VICTORIA – One must be seen to be decisive in these turbulent times.

Stephen Harper managed it in the recent federal election after being blindsided by the market collapse. Gordon Campbell has the luxury of six months, plus a billion or so in the bank, to fashion his own response to a stock meltdown that suddenly took our precious energy and resource prices with it.

Campbell set the framework for hard times in a 10-point plan on live television last week. By now you may know the main elements: accelerated income tax cuts that will show up on your tax form this spring, a little Christmas cash for small businesses that collect the PST, a holiday seat sale for BC Ferries, and some vaguely defined projects to keep construction crews busy.

Here are a few things that didn’t get much attention.

• The key part is the construction. School, hospital and road work will speed up, and twice the premier referred to “resource roads,” which may turn out to be the biggest privatization in B.C. history.

The government tried to hive off custody to thousands of back roads this spring, but its legislation drew a chorus of industry complaints. Now roads will be fixed up at public expense, conveniently putting people to work on jobs that can be started up quickly all over the province. Then they will be privatized and tolled. As Chairman Mao might have said, let a hundred BC Rails bloom.

Alaska had its Bridge To Nowhere, so beware the Resource Road To Nowhere, as campaigning politicians from every corner of B.C. hurry to get their dibs in.

• Campbell has manipulated NDP leader Carole James into voting for the carbon tax shift. Making July and next January’s income tax cuts retroactive to last January puts them firmly into the category of tax cuts promised by James at the recent municipal convention.

NDP finance critic Bruce Ralston answered my earlier question about where the money would come from to revoke the carbon tax, yet keep the tax cuts, in a letter to Black Press newspapers: “The total cost of that tax cut is $622 million. According to the Campbell government’s own first quarterly budget update released in September, there is a projected budget surplus of $1.02 billion for this year, plus an additional forecast allowance of $750 million, due in large part to oil and gas revenues.”

• A big chunk of that forecast surplus has already evaporated. Finance Minister Colin Hansen held up the grim graphs that show B.C.’s key natural gas price falling off the table like U.S. bank stocks since September. China’s orders for things like pulp have stalled, and there is still more than a quarter to go in the fiscal year.

Hansen said the way things look, B.C. will finish up near Carole Taylor’s original forecast in last February’s budget. A surplus of, er, $50 million. What this means is the economy has gobbled the forecast allowance, and Campbell is spend the remaining $1 billion as I write.

• The NDP campaigns against tax and royalty breaks for oil and gas companies, and yet still wants to spend the proceeds of the revenue boom they have produced.

• The forest industry wasn’t completely skunked. An industrial school tax rebate was tailored for mills, not that it will do much at this stage. 

• Item nine on Campbell’s list was to “rein in avoidable government spending.” Not health, education or anything like that, Hansen hastens to add. For his part, the premier didn’t foresee any program cuts. Just, you know, things we don’t really need right now.

The other gas boom

A pair of explosions targeting sour gas pipelines shook the tiny community of Tomslake near the Alberta border, and dramatized the boom enhanced by Campbell’s energy policy.

It’s too bad that a disgruntled individual can cause so much anxiety and public expense. Police have flooded the area, ruled out convicted bomber Wiebo Ludwig as a suspect, and have no firm leads.

Apparently a crude bit of homegrown terrorism, this attack may serve to speed up the B.C. government’s efforts to increase gas well buffer zones around rural residents.

Tom Fletcher is legislative reporter and columnist for Black Press newspapers. tfletcher@blackpress.ca.