British Columbia’s Budget Dodge
Guest: David Williams, Business Council of BC economist
On this edition of Journal, we take a close look at British Columbia’s recent budget update – and try not to rant in frustration.
It is bad news: a deficit of $11.6 billion, the largest in our history. And it would have been much worse except that the government chose to include revenues of $2.7 billion in future payments from a settlement with tobacco companies. In other words, even though the province is only receiving just over $900 million this year, they included all 18 years of future payments at once, as if it happened today. One journalist called this a dodge, but at the very least, it is misleading.
It’s hard to remember that Premier John Horgan had a surplus of $6 billion when he left government, even after dealing with COVID costs. Today? A different story.
And the much ballyhooed spending cuts are only $300 million in a budget of $95 billion – not even enough to cover revenue losses.
Talented journalist Rob Shaw, senior political reporter with CHEK-TV, says, “It’s like bailing out a flooded bathtub with a shot glass while the tap is still running full blast.”
So, why should we care, when households are focused on just trying to hold it together paying their own mortgage and expenses?
Well, it’s exactly because households are doing that: trying to keep their finances in order that we should expect our provincial government to do the same.
Joining me to analyze how desperate things are in BC is David Williams, senior policy analyst with the Business Council of BC. David is a scholar who has long studied the direct relationship between public policy and a community’s well-being.
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