis put out an excellent commentary that highlighted some of the billion-dollar boondoggles in the budget as well as many smaller peccadilloes. It is appended below because it has not yet been posted online.

So when I declare that the latest budget from Premier Christy Clark is an atrociously-partisan political scam I have lots of company, and the above collection of citations could have been much longer by including Globe and Mail reporter Justine Hunter's pre-budget scoop on the flim-flam Prosperity Fund coming back, a neat letter on the mounting gross debt from former Newfoundland Premier Brian Peckford, and many others. By Tuesday mid-day it was becoming a cacophony of protests, and rightly so.

BC Liberals' budget creates pre-election slush fund

 There are several ways of describing exactly what Finance Minister Mike de Jong did, but one gist that stood out (aided by pushes from the NDP caucus) was that most of the best tax breaks are going to the upper two per cent of income earners and precious little new money is going to low-income people of various kinds and meanwhile some $4 billion of spending power is being socked away to prepare for next year's pre-election vote-buying season.

In B.C. that strategy shouldn't be a surprise to anyone because the Social Credit regimes and their successor vehicle now called B.C. Liberals have been using it since the 1950s but it still rankles those of us who see it used anew so self-servingly because really it is tawdry politics verging on a perversion of democracy.

Not to worry though because those protests against that blatant pork-barrel politics probably will prove to be insufficient to derail the Liberals' fiscal flim-flam plan because Premier Clark and her colleagues will monopolize the news agendas with diversions and in other ways minimize the times she and her cabinet colleagues have to answer any really tough questions about the despicable ethics and blatant abuses of power exemplified in the budget.

But it gets worse: those ploys are being done to try to keep a lid on perhaps dozens of billion-dollar scandals and horrific cases of mismanagement, incompetence and perhaps even misfeasance in a variety of industries, business venues and social service areas as well as pending lawsuits - several of which I cited in the previous issue of this blog and more which I'll detail below.

SPCA event was deliberate smokescreen of budget scams

That smokescreen strategy was crystal clear on Monday morning (Feb. 22) when Clark pulled off a classic media diversion ploy: going to the SPCA shelter in Vancouver to announce a crackdown on breeders of dogs and cats, which was the third time this month that SPCA-related news has entered the political news, which suggests it was intended to do so, and of course it gave Clark an excuse to not make it over to Victoria in time to participate in that day's question period and thus saved her from having to face some sharpened barbs from New Democratic Party leader John Horgan and other NDP critics - a job that was left to Deputy Premier Rich Coleman, who arrogantly sloughed the questions off as mere nonsense from a party that merely says no to all progress.

Clark avowed that "irresponsible breeders are not welcome in British Columbia" - as if saving a few dozen cats and dogs is more important than taking bus passes away from special-needs people, and as if coming down hard on a few dozen animal breeders is more important than say getting the Health Ministry to clamp down on slum landlords renting out hundreds or thousands of bug-infested SROs.

Sure enough the SPCA event gave the mainstream news media some video and audio clips to use in their newscasts and Clark was saved from answering more important questions in the legislature such as how she could justify plunking $100 million of play money into a badly-misnamed Prosperity Fund. (It began as a repository for revenues from liquefied natural gas projects but since no plants have begun they have tried to save some face by filling it with revenue from an increase in Medical Service Plan premiums aka taxes.)

Some readers may scoff that a government would go to such lengths to manipulate media messaging but in fact the Clark Liberals government is spending hundreds of millions of dollars a year on "communications" and the central strategy agency [which ironically I urged the creation of when I was Premier Dave Barrett's press secretary from 1972 to 1975] alone spends about $35 million a year on such things, according to the report below by Integrity BC's Dermod Travis.

Federal election used to smokescreen damning report on child death

And now this morning we have new graphic proof of how Premier Clark uses that agency to control the news that the B.C. government releases each day and thus also what the mainstream media consumes and regurgitates in larger or lesser amounts, thanks to another scoop exposee from independent journalist Bob Mackin [@BobMakcin] in today's online Tyee, as I thus Tweeted:
 
Media manip in #bcpoli  Fedelxn used to smokescreen report on BC govt negligence in a child-in-care death http://bit.ly/1WGP9qf @bobmackin

Or as the Tyee's photo caption put it, "The BC government took months to prepare its response to a report on the 2013 death of Paige Gauchier, finally releasing it at 3 p.m. on Oct. 19 -- election day."

An excerpt from the Tyee story and a link to the full version is appended at the bottom of this blog; it contains the names of contents of emails between government communications staffers which clearly show that the smokescreen was designed in the Premier's Office.

Needless to say, Child and Youth Representative Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond was livid to hear that news and talked about it with talkshow host Simi Sara, a copy of which was rerun shortly after 10:30 a.m. and can be heard via CKNW's audio-vault archives.

Listen especially to NW's news report at 10:00 a.m., Jill Bennett and Gord Macdonald discussing it at 10:05 a.m. and then the interview with Turpel-Lafond after 10:30 at http://www.cknw.com/audio-vault/ . It is or should be a shocking indictment of the governing Liberals even worthy of their removal from office.

And when Children and Family Development Minister Stephanie Cadieux declined a previous commitment to discuss the matter on-air at 1:10 p.m. the station re-ran the Turpel-Lafond remarks and excerpts of Cadieux in today's Question Period.

Clark decries new book from Willie Pickton

Back at the SPCA event, the Premier did take a few questions from the media at the animal shelter but none of the questions struck home about her basic and generally poor stewardship of many many government files, such as say the huge cost overruns and operating losses on the Port Mann bridge, the massive overruns on bungled information technology projects, and many other boondoggles.

Instead the top story out of the event became her responses to the stunning news that convicted serial murderer Robert Willie Pickton had managed to secretly write a book in Kent Prison near Agassiz and smuggle it out to a writer and publisher in the U.S. whereupon it was posted for sale on Amazon, on both Canada and U.S. versions, until public outrage and political comments by Clark and federal Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale more or less bullied Amazon into taking it down - a de facto censorship of a legal act that while emotionally understandable is nonetheless another dangerous step towards state censorship.

"I don't understand why anyone would want to buy the book," said Clark, ironically standing behind a lectern with the words "Respect Animals, Prevent Abuse" on it while she either ignorantly or knowingly overlooked the reported gist of the 144-page book, namely Pickton's shocking allegations that he was really being scapegoated alone for things other people had participated in.

Oh?


That's a really really weird coincidence, at least to me, because only a few days before in my Daily Twigg blog I had lamented that among the budget's failings was yet another failure to fund a proper investigation of the many scams going on in and around this (and other) governments, such as failing to extract the full truth behind the misnamed Truth and Reconciliation Commission and failing to investigate who else must have been at least aware of Willie Pickton's sordid activities since he claimed to have murdered some 49 women, far too many to have acted alone and many of whom fit one typology: drug-addicted prostitutes whose bodies were disposed of by being fed to pigs - but he was convicted on only six cases.

And then suddenly Willie puts out a book about that very thing? I had no idea it was coming. And then the governments rush to successfully suppress it the same day, aided by a storm of outrage in the mainstream media, said fury fueled by feelings from such as Clark that it would be truly heinous for anyone to profit from such a book, and that that loophole allowing prisoners to write things should be closed as fast as possible.


A motive of Profit? From selling a few thousand copies of a 144-page book written by a near-illiterate simpleton?? By a guy who was a millionaire landowner facing a lifetime in jail and having no kids? I don't think so.

No, profit is not the issue or motive here, and nor is the issue the new emotional hurts inflicted on hundreds of relatives and thousands of other people whose hearts bleed whether the victims are real people caught in the sex and drug trades or merely animals locked in cages.

No, the real story should have been that Willie Pickton is revealing or at least alleging anew - in a book text I have not read yet - that there were collaborators and other knowing participants in his awful unlawful machinations, and that some of the participants may have been high-up people, even politicians and other publicans.

Indeed the gist of rumours about the so-called pig farm is that influential people from various fields of interest were invited to attend parties at Piggy's Palace, a converted barn in Port Coquitlam, which at least initially was ostensibly a healthy happy part of a charity supporting sports teams, with great dances to live bands, but once visitors got there or maybe went back there for a second or third time then some of those influential people may have been entrapped with photos taken in compromising situations in side rooms, and then maybe they were blackmailed, such as with threats to inform a spouse or maybe to spread some word that the victim had just eaten some pork that came from a pig that had eaten human flesh....

In fact questions about the Pickton story have persisted  long after Willie was jailed and even have become part of repeated allegations on the Abel Danger website that he and/or Piggy's Palace may have been part of an international conspiracy in which implications of gross sexual depravities are routinely used to coerce politicians and other powerful people such as bankers into doing the bidding of powerful interests; the most recent of dozens of Abel Danger posts to mention that alleged pig farm connection can be seen here .

Why hasn't the B.C. government taken further steps to probe the circumstances behind that horror? That's a good but unanswered question.

Oppal inquiry failed to find full story behind Pickton murders

Which politicians or publicans may have been entrapped and compromised in that? A proper inquiry might find out, but it would have to be an inquiry better than the sham run by former judge and former Liberal politician Wally Oppal for then-Premier Gordon Campbell that reportedly was hampered by a narrow terms of reference that prevented Oppal from looking into activities when the same Gordon Campbell was chair of the Vancouver Police Commission when it was assumed to be unlikely that some serial killer was behind a then-growing string of missing-women cases in the Downtown Eastside. Oppal's report is viewable here . Campbell now is Canada's High Commissioner to the United Kingdom, a position he obtained after the Clark regime broke the rules and hastily awarded him an Order of B.C. medal.

The problems in Vancouver's low-end sex trade and its possible association with the Pickton pig farm is an ugly topic that mainstream media hate to touch, partly because it runs up their bills for legal opinions, but it's also a topic that Premier Christy Clark clearly does not want to pry open either.

Why not? Well because it could lead to even worse scenarios, such as that the missing and murdered women associated with the Pickton pig farm and Piggy's Palace also could be related to the missing and murdered indigenous women along B.C.'s Highway of Tears that the B.C. Liberals also have been covering up for years and even related to the soon-coming federal inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women soon to be launched by the federal Liberal government under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and supervised by new Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould, a lawyer and B.C. First Nations woman who for now at least seems to be determined to at last get to the truth of the sordid matter.

Annett alleges systemic coverup of crimes against humans

How sordid is it? One of the leading experts of that is Kevin Annett, a former Anglican minister in Port Alberni who encountered evidence of such wrong-doing first hand, found more in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside and then nationally, and undertook what is now a 20-years-long international campaign for justice, which has brought him death threats, vilification and few plaudits - though his imminent publication of two new books covering the whole saga could change some opinions - assuming the mainstream media and other forces don't censor and ban his books the way they've just done to Pickton.

When Annett heard about the new Willie Pickton book he was moved to write a damning indictment of the continuing coverups in the former federal Conservative government's mis-named Truth and Reconciliation Commission and before that the Oppal inquiry, a copy of which can be read at http://kevinannett.com/ .
Annett quite rightly argues that the issue is not whether Pickton should be allowed to publish and/or profit from prison but it is that Pickton is alleging his actions were part of a conspiracy that should be exposed.

B.C. sex and human abuse crimes part of global financial conspiracies?

Sadly the conspiracy theories about systemic sex and drug abuses of mainly aboriginal women in B.C. are accompanied by allegations and evidence of unpunished and uninvestigated conspiracies of many other sorts, such as the pernicious drug trades and ethnic gang crimes in Metro Vancouver, the systemic tax-avoidance in multi-million-dollar real estate flipping scams, the lax supervision and sweetheart support of various resource industries that give kickback donations to the B.C. Liberals, the giveaways of assets to global capitalists such as Campbell's giveaway of BC Rail, the chronic budget overruns on megaprojects and endemic kickbacks to friends and insiders of the governing party, the rising influence of lobbyists, the papering-over of scandals, the manipulations of the media . . . and more.

One particularly suspicious case involves the English family's large waterfront Pacific Rim Resort property near Tofino, which former owner John (Jack) English is alleging in court was partially and possibly wholly stolen from him by agents allegedly working surreptitiously for B.C. Investment Management Corp., the huge public-sector pensions manager based in Victoria that now owns part of the property through a subsidiary, as well as allegedly agents of B.C. Hydro and other government officials, who may have been assisting the B.C. government to obtain the property at below-market value for land-claims and treaty settlements and/or to become part of a regional tourism strategy.

The case has some of the earmarks of other B.C. scandals, including arson, sabotage, intimidation and allegedly attempted murders, and it too has been featured in the Abel Danger postings. A summary of English's claims can be seen here at http://cuabcimc.blogspot.ca/ .

Even larger is the alleged "water war crimes" conspiracy put forth by former lawyer John Carten at the www.waterwarcrimes.com website. He has acted for some water export proponents and notably filed a US$10.5-billion damages suit against the province on behalf of an American proponent, Sun Belt Water, whose Canadian partner won a modest payout from former NDP Premier Glen Clark's government while the U.S. partner got nothing. Carten, who also has since become a personal friend of the writer, also alleges that government lawyers abused the Family Maintenance Enforcement Program and the Law Society of B.C. in order to hamper his legal work and end his career as an active lawyer because he had reported and continued to report instances of lawyer fraud and judicial misconduct related to the Sun Belt Water case to the police and other authorities. 


One of the most notable water cases involves a 30-year battle by Rain Coast Water Corp. of West Vancouver, previously called Aquasource Ltd. and incorporated in 1983 as Coast Mountain Aquasource Ltd., one of the original bidders for B.C. water export licenses in the 1980s. Its trial began in October 2012 in B.C. Supreme Court before Mr. Justice Peter Leask, with the company alleging that the B.C. government wrongfully impaired its ability to do business, and the company seeking damages that so far have not been quantified. Written submissions were completed in June 2015.

It's especially interesting from a political perspective because it has involved a number of political figures including former premier Bill Vander Zalm as a defendant, but especially insofar as they include two of Clark's most key advisers, longtime lobbyist and political strategist Patrick Kinsella who aided the leading rival water export company [he is neither a defendant or participant in the Rain Coast case], and longtime government lawyer Doug Eastwood who at times defended the government in the Rain Coast case - and both Kinsella and Eastwood, who worked together on B.C.'s role in the 2010 Winter Olympics, were co-chairs of Christy Clark's leadership campaign, after which she appointed Eastwood to head B.C.'s Justice Institute.

The water cases and all the other political machinations would make you wonder if B.C. is some tin-pot dictatorship in Central America or Africa, but no: this is supposedly beautiful British Columbia.

Yes the landscapes are awesome, and the natural resources are still great albeit threatened, but the politics stink, and the incumbent provincial government is showing no signs of wanting to do a genuine cleanup.
The cynicism in its latest budget proves that is true.

So will Christy Clark admit that her regime has been a disastrous grand deceit and repent before the next election? Or will she suddenly resign like Gordon Campbell and Bill Bennett did before they were likely to be defeated and let someone else with cleaner hands and a fresher image take over?

Or will she push forward with bravado, chutzpah and a many-million-dollars-worth media campaign using taxpayer dollars that will snow the voters once again and condemn B.C. to four more years of bad government?

We'll see. Other politicians have resigned for less disgraces. And we didn't even mention the many peccadilloes involving her various present and former aides.

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One hand giveth...

Feb. 22, 2016

By Dermod Travis

Petty. One word that springs to mind after last week's B.C. budget.

At best, it's a lip service budget. Tweak here, tweak there, but devoid of any real purpose.

To be sure, some were tossed a chicken wing.

But you can almost hear the minions in the backroom: “just make sure it doesn't cost us anything, the rubes will never catch on.”

Make believe money for the most hurting. One minute it's there, then poof.

After the canned budgetary spin, there's a host of other insights worth sharing from last week's fiscal plan.

Since 2010/11 – Premier Christy Clark's inheritance year – total government revenue is up $7.4 billion or 18.15 per cent, nearly twice the rate of inflation. Average weekly earnings in B.C. are up 11.4 per cent.

In the “other revenue” category – things such as tuition fees and motor vehicle licences – the government has pencilled in $3.4 billion, an increase of $793 million over 2010/11 or $170 more per capita.

Six-years ago, B.C. Hydro coughed up $591 million. In 2016/17, $692 million or $52 more per household.

In 2001, the B.C. Liberal party promised to “stop the expansion of gambling that has increased gambling addiction and put new strains on families.”

That was back when provincial revenue from the B.C. Lottery Corporation was $444 million. This year: $1.2 billion.

In the white elephant department: the Transportation Investment Corporation (TIC) continues to bleed red ink. TIC operates the Port Mann bridge and not particularly well.

Its losses have overshot forecasts by 67 per cent and now total $442 million. They're estimated at a further $207 million for 2017 and 2018.

All in, that's enough to buy three fast ferries.

How one government's boondoggle excuses another government's boondoggle remains a mystery to this day.

TIC's debt stands at $3.4 billion, more than the government's original $3 billion estimate for the entire Gateway plan, which included a $300 million contingency fund.

And the government is at it again.

The opening bid on the proposed Massey Tunnel replacement is $3.5 billion and that's for a bridge one-kilometer longer than the Port Mann.

They say, practice makes perfect.

Not all departments were left to scrounge petty cash.

In the political spin department, the Communications and Public Engagement Office's budget is up 43.3 per cent over 2010/11 to $37.9 million

Perhaps health minister Dr. Terry Lake can explain that one to 82-year-old Francis Flann who had to recover from cancer surgery in a homeless shelter this month.

The office's overall budget isn't the only thing that's gone up in the spin cycle. 

In 2010/11, Gordon Campbell’s press secretary made $80,153. Last year, Clark's took home $108,655, a difference of 35.5 per cent.

Likely wasn't a stress-free job in Campbell's final year either.

The Ministry of Natural Gas Development is on track to spending $2.58 billion (2013/14 to 2018/19). Natural gas royalties are on track to bring in $1.65 billion over the same period.

Prosperity, B.C. is just around the bend.

On January 1, MSP premiums rose 4.1 per cent. In the first 9 months of 2015, the average hourly wage in B.C. fell 5.0 per cent.

Even with the government's so-called premium relief, total MSP premium revenue is set to increase $124 million this year to $2.55 billion.

Back in 2010/11, it brought in $1.79 billion.

Going into the budget, 800,000 residents paid “no premiums at all,” according to the government's talking point on the issue dating to 2011.

No word yet on how many more won't be paying as a result of the government's plan to reduce the impact of MSP premiums, while increasing total revenue by $124 million over last year.

The government did issue a news release last week targeting seniors with the question “Medical Services Plan premium assistance: Do you qualify?”

Here's a wild idea: instead of a news release, how about getting information to every senior in B.C. that qualifies? Revenue Canada can help in that regard.

But then that might blow a hole in the budget.

One company makes money out of B.C.'s health care system. Since 2010/11, US-based MAXIMUS has billed the government $307 million to administer MSP services.

Its CEO – Richard Montoni – made $6.2 million US last year.

B.C. may have some of Canada's lowest tax burdens for high-income earners, not so much for the poor or middle-class.

According to the budget, a single individual earning $80,000 in B.C. pays $7,828 in provincial taxes. In Alberta, they would pay $8,106, Ontario ($12,354) and Quebec ($19,911).

A two-income family of four earning $30,000 in B.C. pays $2,687. In Alberta, it would be $871, Ontario ($2,381) and Quebec ($650).

God help them if they get a $1 raise, because the full MSP hit will kick-in.

Like any government that just increased the budget for its communications's office, it's expected they'll do inter-provincial tax comparisons most favourable to their political spin. Other provinces do the same.

So let's see how B.C. stacks up in Manitoba's analysis.

A single-parent earning $30,000 would have paid $802 in provincial taxes last year in B.C. In Alberta, they would have received $329 from the government, in Ontario paid $31 and in Quebec they'd get back $2,071.

A two-income family of five earning $75,000 would have paid $4,409 in B.C., Alberta ($460), Ontario ($3,577) and Quebec ($7,161).

At least British Columbians can take comfort in the knowledge that there's $100 million sitting doing nothing in B.C.'s newfangled Prosperity Fund.

Back in 2013, when the idea was announced, Clark's advisor – Pamela Martin – tweeted: "what would you do with a trillion dollars? A Once-in-a-generation bonanza (sic).”

Only $999 billion, 900 million more to find out.

Dermod Travis is the executive director of IntegrityBC. www.integritybc.ca

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How the Premier's Office Buried a Scandal on Federal Election Day

Clark's office pushed to release response to young woman's death on day of vote.

By Bob Mackin, Today, TheTyee.ca

When the B.C. government released its response to a damning report on the death of a young woman who grew up in government care on federal election day, it was clear someone wanted the news buried.

The Tyee has learned the direction came from the premier's office, which overruled ministry communications staff who wanted to release the report before or after election day.
Children and Youth Representative Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond's report on the life and death of Paige Gauchier shocked British Columbians. The title -- "Paige's Story: Abuse, Indifference and a Young Life Discarded" -- summed up her scathing findings.
full version at  http://thetyee.ca/News/2016/02/23/BC-Premier-Office-Buried-Scandal/

• Horgan Responds to Child Ministry's Election Day Announcement

  NDP leader welcomes improvements to at-risk youth care, questions timing.
  

• BC Gov't Plan to Improve Child Services 'Huge': Watchdog

  Ministry responds to scathing report on death of 19-year-old Paige.
  

• Paige's Story: Who Checks In When Students Check Out?

  Children's watchdog finds BC school attendance policies lack teeth.
  
• Read more: BC Politics

B.C. budget analysis

Budget merely a ploy for preserving the hegemony of power

By John Twigg

It took me longer than I had hoped and when I finally did fully figure out what is going on in the latest provincial budget from B.C. Liberal Party Premier Christy Clark I was all the more disappointed because sadly it's a tawdry little tale that should have been obvious to me from the outset.
To make a long story short, once again we see a self-serving political regime setting the table to help it win the next provincial election which will happen next year (on May 9, 2017), rather than fully addressing the urgent needs this year of people, communities, industries and businesses in the province.
Though that pattern is time-worn, I noted in retrospect that only a few critics got it quickly and spread it from the outset and so it took a few days for that truth to set in and arguably it still has NOT been perceived yet by the vast majority of B.C. citizens, namely this truth:
- the latest budget from the B.C. government (for 2016-17) is merely one more step in preserving the long hegemony of the business and moneyed classes in B.C. who unite and tolerate bad governments in order to prevent what they see as an even worse regime from ever taking power again, namely the B.C. New Democrats.
The main critics who first pointed out that thesis are interesting: the first was NDP leader John Horgan, whose first line in reacting to the budget on Tuesday was that it shows "the Premier is in it for herself" but strangely neither he nor many of his colleagues kept pressing that line and instead they switched to criticizing specific issues or policy areas.
And arguably the second was Vancouver Sun columnist Vaughn Palmer who ended his front-page column Wednesday by noting that Budget 2016-17 "will carry the Liberals into the next provincial election" because it "socked away about $4 billion in forecast allowances, contingencies and projected surpluses .... (as) a way of funding election promises . . . .", - a theme that neither he nor his colleagues kept pressing.
To be fair some other pundits and critics did also quickly pick up on that cynical partisan theme, notably media mavens Keith Baldrey and Mike Smyth and tough-minded NDP MLAs Norm Macdonald and David Eby, but generally the public did not see or hear the main central idea that the latest B.C. budget overall is merely yet another self-serving sham by political opportunists masquerading as do-gooders moreso than it is a budget actually doing good, and that their basic motive really is to do whatever it takes simply to keep the socialists out of office (which seems to be a global phenomenon lo these many years too).
That point also was stated sharply by Green Party leader Andrew Weaver when he finally got to speak in the House on Thursday and noted the Clark government "says whatever it takes to get through lunchtime."
Certainly there is ample evidence in the budget that that is what the Clark Liberals mainly are doing in their latest budget, creating illusions of giving new money now to worthy and needy causes while in fact withholding aid so that it will have more such money to deliver next year.

Budget gives and takes back

On budget day there was an amusing example of that cited by Palmer in which Finance Minister Mike de Jong apparently was unaware that his supposed gift of $70 million to families no longer being required to pay Medical Services Plan "premiums" for children was in fact dwarfed by premium rate increases generating $147 million.
So in the MSP case the government gives with one hand and takes even more away with the other hand.
Another example that only became evident on this Friday morning is the changes in bus passes for persons with disabilities: those PWDs are getting an "extra" $77 a month under de Jong's budget but meanwhile they also are losing their free bus passes worth some $60 a month.
I don't know the full cost of those line items (probably in a range similar to the MSP example) but what really matters is the pattern: the government is being both deceitful and parsimonious. And worse, it is doing so for partisan political purposes: to create a scenario in which they will be better able to steal another improbable win in the next provincial election.

BC Liberals win despite flaws 

Improbable? Yes, because the Clark Liberal regime like the Gordon Campbell Liberal regime before it has been a poor government when it comes to actually fairly delivering programs and services to people in so many areas, from underfunded health, education and social-program services to overly-generous incentives for so-called free-enterprise pursuits involving very large investments by very rich and powerful players in the economy, many of whom donate multi millions of dollars towards keeping the Liberals in power, or let me rephrase that: keeping the New Democrats out of power.
In other words, mental patients lose bus passes while very large private-sector consulting firms keep getting contracts into the billions of dollars (think Site C for LNG) and more than a few of which go badly awry at costs in hundreds of millions of dollars.
But on top of that mismanagement, the Clark Liberals regime like the Campbell one before it also has been touched by some personal scandals, though so far they have been remarkably successful at containing the damage and suppressing the outrage in mainstream media.
Though the government's many mis-steps would seemingly give the Horgan New Democrats lots of material to work with, for various reasons they have been reluctant or unable to do so, perhaps intimidated after MLA Rob Fleming made some libellous comments about one of Clark's closest advisors and had to apologize and eat some hefty legal bills that apparently the party paid for and not taxpayers.
So far the Clark Liberals are holding on to power firmly, though of course the NDP wins in the two recent by-elections could be some kind of harbinger of change.

Clark Liberals mismanage many big files

Prime examples abound of the government's vulnerability to allegations of mismanagement such as in the government's information technology projects, some energy megaprojects (eg power lines), public facilities and highways, among others. (See the work of Integrity B.C.'s Dermod Travis on construction projects and Vancouver Sun on information technology.)
Yes, a majority of voting British Columbians now tend to vote for and financially support the B.C. Liberals even when it means holding your nose and looking aside not only from the blatant waste and incompetence but also overlooking deceits and dirty tricks, apparent conflicts of interest (e.g. Campbell's sale of BC Rail) and yes even overlooking more than a few cases of proven criminality.
One such case that did get reported involved Boss Power Corp., in which the B.C. Liberal government caused taxpayers to have to pay out $30 million in 2011 because certain Liberal politicians took some inappropriate actions against it in the run-up to an election campaign. (see Integritybc.ca here ) but that was relatively minor compared with numerous other cases both settled and pending.
Indeed several far worse cases are alleged and pending but so far have received little or no coverage in the mainstream media nor any sympathy from Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition.

For example, there is a hornet's nest of allegations and lawsuits involving alleged international water conspiracies that are best summarized on the www.waterwarcrimes.com website put up brilliantly for many years now by John Carten, a former lawyer who has acted for some water export proponents and notably filed a US$10.5-billion damages suit against the province on behalf of an American proponent, Sun Belt Water, whose Canadian partner won a modest payout from former NDP Premier Glen Clark's government while the U.S. partner got nothing. Carten, who also has since become a personal friend of the writer, also alleges that government lawyers abused the Family Maintenance Enforcement Program in order to hamper his legal work and end his career as an active lawyer.
But those cases are just the tip of a much-bigger iceberg of cases in which systemic wrongdoing or negligence has been or still is alleged against various wings of the B.C. government, such as the Environment employee who "went postal" and murdered some people in the Williams Lake and Kamloops offices because he felt they were shirking their public duties, or the government's alleged failure to properly inspect the safety measures in the Burns Lake sawmill in which a dust explosion and fire killed two workers.

B.C. will participate in inquiry coming on Missing Women

Unfortunately the B.C. government has a history of failing to adequately investigate its own wrongdoings or negligence, such as the Province's abject failure to this day to fully and properly probe  the evils in, around and behind the notorious Pickton pig farm and Piggy's Palace party barn in Port Coquitlam.
That's unfortunate because it is rumoured that some politicians, police, lawyers and maybe even judges were attending parties there and thus perhaps being entrapped and blackmailed such as for having eaten pork from pigs that had eaten the bodies of drug-addicted prostitutes from Vancouver's Downtown Eastside (i.e. the "missing" women), and/or for having become drunk or drugged and then photographed in compromising positions, perhaps sometimes even while having sex with children.
But of course we should instead believe the blandishments of former Premier Gordon Campbell who as one of his last acts appointed his political colleague and former judge Wally Oppal to conduct an inquiry but set the terms of reference to exclude the time when Campbell was Mayor of Vancouver and chair of the Vancouver Police Commission and when local police allegedly were slow to investigate the mounting number of missing women, then around 30.

More recently the Abel Danger website alleged that powerful people were secretly flown in to the Fraser Valley just so they could attend and maybe watch the making of sicko porn videos sold all over the world.
No doubt that all will be hard to believe even for some of my regular readers but really the scenario is quite similar to and may even become directly related to the federal government's coming inquiry into #MMIW the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women in which an undetermined thousands of women and children across Canada but especially in the western provinces were kidnapped for use in sex trades and never seen again unless their bodies were found dead.
The B.C. component of that, or at least part of it, became known as the Highway of Tears, for the perhaps dozens of mainly aboriginal women who went missing in recent years while travelling (often hitchhiking) between Prince Rupert and Prince George, but what did the Campbell and Clark Liberal regimes do about it? Virtually nothing until the federal Trudeau Liberals came along, and then B.C. merely offered a measly belated bus service they want local communities to help pay for, and now more recently they've said a few words such as in the Throne Speech promising to co-operate with the federal probe.
"Your government will work with its partners in Ottawa on the Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and also work with local communities and First Nations to move forward with its five point action plan for safe transportation options along Highway 16," it said in a prime example of its double-talk.

If any readers still doubt such notions, take a look at the case of former (now late) judge David William Ramsay of Prince George, who was jailed after having been found to have been having sex with young Indian girls. But if he was doing that, who was supplying the girls to him? Could it be true as hinted that there is or was a network of gangs in northern B.C. who routinely traffick children into the sicko sex trade?
One would think Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition in Victoria would be clamoring for more action from the Province on such stuff but strangely it has been reticent.

Land scam alleged near Tofino

But it gets even worse, or at least larger and wider. I've also become aware of numerous other alleged perversions of justice that Carten and his colleagues have become aware of, such as the strange case of John (Jack) English, whose family bought a large waterfront campground south of Tofino in 1984 but then saw it allegedly usurped by dubious lawyers acting possibly in cahoots with B.C. Investment Management Corp., B.C. Hydro, provincial tourism and economic development officials and the Ministry of Aboriginal Affairs and Reconciliation who appear to have been trying to get the land so it could be given to the local Tla-o-qui-aht First Nation as part of a land claim and treaty settlement package and part of a new regional tourism promotion strategy.
That's a more or less normal business practice around B.C. nowadays, and quite similar to a property transfer deal recently announced for Bamfield, but in the English case near Tofino it allegedly may have involved arsons, intimidations, destruction of property and/or corruptions of lawyers and other officials in and around 2010, the preliminary detailed allegations of which are summarized on a public website here .
Whether or not such and other allegations are true or false, the point is that the Clark government could and should be asked some tough questions about such things, especially in the budget process, but so far there has been no sign that such allegations of mismanagement and corruption will be raised in budget debate.

Many areas deserve more questions

In fact there are many other such areas where questions also are needed, such as in the works of Integrity BC's Dermod Travis as above, the many fine works of independent journalist Bob Mackin, the works of bloggers such as Laila Yuille and Rafe Mair, the Common Sense of Damien Gillis, and quite a few others such as blogger @Norm_Farrell, National Post's Bruce Hutchinson, and others including Georgia Straight's Charlie Smith, TheTyee website, Vancouver Observer etc etc.
Especially important to be probed are the several resources megaprojects such as Site C and LNG which have such huge price tags and government stakes, several monopolistic Crown corporations and especially Insurance Corp. of B.C., and various real estate developments that are being bulldozed forward over the objections of numerous interested parties from First Nations and environmental groups to economists and accountants and pundits who rightly question the projects' timing, efficacy and cost-benefits.
We are of course aware that government borrowing for megaprojects and incentives for private-sector investments can be useful tools for growing the economy, and that's true too for mid-sized and smaller endeavours - especially for such good things as bolstering the local-food movement, which the Clark government spouted about in its Throne Speech, but at some point there has to be a bottom line or top end.
For example, provincial incentives to the film industry are shooting up to about $500 million in the coming fiscal year, roughly double the level of previous years, and Premier Clark also "found" $15 million to boost the local music recording industry whose work was being poached by an Ontario tax credit - which move earned Clark some high-profile play in the media - but is that a prime priority when many other social goods and needs are going wanting, such as closures of schools and shortages of social housing?
Again we don't have hard numbers at hand but what matters more is the pattern.

Family programs short-changed

There was a lot of attention given to the government's belated lift in funding for the Ministry of Children and Family Development, enough to hire about 100 more social workers, but did you hear of any massive new spending on child care? Or more policing in Surrey? Or transit? Not much. At least not this year, but maybe in next year's budget we'll finally see a few more sops to the truly needy, no doubt including seniors housing and maybe hopefully more and better home care too (because keeping seniors out of care facilities saves money as well as making people happier).
In fact the Vancouver Sun on Wednesday had excellent reports by Tracy Sherlock and Lori Culbert on MSP and MCFD which reveal what is really an appalling situation of chronic underfunding of needs and gouging of taxpayers. While veteran political hack bureaucrat Bob Plecas called the new funding "brilliant" because it reflects some of his recent recommendations, Children and Youth Representative Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond said the changes were "few" and need to be implemented right away because the ministry has been suffering for years from too many "penny-wise and pound-foolish" decisions.
There seems to have been a similar pattern in real estate and housing, in which the government tinkered with a few things to make it appear as though the government cares and is on top of things (e.g. removing the Property Purchase Tax on new houses up to $750,000 and boosting the tax from 2 to 3% on properties over $2 million) but really what it did was put on some cosmetics while leaving real estate speculators and vultures - who also tend to be strong supporters of the B.C. Liberals - free to keep doing their profiteering games (i.e. not closing the tax-evading loophole on bare-title transfers or flips).
So Community Living B.C. got a nice $36-million "boost" in the budget to help it deal with its caseload of some 19,000 clients with mental and physical challenges, though only $12 million of that was "new" money and really it's still inadequate compared with the growing needs, particularly teenagers becoming young adults ready to leave home and adults requiring assistance losing their elderly parents.
Meanwhile we know from news reports and from seeing urban streets that there are many large, serious and growing needs for better social services in B.C. but instead we are getting from the Clark Liberals some policy tweaks that are "very miserly and ill-conceived" as a caller to CKNW said this morning, adding that "people with disabilities know they're not better off" regarding the loss of free bus passes.
But of course the main priority of Clark and her backers and minions is to win the next election, which means saving up cash for vote-buying measures closer to the vote.

Liberals make B.C. safe for global capital

And they're not doing that just for themselves, though the pay, perks and pensions certainly are nice enough, but they're also doing it for a higher purpose: keeping B.C. safe and hospitable for global capital.
Perhaps even some of my regular readers will doubt that claim but the new budget proves it over and over, from soft and under-staffed safety and regulatory controls of resource industries to the continued open season for international speculators in B.C. real estate not only in urban housing but also in rural estates and yes even farm and ranching lands.
Yes it's dangerous to diddle with property rights - legally, financially and politically - but on the other hand look at the harm being done from houses sitting vacant and driving up prices to the point that employers in Vancouver can't find workers willing to live there, or while foreign speculators ostensibly do house renovations so they can claim it as a principal residence and thereby avoid paying capital gains taxes when it's flipped. And what is the Clark regime doing? Letting the real estate industry investigate itself to see if it can find a few token bad-apple Realtors.

Many good moves should be done now

The really sad thing, at least to me and a few others, is that so much more could be done NOW to begin making British Columbia a much better place, but neither the Liberals nor the New Democrats are seriously espousing such things - such as reviving the Bank of B.C. and enabling it to issue a new currency in the gamut of forms from metal and paper to bar-code and bits - in order to help finance a massive program of economic development and job creation featuring a panoply of new industries and services, from legalized marijuana and other agriculture and food industries to bulk water exports through a single-window auction and a new ferry crossing from YVR to Gabriola, among many others.
But where is the debate?? The incumbent government is doing merely the minimum to forestall a citizens revolt and really is NOT working overtime to repair a flawed and in some ways a very sick society that is rapidly getting worse.
I acknowledge that most MLAs mean well, even the Liberals, but only a very few see the big picture and even fewer would admit that British Columbia is riven with systemic endemic corruption that turns a blind eye or even helps cover up blatant wrongdoings, from east-end street crimes to Howe Street scams and even some politicians and other high-level figures getting entrapped in a variety of shady places. But was there ever a proper inquiry of all that, such as what's behind the crime in Surrey? Of course not. This after all is "Beautiful British Columbia" where the politicians and bureaucrats have virtually no meangingful checks and balances.
By the way, did you hear that John Horgan just shuffled his caucus critics? And so who is where now? And does it make a difference? QED.

Weaver skewers Liberal hypocrisy

I will give some credit to Green MLA Andrew Weaver, whose whole budget speech Thursday at about 3 p.m. is well worth reading in Hansard , but this snippet captures the essence:

"Despite the changes to MSP premiums announced on Tuesday, we still have a system that doesn't work, however, for most British Columbians. To use the Premier's words, as the opposition did so well earlier today in question period, it's a system that is "antiquated…old, and the way people pay for it generally doesn't make a whole ton of sense." Those are the Premier's words. I agree. The opposition agrees. But somehow the government doesn't agree with itself. I'm not sure what's going on.

"Hundreds of thousands of people in this province are currently behind in their MSP payments. That's a ton of bureaucracy, needlessly employed in enforcing an antiquated, old system. That's what the Premier said. I agree. Bureaucracy — dare I say that's red tape?

"Shame if it is, because of course we know that the government doesn't like red tape and in fact has gone so far that we now have red-tape-reduction day, making us truly a laughing stock across Canada. Every, single person that I have actually raised this to and mentioned that red-tape-reduction day is now on the same par as Terry Fox Day, Holocaust Memorial Day, Douglas Day, B.C. Day and Family Day looks at me and says: "What?" They couldn't believe it. This government believes it, but it says whatever it takes to get through lunchtime."

Yes, the Christy Clark regime and the Campbell regime before it are in the habit of saying "whatever it takes to get through lunchtime."

So they say one thing and do another, and because the NDP Opposition also doesn't really have its act together yet, or maybe because the NDP believe they should hold their powder until next spring, the Liberals get away with it again and again.

So far there is still no better alternative.

I despair for my home province, where my forebears on both sides have lived since the late 1800s.

The world is in even far worse shape than British Columbia is in - and British Columbia is even the best-performing province in Canada right now, judging from economic growth, population migration, climate, environment and economic structures - but the global trends are truly troubling, no less than Bible prophecies coming true apace now and World War 3 looming just as predicted, and what are we doing to prepare for all that? Precious little, or virtually nothing.

Yes other places are much much worse off, but what we have here and now in B.C. could and should be much much better.

NDP's James lamented budget gaps

NDP finance critic Carole James (yes she was re-appointed - who knew?) did touch on that in her response to the budget on Wednesday, in which she mainly seemed to be reading a script prepared by caucus staffers, and here's an excerpt from her ending:

"I like to sometimes imagine, what it would be like if British Columbia had a government that actually respected and worked with the people in this province, a government that actually took on the challenges that are facing us, a government that actually worked to unite and not divide our province, a Premier that actually didn't call people out when they disagreed with her, a government and a Premier that didn't call people names when they had a difference of opinion but actually looked and explored and listened to those differences of opinion and tried to find common ground to benefit all British Columbians.

"Imagine what we would be able to do in British Columbia if we had that kind of leadership, if we had a government that, instead of throwing money into some kind of fantasy fund, decided to actually support hard-working British Columbians and that actually gave families a break as the top priority, instead of their own political interests; a government that actually invested in what I see as opportunity — education and training and child care, support for the most vulnerable; a government that looked at long-term planning, instead of one-time funding that was great for a photo op but did nothing to actually support communities long term.

"It's very clear from this Budget 2016 that those actions are not part of this Liberal government agenda. They certainly are not this government's direction. I look forward to the day when we're able to say that we have a government that is going to put people first once again in this province."

BC-CCPA sees shortfalls

The B.C. branch of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives took a similar line regretting that the moves taken were too few and too small but not really suggesting some positive alternatives:
"Our overall assessment of the budget, as Iglika Ivanova said in an interview for The Tyee, is that instead of comprehensive action on job creation, poverty reduction, housing affordability or other pressing issues, the government presented a collection of small, ineffective measures that won't make much difference for most British Columbians. For example:

• After a nine-year freeze, disability benefits are increasing by a measly $77 a month. But as Iglika notes, "We need to have increases that actually reflect the cost of living in our province. Leading the country shouldn't just be in GDP growth, it should be about how we treat the most vulnerable among us."
• The budget for K-12 education is practically frozen for the next 3 years.
• There are a few small measures on housing, but they are entirely aimed at home buyers.
• The government committed a small amount of funding for child care centres, essentially ignoring the child care affordability crisis.

Read more of Iglika's analysis here: What you need to know about BC Budget 2016, Marc Lee's analysis of housing measures here: Housing budget? Not so much, and Keith Reynold's assessment of tax collection and spending here: Less money collected as taxes and spent on health and education.

So where's the rage against the machine? Nowhere.
Maybe next year will be better.

Financial squeezes apply from hockey to B.C. politics

Squeeze on Canucks reflects squeeze in B.C. budget
By John Twigg
Anyone familiar with the Vancouver Canucks hockey team will know these are tough times for the organization, both on and off the ice, but I wonder how many people realize a similar squeeze is being faced by the B.C. Liberal Party government in Victoria?
The Canucks hit a nadir on Saturday, losing badly at home to the lowly Toronto Maple Leafs in a nationally-televised game, and then last night they lost another stinker to the Minnesota team, also one of the worst in the league.
The poor performance by the Canucks on the ice is being reflected in empty seats at the rink, unheard of in years past when total sellouts were the norm in Vancouver, and it was seen on Twitter on Monday afternoon when the team had a promotion at a downtown juice stand that was giving away tickets to that night's game.
The causes of the hockey team's malaise are a combination of factors from having too many aging veterans and too many raw rookies to too many players having no-trade clauses that enable them to luxuriate in Vancouver's ambience for years on end regardless of how the team does, and it did appear that some players seemed to be playing so poorly that no team would want them in the approaching trade deadline.
In recent games it looked to me like coach Willie Desjardins was being told by management to showcase some of those weaker and/or more costly players that the team is hoping to trade away - for which the coach was excoriated by media analysts (notably in an off-camera session that inadvertantly was heard via a left-open microphone) - but the players' poor efforts seemed designed to thwart that plan too. 
Off-ice the team faces rising costs from several directions such as for labour and operations and player and management salaries, and especially that the low exchange rate of the Canadian dollar makes their player salary and travel costs even more burdensome.
So the hockey franchise might like to be a buyer in the coming trade window but the squeeze from the business side suggests they can afford to be only a seller, quite possibly to little demand.
The exception would be if the team owners, the Aquilini family, decided to invest further millions into the business to buy some better players, but one wonders whether they'll be willing to do so in the current tight fiscal and economic climate. 

And that difficult choice is also seen in the affairs of the B.C. government via its new budget for 2016-17.

B.C. budget "not immune" - de Jong

As this article was first being written, the Legislature was hearing a new budget speech from Finance Minister Mike de Jong, and while much was expected to be made of British Columbia's relatively strong financial and economic conditions that's only in comparison to other provinces that generally are seriously struggling.
Though de Jong as expected was able to pass around a few goodies from an apparent surplus of income, the reality is that the Province still cannot afford such moves as say a major attack on poverty or say the total elimination of Medical Service Plan "premiums" still regressively charged by B.C. direct to B.C. citizens whereas most other provinces use a means-tested system through income tax.
"We are on track to meet our budgetary forecasts, but we are not immune from the challenges facing the world economy," de Jong said near the beginning of his speech, a preliminary transcript of which is available from B.C.'s Hansard House-Blues.

The inability or unwillingness of the B.C. Liberals under Premier Christy Clark to aggressively address the poverty problem was described well in a column this morning by pundit Bill Tieleman in The Tyee online news site, viewable here and a larger excerpt below.
"Today is B.C. budget day, but don't count on Clark to deliver because it's simply not her priority," he wrote, noting 20 per cent of B.C. children live in poverty, according to advocacy group First Call's analysis of Statistics Canada figures, and people with disabilities haven't had an increase in benefits since 2007 and are expected to live on just $906 a month.
In fact the government did make some moves to help low-income families, such as expanding exemptions from MSP premiums, but de Jong admitted the government was not able to do as much as was hoped.
"For British Columbia's most vulnerable citizens, the strength and flexibility of our social safety net is vital to health, happiness and even survival. That's why Budget 2016 is providing an additional $673 million over the next three years to the Ministry of Children and Family Development and the Ministry of Social Development and Social Innovation to support families and individuals most in need," said de Jong, which over three years is not a huge lift.
That was a point quickly made after his speech by NDP finance critic Carole James, who contrasted that with other more generous new spending in other areas and then adjourned debate for a more fulsome critique tomorrow afternoon.
"Budgets are all about choices," she said, claiming the new budget shows the true character of the Clark L:iberals because it gives tax breaks for the wealthy but little for families.
She noted the government is spending more on liquor store renovations than on housing.
B.C. NDP leader John Horgan also issued a caucus news release making similar criticisms, which is viewable here.
The always-useful analysis by Bill Tieleman is here
And the astute analysis of the National Post's Brian Hutchinson is at "Spendthrift but balanced B.C. budget a classic case of give-and-take" http://natpo.st/1mGndq5 

It certainly is true that British Columbia's diversified economy is performing remarkably well compared with other provinces, as was noted in an op-ed piece in this morning's Vancouver Sun by Jock Finlayson and Ken Peacock of the B.C. Business Council viewable here.
"Against the backdrop of slumping commodity markets and tepid global growth British Columbia near-term economic prospects are surprisingly positive creating a largely favourable backdrop for this week's provincial budget," they wrote, citing particularly a surge in in-migration and population growth.
Of course there are many factors in the mix, such as the low C$ enabling sales of B.C. commodities even into depressed markets, and the low C$ being likely to encourage tourism into B.C. this coming summer, and heavy snow having helped the ski resorts this winter, but on the other hand the lower prices for oil and gas and the depressed demand for energy may kill B.C.'s hopes for a liquefied natural gas industry even before any plants are built - which would greatly undermine the Clark Liberals' economic and fiscal plans.
So it's far too early to celebrate B.C.'s successes even though de Jong insists the province's plans are "on track" and really there are many serious challenges still waiting to be addressed, such as homelessness and rising costs of housing and struggling small businesses.
Meanwhile there are many other strategies that could be pursued but are not for various reasons, such as allowing bulk water exports, reviving the Bank of B.C. so it can issue a new currency and help finance business growth and job creation, encouraging renewable resource industries, expanding job creation for low-skilled workers and many more good things (e.g. a new ferry crossing from YVR to Gabriola) that the budget overlooked.
I'll probably have more to say in coming days as more details become apparent.
Below are the government's news release, more of Tieleman's column and a link to an interesting perspective on budget-making in B.C. by the Victoria Times-Colonist's Les Leyne.

Government news release and Minister's quotes

Minister of Finance Michael de Jong -

"We've been following a prudent plan that includes a focus on paying down
our direct operating debt, which is projected to be at its lowest point
since 1984-85 if we stay on course."

"B.C. families know that working hard to pay off their credit card debt
means they will save money on interest payments, and the same is true of
government. A reduction in the operating debt means almost $500 million that
would have gone to interest payments can instead be invested in priority
programs for British Columbians."

"With a track record of successive balanced budgets, B.C. remains in a
fiscal position envied by many jurisdictions around the world. We are
forecast to lead Canadian provinces in economic growth this year and are
continuing to make fiscal decisions that further strengthen our economy,
create jobs and make life more affordable for British Columbians."

For more details on Budget 2016, visit: http://bcbudget.gov.bc.ca

Ministry of Finance NEWS RELEASE

Fiscal discipline and new investments support B.C. families, jobs and
communities

VICTORIA - British Columbia's continued fiscal discipline and steady
economic growth are providing the means for new and increased funding for
services, helping families with the cost of living, and taking new steps to
help promote home ownership, Finance Minister Michael de Jong announced
today.

Balanced Budget 2016 invests $1.6 billion in new and increased spending over
three years on core services in addition to annual 3% increases in the
health ministry budget, almost $500 million of which is funded by lower
interest costs due to the retirement of operating debt.

Government will once again balance its budget in 2015-16, and in each year
of the three-year fiscal plan. Within the balanced budget, new and increased
investments in government programs and services include:

* $3.2 billion over three years added to the Ministry of Health compared to
  2015-16.

* $673 million in additional support for children, families and individuals
  in need over three years, including $217 million for the Ministry of
  Children and Family Development to support vulnerable youth and their
  families, and $456 million for the Ministry of Social Development and
  Social Innovation to support those in need and to increase monthly
  disability income assistance rates.

* $143 million over three years to enhance key areas of the B.C. economy
  that support jobs in communities, including the new $75-million Rural
  Dividend Program to help small communities strengthen and diversify their
  economies, additional support for youth trades training, building the B.C.
  wood brand in India, and additional BC Transit funding.

Changes to Medical Services Plan (MSP) premiums and enhanced premium
assistance effective Jan. 1, 2017, will help lower-income families,
individuals, and seniors with the cost of living. All children will be
exempted from MSP premiums, directly benefiting about 70,000 single-parent
families. By making children free and expanding premium assistance, an
additional 335,000 people will see their premiums reduced and an additional
45,000 people will no longer pay MSP premiums at all. With these changes,
for example, a single-parent with two children would save up to $1,224 each
year, and a senior couple earning up to $51,000 may now qualify for reduced
premiums. Once the changes are implemented, nearly two million British
Columbians will pay no premiums at all.

Government is acting to help the housing market respond to high demand for
homes, which is resulting in rapidly rising prices, particularly among
single-family homes in the Lower Mainland. Budget 2016 introduces a new full
exemption from the property transfer tax on newly constructed homes
(including condominiums) priced up to $750,000. This exemption will save
purchasers up to $13,000 on a newly constructed home and is estimated to
provide approximately $75 million in property transfer tax relief for new
construction in 2016-17. The cost of this measure will be offset by adding a
third tier to the property transfer tax rate, increasing the rate to 3% from
2% on the fair market value of property above $2 million.

Proposed changes to the Property Transfer Tax Act will authorize government
to collect new information from owners when they register their property.
The government will resume collecting data that specifically identifies
foreign purchasers. Beginning this summer, individuals who purchase property
will need to disclose if they are citizens or permanent residents of Canada,
and, if they are not, their citizenship and country of residence.

Government is also investing capital funding of $355 million over the next
five years for construction and renovation of affordable housing for people
with low to moderate incomes.

A portion of the dividend derived from the government's strengthening
economy, fiscal discipline, and reduction in operating debt will be used to
establish the B.C. Prosperity Fund. Budget 2016 applies an inaugural
commitment of $100 million from the forecast 2015-16 surplus to establish
this long-term legacy intended to:

* Help eliminate the Province's debt over time.

* Invest in health care, education, transportation, family supports and
  other priorities that provide future benefits to British Columbia.

* Preserve a share of today's prosperity for future generations.

Government has identified its lead priority for the B.C. Prosperity Fund as
reducing taxpayer-supported debt. Government will allocate a minimum of 50%
of each year's allocation to the fund to debt retirement, and a minimum of
25% will be saved to accumulate earnings. The remainder will be available
for core government priorities that provide long-term benefits to British
Columbia. In addition, future government surpluses including LNG revenues
will help grow the fund over time.

Budget 2016 continues to invest in new and upgraded infrastructure to
support services and jobs. Taxpayer-supported infrastructure spending will
inject $12 billion into the economy over the next three years, build new
projects, and expand and sustain existing infrastructure. This includes:

* $3.1 billion in total transportation infrastructure investment, including
  highway upgrades and transit infrastructure.

* $2.9 billion for new major health-care projects and upgrades to health
  facilities, including the new Centre for Mental Health and Addictions.

* $2.5 billion for post-secondary facilities, including building capacity
  and helping meet the province's future workforce needs in key sectors, as
  set out in the B.C. Skills for Jobs Blueprint.

* $1.7 billion to maintain, replace, renovate, expand and seismically
  upgrade K-12 school facilities, including new school space to accommodate
  increasing enrolment.

The surplus forecast in each year of the fiscal plan helps keep taxpayer-
supported debt affordable. By the end of 2015-16, the direct operating debt
will be reduced by $2.2 billion since government resumed balancing its
budget. Under the current fiscal plan, with continued fiscal discipline,
there will be an opportunity for B.C. to be free of operating debt as early
as 2020 - the first time in 45 years the Province would not be carrying the
burden of operating debt.

The independent British Columbia Economic Forecast Council is projecting
provincial real GDP growth to be 2.7% in 2016, 2.6% in 2017, and an average
of 2.4% over 2018-20. Government's economic growth forecast remains prudent
relative to the Economic Forecast....

When Do the Needy Get to Enjoy 'Bright Spot' BC?

We'll find out with today's budget. My forecast? More crumbs for the struggling.

By Bill Tieleman, Today, TheTyee.ca

http://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2016/02/16/When-Do-Needy-Enjoy-BC/

''Let them eat cake!'' -- Attributed to French Queen Marie Antoinette, 1755-93, in response to the poor not having bread

British Columbia has the best economy in Canada -- something that BC Liberal Premier Christy Clark is constantly boasting about, calling it the country's only ''bright spot.''
And that's great news, but when do people in need start seeing any of the benefits?
Today is B.C. budget day, but don't count on Clark to deliver because it's simply not her priority.
B.C. has Canada's leading economy, yet 20 per cent of our children live in poverty, according to advocacy group First Call's analysis of Statistics Canada figures.
People with disabilities haven't had an increase in benefits since 2007 and are expected to live on just $906 a month, including food and shelter costs for a single person. Try that in Metro Vancouver.



Les Leyne re BC budget
http://www.timescolonist.com/opinion/columnists/les-leyne-past-budgets-show-how-ideas-can-fail-1.2173243

"Life has to be more meaningful for people,” finance minister Dave Barrett observed at the outset of his first budget speech in 1973.
Injecting “meaning” into people’s lives is a pretty ambitious goal for a government budget. Most finance ministers just try to cover as many bases as they can and hope for the best. Barrett was premier as well, of course, so he had a lot more leeway in writing the speech.
As the annual public-accounts geekfest known as the budget lockup gets underway this morning, it’s a good time to review budgets of years gone by. Some of them give clues to how bright ideas can go sideways, or turn to gold.
- See more at: http://www.timescolonist.com/opinion/columnists/les-leyne-past-budgets-show-how-ideas-can-fail-1.2173243#sthash.aIBzR1B7.dpuf

Issues that should be priorities in #bcpoli

Parties should look beyond narrow interests

By John Twigg

This article below from the B.C. Centre for Policy Alternatives is left-oriented but it makes a good point about what other policy alternatives are available and being overlooked in the current few debates about B.C. public policy, and what could or should be in the B.C. budget due to be presented tomorrow (Feb. 16).

My tweet to them that is reproduced below adds one of them: a revived Bank of B.C. to help finance job creation, but there could be many others, such as more community gardens, whole new industries such as bulk water exports and legalized marijuana, and whole new enablers such as universal child care to help reduce poverty.

The point is that political parties developing platforms for the next election need to look beyond their own narrow focusses - of which all parties are guilty.

For example on a recent Voice of B.C. show former health ministers Paul Ramsey and George Abbott spoke with host Vaughn Palmer and batted around about a dozen issues that made a nice list of what really are the top policy issues in B.C. politics today.

Those issues included MSP premiums (a de facto tax with about $500 million unpaid now!!), funding of health care, home care (putting it in Health to get federal cost-sharing), child care, government finances, forest policy, voting reform, treaties and land claims unsettled, regulating lobbyists, housing and real estate regulation, and several others I didn't make note of. Certainly B.C. Hydro projects and costs, LNG and many other industrial issues, notably food self-sufficiency.

So while the B.C. Green Party will go hard on greenhouse gas emissions, the B.C. Conservative Party will go hard against personal income taxes and the New Democrats will promise protection for union and worker rights and the B.C. Liberals will pander to multinational resource corporations, the real needs of the people of the province are really what should be the top priorities.

Here's the twitter exchange and then the BCCPA article that triggered it.


Seth Klein ‏@SethDKlein 13m13 minutes ago   tweeted

7 things that should be in the BC Budget but were missing from the Throne Speech - http://www.policynote.ca/7-things-that-should-be-in-the-bc-budget-but-were-missing-from-the-throne-speech/ …

JT tweeted
@SethDKlein Good stuff but there could be 70 more such things better for #bcpoli, eg restarting BankofBC to issue currency for job creation

7 things that should be in the BC Budget but were missing from the Throne Speech

February 15th, 2016 · Iglika Ivanova · 1 Comment · Children & youth, Climate change & energy policy, Economy, Education, Employment & labour, Poverty, inequality & welfare, Provincial budget & finance

BC Budget 2016 will be tabled tomorrow but we already know it will include a break on MSP premiums for some single parents, $50 million for new affordable housing initiatives this year (with funding also committed in each of the next four years), help for first-time home buyers, more resources for the long neglected BC child welfare system, some mental health initiatives (not specified yet), and a tax credit for farmers who donate food to non-profits (for example, food banks, soup kitchens and school lunch programs).
It’s typical for the provincial government to pre-announce many of its new initiatives before Budget Day. What concerns me is that some of the big challenges facing BC are entirely missing from the pre-budget conversations this year. Here are 7 initiatives BC Budget 2016 should include if the premier is serious about making sure that all British Columbians “share in the benefits of a growing economy“.

1. Funding for the implementation of the widely-endorsed $10 a Day Child Care Plan
BC families are facing an affordability crisis with child care. Fees can run upwards of $10,000 per year — higher than university tuition — and regulated spaces are available for only 27 per cent of BC children under five. Add to this inconsistent quality and it becomes clear that the status quo fails to meet the needs of BC families.
BC and Canada are laggards by international standards, investing far less than what is required to ensure all children can thrive. Small enhancements to the status quo (like the BC Early Years Strategy) are just not cutting it — we need a change in priorities.
The call to increase public investment in quality, affordable child care is neither new, nor controversial. In each of the last three years, the bipartisan (and government-dominated) committee of MLAs conducing the BC budget consultation unanimously recommended that BC “provide funding and support for the development and implementation of an affordable child care plan.”
So far this recommendation has been ignored but the time has come for BC to adopt the widely-endorsed $10 a Day Plan. The change in federal government presents a unique opportunity for action. Trudeau campaigned on a commitment to a national childcare program, at least in principle, so Budget 2016 should include provincial investment to get the $10 a Day plan going and the BC government should work together with its federal counterparts to secure federal support for the BC child care plan.


2. A comprehensive poverty reduction plan, including immediate increases in disability benefits and welfare rates
For years, the BC government has insisted that its economic development measures would automatically take care of poverty. This has not happened.
The BC economy has been growing steadily since the recession but this has not reduced the need for food banks. On the contrary, food bank use is on the rise. More than 100,000 British Columbians needed food banks last year. One third of them received social assistance. Another third received disability benefits.
The fact that two-thirds of food bank users receive government income support is alarming. It means social assistance for people with disabilities and those who have fallen on hard times are pitifully inadequate.
And how could they be adequate when rates have not increased for eight and a half years? Over this period the price of food rose by 23% and the price of rent by 12% (according to Statistics Canada’s Consumer Prices Index for BC) but social assistance rates did not increase by even 1 cent.
Offering tax credits to farmers who donate food to non-profits is not a solution to hunger. We need policy change that would reduce the need for food banks in the first place.
When the province released its disability strategy a year and a half ago, the premier acknowledged that disability supports should be increased and said this was one of her priority areas for new spending “when we can afford it.”
BC is projected to have the strongest economic growth in the country in 2016. We can clearly afford to support those in need and Budget 2016 should include boost disability benefits and welfare rates to levels that reflect the real costs of living in our province.
Social assistance is only one piece of the solution. BC must follow the lead of other provinces and adopt a comprehensive poverty reduction plan. This is another budget consultation recommendation the BC government has chosen to ignore for the last two years and I hope it won’t be ignored again.
Investments in child care, as noted above, are also consistent with poverty reduction measures. Other priority investments include increasing the stock of BC’s affordable housing, making mental health services more accessible to British Columbians who need them, supporting community-based health initiatives focused on prevention, and enhancing seniors care services.
The BC government is already planning to fund initiatives in a number of these areas. Having an integrated strategy with targets and timelines and a Minister responsible for the file would greatly increase the individual measures’ effectiveness.

3. Infrastructure investments for municipalities, including transit investments
The failure of the recent transit referendum should not be used as an excuse to continue with business as usual. With a growing population, expanding transit infrastructure and improving service levels are essential to Metro Vancouver’s economy.
It’s not a good sign that the only mention of transit in the Throne Speech was a reference to the Evergreen line, a project that has been in the works for close to a decade and is expected to finally open in 2017.
Budget 2016 must provide funding to address the urgent need for rapid transit investment in Surrey and Vancouver, and related infrastructure deficits facing BC municipalities. BC needs to work with the federal government (which campaigned on promises to quadruple federal investment in transit) and develop a long-term infrastructure investment plan to ensure that all communities have access to viable transportation options.

4. Carbon tax increase and reform of the Low-Income Climate Action Credit
BC’s renewed interest in climate action in the lead up to the Paris conference in December is welcome. An increase in the provincial carbon tax is one step the government could take immediately towards meaningful climate action.
We’ve long recommended that BC should increase the carbon tax to $40 per tonne, and reinstitute the carbon tax annual increases of $5 per tonne, which were in place for the first four years after the introduction of the tax. This would take the current carbon tax to $60 per tonne by 2020—equivalent to 13 cents per litre of gasoline.
Budget 2016 can do this. There’s no need to wait until the Climate Leadership Team releases its plan. We know it needs to be done and with the current low energy prices, it will be less noticeable at the pump.
The carbon tax increase needs to be paired with an expansion in the Low-Income Climate Action Credit to improve the fairness of the tax.
The Throne Speech made it clear that the province has no intention to break with the revenue neutrality requirement of the carbon tax regime. This is a mistake. The tax cuts put in place to ensure revenue neutrality now exceed the revenues raised. By a lot. In 2017/18, the carbon tax is projected to give out tax cuts amounting to 130% of revenues.
The funds raised by the carbon tax would be much better used to support a new provincial climate action plan.

5. Adequate funding for education programs at all levels
A year and a half after the teachers’ strike ended, our schools still don’t have the resources to support children with special needs. The much touted $75 million Education Fund was too small and only prevented further cuts. This leaves families the impossible choice between “paying their bills and the deteriorating mental and emotional health of their child” (as a recent report from the BC Parents of Special Needs Children highlights).
Budget 2016 should make the necessary investments in our public schools to ensure that students with learning disabilities, ESL, or other special needs receive the support they need to reach their full potential. This means education funding that does more than keep up with expected inflation, which is all that’s currently budgeted.
Budget 2016 should also restore funding for tuition-free adult basic education. The BC government’s decision to allow colleges and universities to charge tuition for high-school level courses has seriously undermined access to education.
The one-time reinstatement of $6.9 million as transition funding for 2015/16 is a bandaid, not a solution. The new adult upgrading grant that is supposed to assist low-income students is not enough. The full funding should be permanently reinstated in Budget 2016.
The vast majority of basic education students are low-income earners who enroll because their high-school marks or courses do not qualify them for entry into trades or other college and university programs, programs which allow them to get jobs that pay a living wage.

6. Tax fairness reform, including replacing MSP premiums with taxes based on income and restoring the tax bracket for high earners
BC’s tax system has become remarkably regressive since the turn of the century, as we’ve documented here. There’s no shortage of ideas for how to make our tax system more fair. One of the most obvious is getting rid of MSP premiums.
No amount of tinkering around the edges will solve the fundamental problem with MSP premiums: they are an unfair tax.
MSP premiums are a significant expense of the income for a two-parent family of four living on $40,000 per year, amounting to 4.5% of income. But they are inconsequential to a family making $400,000 per year. Plus, many people in jobs with good benefit plans (jobs that typically pay higher than average wages) have their premiums paid by their employers, while workers in precarious jobs with no benefits are left paying out of pocket. This makes the tax even more unfair.
In a 2013 report on tax fairness, Seth Klein and I modelled one way to replace the revenues lost from eliminating MSP with a progressive income tax. There are many others.
For example, when Ontario got rid of its health premium in Budget 1989, they replaced it with a combination of a personal income tax increase and a payroll tax (called the Employer Health Levy).
Budget 2016 should also reinstate the top tax bracket of 16.8% for individual income over $150,000, which expired in December 2015. Making this tax bracket permanent would raise an additional $235 million per year. It would also tackle the growing income disparities in BC.
BC has the lowest income taxes in Canada for individuals earning up to $122,000, the lowest corporate income tax rate and the third-lowest small business tax rate (after Manitoba and Saskatchewan). If instead BC charged taxes closer to the average for other Canadian provinces, we would easily create the budgetary room to implement the types of investments I’ve outlined here.

7. Natural resource royalties reform
The resource industry has been hit hard by low energy prices. However, even when it was booming, BC was not receiving a fair share of the proceeds of natural gas development. The LNG Income Tax was supposed to capture more of these, but the lowering of the tax to only 3.5% means any LNG projects that eventually go ahead will pay a pittance to the BC Treasury. In spite of record production levels, royalty revenues were well short of historical levels when production was much lower.
Budget 2016 should end the costly royalty credits that serve as a subsidy to fracking operations.
BC should consider a shift to a gas royalty regime that ensures a minimum royalty to the province for each unit extracted, rather than the current approach, which only pays reasonable royalties when market prices are very high.
Alberta’s recent fiscal crunch is a cautionary tale not of government overspending (as the Throne Speech suggested), but of government too reliant on resource revenues to pay for ongoing programs and services. Rents from non-renewable resources should be invested in a Norway-style Heritage Fund for future generations instead of being rolled into general revenues and used to cover current operating spending.
BC’s finances are in good shape and we can afford to borrow a little more to make these key public investments. With sufficient revenue reform — items 6 and 7 — they can be achieved without running a large fiscal deficit (examples in this 2013 report).

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