Premier Gordon Campbell went on the offensive in his address to the Union of British Columbia Municipalities today, laying the groundwork for coming battles over education and health care spending.
In a departure from his tradition of announcing new provincial spending initiatives before the annual gathering of local government officials, the three-term Premier told this year’s UBCM convention that the province needs to cut spending.
“We ran out of money about $2.8 billion dollars ago,” Campbell said.
“We have no choice but to take a close and hard look at both our health and education services in the months and years to come,” he warned.
On education: “We have to ask ourselves questions. Maybe we need a new funding formula for K-12? Maybe we need to restore taxing authority for boards of education? Maybe we need to realign some of the responsibilities for providing services?”
On health care: “By any measure, the current rate of growth of health spending is not sustainable.... If we don’t deal with this, health spending is going to squeeze out every other spending priority that we may have in government.”
The Premier was persistent in his effort to re-frame the health care debate.
“Right now in British Columbia, we spend the second least per capita amount in Canada on health services,” he said. “Now some people say that’s a bad thing. But think of what it means. It means that we are better utilizing our health care dollars.”
He noted that B.C.’s health care system was named the best in the nation by the Conference Board of Canada, and said, “If B.C. was a country, we would have the highest life expectancy in the world for men, and our woman would have amongst the highest life expectancies in the world.”
The Premier address came only an hour after the UBCM passed a resolution opposing B.C.'s implementation of Canada’s harmonized sales tax, or HST.
“Deciding to implement the HST for B.C. was hard. We all knew what would be said. And we didn’t think it would be popular,” he said.
“Every leading economist in the country has said it’s the single most important thing we can do to encourage investment and to move our economy forward. It will lower costs of production by almost $2 billion annually, and put our companies on an equal footing with six other provinces and 129 other countries who don’t have any sales tax on business inputs,” Campbell explained.
“Our HST will be the lowest in Canada. That will be combined with the lowest personal income tax rates... the lowest corporate tax rates and the lowest small business tax rate,” he said.
“We have one of the most competitive tax regimes in the country, and in spite of what the leader of the opposition may think, I can tell you this: When you have a competitive tax regime, you’ve got investment, you’ve got jobs and you’ve got prosperity.”
Monte Paulsen reports for The Tyee.
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Badger Billy
2 years ago
3 choices only
When bad economic times come, the elected solons have fundamentally three choices to make : raise taxes; cut spending; resort to deficit financing. The first is a sure-fire ticket to political oblivion, most times. The second is not popular, but obvious. The third only mortgages our children's future. Critics of the current bunch in Victoria denounce Mr. Campbell's deficit-financing priorities. Health care operations and school janitors need to come before convention centres and Gateway transportation mega-plans, they say. The debate on how to build budgets when expenses exceed income will never resolve itself fully. The more conservative will always favour more "things" -- or hard costs, like construction or business tax relief -- while the more liberal will always favour more the "people" emphasis -- or soft costs, like social services and arts. One only hopes there's a "twain" there where the disputants can meet, even if grumbly and dyspepsic.
Dan the socialist
2 years ago
Is Campbell that out of
Is Campbell that out of touch? Second lowest per capita on health services. So does utilizing health care contracts mean illegally tearing up contracts? (SCOC ruled against Gordo but it was too late) and getting lower paid staff, closures and reductions.
The MSP premiums are going up so health and school boards will have to pay that out of their budget, so less to spend for health and education.
If school boards can start taxing again that means basically another tax for people and even renters will feel it with rent increases. Then the HST next July. It never ends. Does he think people are made of money?
Where is all the money going from increased taxes, fees and all the cuts? From camping to health care there have been increased fees and less service.
People say right wing governments are good with money but from looking at Campbell, Harper, Stelmach the right wing is very poor at managing the peoples money.
crankypants
2 years ago
Who's zoomin' who
Let's see. When times are good, harp on the costs of the health care system & education. When times are bad, harp on the costs of health care & education.
As the Four Tops would say "It's The Same Old Song".
It is interesting to note that this government always chooses to make cuts to programmes that impact the general populace with the poorest the most impacted. Meanwhile big business gets either a hands off approach or more tax breaks. Can you guess which sector has the luxury of lobbyists to plead their case?
Yes the government has to make some tough choices in this economic climate, but maybe they should a little closer to home.
Reduce the size of cabinet to pre 2001 levels. Less cabinet ministers should also mean less deputy ministers and all the other support staff that go with a ministry.
Shut down BC Rail completely. We don't need executives making over $1 million per year to run a railway with no trains.
Cut all MLAs' salaries to show good faith. Nothing shows leadership more than leadership by example.
In other words, let the privileged and empowered share the burden rather than just the great unwashed.
dave49
2 years ago
Don't forget the carbon tax
Don't forget the carbon tax and the cost of buying offsets to become carbon neutral by 2010. That is basically a budget cut for health care and education.
At 6:00 am on July first, the day the carbon tax notched up another increment, CBC 1 ran a news item about the cost of the carbon tax and carbon neutrality for Vancouver Coastal Health. The story was not repeated later and the web story was small and general, not even mentioning VCH.
DPL
2 years ago
So Gordo went from, no
So Gordo went from, no deficit, to well 480 millions, to over three billion defecit. It just slipped up on him. It appears all those folks in the finance ministry arn't doing their job. We know they are doing their job as well as we kow Gordo was lying
The Blackbird
2 years ago
Gordo's hints ...
or bold platitudes, or ethusiastic Olympic cheerleading, or faux environmentalist tax grabbing, or anything else that emanates from his mouth shouldn't mean a thing to any of us anymore no matter how good or bad they sound because we all know he is a liar. When a liar is outed and the public has lost whatever small shred of trust it may have had in his ability to manage so important a task as leading a province, we end up looking like suckers the longer we let him keep his seat.
freebear
2 years ago
Actually.....
“We ran out of money about $2.8 billion dollars ago,” Campbell said.
He meant to say one Olympics ago!
Frank
2 years ago
Campbell
“We ran out of money about $2.8 billion dollars ago,” Campbell said.
Too bad he's increased our payments at the same time as revenue has dried up.
That $50 billion plus in "financial obligations" to P3s and others adds up to a big monthly payment. Although the Liberals and the media refuse to call it what it is, debt.