The fall legislative session has come and gone, five days of accusations and insults that mainly served to demonstrate how unready the NDP is to govern the province in these uncertain times.

The NDP’s favourite sound bite last week was that Premier Gordon Campbell’s economic stimulus program was sketched out on the back of an envelope.

No kidding. A quick look around the capitals of the world since the stunning collapse of commodity, stock and financial markets will reveal a lot of envelope-sketching.

The NDP rushed out their own recovery plan in October based on windfall revenues they had to know were drying up. Once Finance Minister Colin Hansen released the latest economic update, showing B.C.’s projected revenues are expected to shrink by $3 billion over the next three years, the NDP started to back delicately away from firm spending commitments.

But there are two things they can’t back away from. First, they will repeal the carbon tax on fossil fuels, but leave the compensating tax cuts in place.

Indeed, after a week of bluster and blame the opposition voted unanimously for the B.C. Liberal bill that accelerates the first round of tax cuts to put a modest refund in people’s hands next spring. Replacing that revenue to keep the schools and hospitals going just got a whole lot harder.

Second, they will immediately raise the minimum wage to $10 an hour. Just as “axe the gas tax” seemed attractive when energy prices were soaring, raising the minimum wage sounded good when the economy was roaring. This is not what business, especially small business, needs now.

Small businesses (the self-employed and businesses with 50 or fewer employees) represent 98 per cent of the 386,600 businesses registered in B.C. last year, and employ nearly half of all workers. They now account for a third of B.C.'s economic output, the highest of any province.

It is also a vital source of innovation – approximately 96 per cent of high technology businesses in B.C. are small businesses.”

Which brings me to the best and most original part of Campbell’s 10-point economic program: working with Alberta to set up a group pension scheme for the three out of four people who don’t have a company pension plan. Instead of trying to manage their own savings and investments, they can sign up for monthly payments to a large, professionally managed fund, just like teachers do.

The NDP didn’t object to the pension proposal, but the party seems allergic to any kind of cooperation with Alberta. I can’t see this or other joint ventures going too far if there’s a change in the B.C. government next May.

These days the idea of government arbitrarily setting private sector wages, or spending money it doesn’t have to stimulate industries that have lost customers, seems quaint at best.