The issue is that we hide debt all over the place. So the $23.6
Billion that are borrowing over the 4 year budget plan includes the deficit
+ the borrowing on un-funded capital projects + the borrowing to pay previous
debt. Then, there is the increased debt that was off-loaded on crown
corporations like BC Hydro. That doesn’t even show up at all. (The General coffers takes
dividends from crown corporations even though they are losing money and thereby
transfer debt over to them).
Another thing that does not get noticed is the increased commitments
to buy services in the future that are already weighing down the budget for
decades to come. I am not saying that all commitments are bad. If we lock in
good rates for services that we know we will need, that is wise. However, we
seem to often lock in high rates and buy services in advance that we don’t know
if we are going to need.
So if we look at the total shortfall this year and include
crown corporations, it is close to a $10 Billion shortfall on a $44 Billion
budget. Make that your household budget
and it is like earning $44,000 after taxes but spending $54,000. Some is a
personal loan and some is money you borrowed from a friend so it doesn’t show
up on your net worth and some is credit card debt and some is capital expenses like
a car loan. But rather than work the monthly payment into your budget, you pay everything
with a second credit card that you later plan to bury in your mortgage when it
comes due. You can get away with it for
a few years, but not for long before it will catch up with you.
Provincially, we have a major spending problem and by
focusing only on the operational deficit we are pretending that we have almost
balanced the budget!
In truth, we have to either increase income or decrease spending by close
to 20% in order to stop adding to the provincial debt. Until we admit the full scope of the problem,
we will not get serious about fixing it. The BC Conservative Party is dedicated
to reducing the debt and not just playing games with how to hide it. We will address the deficit, we will
reduce the borrowing for unfunded capital projects and we will reduce the
bleeding at BC Hydro and ICBC and BC Ferries, etc. In short, we will put the
province on track to getting to a place where we can reduce the debt.
This will not be an overnight solution but we will address it
by:
1)
Making the fall session of the legislature into
a governance session where we manage the budget that is put out in the spring
so that we don’t have overruns and we review the crown corporations so they don’t
go crazy like ICBC has done in hiring dozens of managers making over
$200,000/year (remember how they recently went from something like 17 to 53 and
the government never noticed).
2)
Continually reviewing all ministries for overlaps and inefficiencies
and getting rid of the waste. There are significant gains to be had by doing
this.
3)
Increasing revenue by being open to investment
in our province. For example, the carbon tax is decimating the cement industry
and high paying jobs are being lost because we cannot compete with companies
outside BC that do not have to bear this cost. That is a double hit. When a job
is lost the government loses revenue (taxes) and gains expenses (social
services). We need a job plan that believes
that responsible development is possible in BC and that we can build on our
foundational industries without destroying the environment (those being
primarily forestry, fishing, mining, oil and gas).
We are not looking at cutting services but cutting waste. And
we are not looking at increasing taxes but increasing high paying blue collar
jobs.
Check out article 4 of our policies and guidelines http://www.bcconservative.ca/media/2012/10/2012-Policy-adopted-Sept-22-2012-final.pdf
