John Rustad Has Shown He’s Not a Serious Person

What has happened to John Rustad? He’s been a politician — MLA, cabinet minister and now party leader — for almost two decades.

Not a star, but he seemed a serious person. Now not so much.

Last Friday Rustad’s daily campaign announcement was a promise to “abolish taxes on tips earned by workers in the hospitality industry.”

It’s bad policy. If two people are earning $40,000 a year, why should the one on salary pay far more in taxes?

And it showed Rustad didn’t have a basic understanding of how income taxes work. Or that he knew and was willing to mislead the public.

B.C. can’t exempt tips from taxable income. The Canada Revenue Agency says tips must be included in income.

So why make such a bogus promise?

Sadly, I wonder if Rustad’s team shared this as some weird homage to Donald Trump’s June promise to end taxes on tips — an in-joke for the MAGA enthusiasts on the Canadian right.

Then came the debate. Overall, it was not Rustad’s finest hour.

But at one point he did paint a vivid picture of the effects of the toxic drug crisis.

“I was on my way over here, and at the corner of Robson and Hornby there's an individual who died, and there was emergency people rushing. This person died from an overdose. This is the British Columbia that David Eby has created,” Rustad said.

Serious people are careful with such claims, especially in a debate being broadcast across the province, on a key issue that has devastated so many families.

Not Rustad.

CTV reported that BC Emergency Health Services had no records of any “patient events” in the area that evening, and the BC Coroners Service said it wasn’t investigating any toxic drug deaths.

Pressed by reporters, Rustad revealed his debate claim that he had seen an individual “who died from an overdose” was false.

“There was somebody who was lying on the sidewalk. There were some people who were performing CPR on them, trying to bring them back to life. An ambulance drove up with the sirens on, and of course, at that point we had left,” Rustad told CTV.

So he had not seen a dead body, and had no idea if the person was dealing with a crisis related to drugs.

It seems Rustad fabricated the details to score points in the debate, again reminiscent of Donald Trump’s penchant for fiction. (Rustad did it again this week, CHEK News reported, claiming pedestrian traffic was down 60 per cent in Victoria because of disorder and drug use. The downtown business association measures traffic; it was up in 2023, according to the most recent stats.)

This isn’t the behaviour of a serious — or ethical — person.

No costed platform, but it’s safe to say the deficit would increase

But that wasn’t Rustad’s biggest failure in this campaign.

For some 40 years, small-c conservatives have been concerned about government spending deficits. The bill will come due, the right has warned.

They have demanded accountability from politicians and clear answers about what programs will do and what they will cost.

Rustad’s campaign has abandoned those two values.

We are eight days away from the election. Advance voting is underway.

The NDP and Greens have released platforms, itemizing the costs of their promises.

But the Conservatives still hadn’t revealed their costed platform Thursday. That’s either incompetence or an attempt to hide the information.

In any case it’s not the action of serious people who respect voters.

The spring budget projected a $7.8-billion deficit for the next fiscal year.

The NDP’s platform includes a summary of the costs of its promises.

Its promised “middle-class tax cut” will cost $1.8 billion in lost revenue, the document says. New spending increases will cost $1.7 billion, with the biggest item an additional $400 million for health and mental health.

All in, about $2.9 billion added to next year’s deficit.

The Greens have done the same work to let voters understand the cost of their promises, estimating spending will rise $8.2 billion — with the largest increase at $2 billion for poverty reduction. Revenue will rise $5.3 billion, with the largest gain from expanding the carbon tax on industry and big polluters.

Again, about $2.9 billion added to next year’s planned deficit.

The Conservatives don’t yet have a costed platform, and it’s no longer certain they will.

But even without a platform, it’s clear Rustad is planning a similar or larger increase in B.C.’s deficits. Just one of the Conservatives’ key promises — eliminating the carbon tax — would add $3 billion to next year’s deficit. Rustad has also promised to add $3.8 billion in health spending.

And Rustad now says a Conservative government could continue to run deficits for its first two terms, an odd stance from what was traditionally the party of balanced budgets.

And perhaps a suggestion the NDP had actually been doing a good job on the fiscal side. If it will take eight years for Rustad to balance the books, there are not a lot of easy spending cuts to be made.

Unless, of course, the Conservatives would choose to emulate the BC Liberals’ first weeks in office in 2001 and slash taxes, inviting chaos and service cuts.

With a serious party and a serious leader, voters would have the information they need to make an informed choice. Instead, the Conservatives have dealt in fake anecdotes and failed to manage the fairly simple task of delivering a proper platform.

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