After Olympics, battle brews in B.C.
The NDP opposition had the B.C. Liberal government on the defensive over the deficit and the harmonized sales tax in the legislative session that wrapped up Thursday.
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Updated: November 26, 2009 12:50 PM
VICTORIA – The B.C. legislature wrapped up its fall session Thursday, and it won't sit again until March, when it faces a wide swath of public sector contract negotiations in the wake of the 2010 Olympics.
The B.C. Liberals have already indicated that there will be no money for raises in 2010 contract negotiations, with the government running a deficit estimated to be $2.8 billion by April 1.
That deficit, nearly six times what the government projected before last May's election, was central to the debate between Premier Gordon Campbell and NDP leader Carole James this week. Campbell insisted that while he was campaigning he received some information about revenues falling due to the sharp recession, but was restricted during the campaign from actively communicating with the public service.
The ballooning deficit and the post-election surprise announcement of the harmonized sales tax on July 1, 2010, have caused a plunge in public support for the government. The NDP lead in one recent poll was 14 per cent, with a large majority questioning the honesty of the B.C. Liberal election platform.
NDP house leader Mike Farnworth said the government's post-election legislative cupboard is bare. Long-promised changes to put teeth in B.C.'s Lobbyist Registration Act and police complaints procedures were finally brought in this fall, but they were reheated legislative leftovers from previous sessions, he said.
"This is a government that really doesn't have a plan, that has run out of ideas, or at least ideas that they're willing to be up-front and share with the public," Farnworth said.
B.C. Liberal house leader Mike de Jong said the opposition has had plenty of criticism of government policy, but has offered few alternatives. At the Union of B.C. Municipalities convention in early October, James called for rolling back corporate tax cuts put in place to offset the carbon tax on fossil fuels. That sparked a furious response from the forest industry and business groups, and de Jong said nothing has been heard about it since.
Farnworth said the NDP goes into its party convention in Vancouver Nov. 28-29 on a roll, after holding the government accountable for financial "deceit" and a wide range of budget cuts when the true extent of the recession damage was revealed.
That bad news will likely be added to Friday when Finance Minister Colin Hansen releases the government's second-quarter financial update. That may show if the deficit can be contained to below $3 billion.
