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.