Vaughn Palmer: B.C. NDP, Tories both vague on tough budget questions

B.C. NDP Leader David Eby speaks to B.C. Conservative Leader Lorne Doerkson during the B.C. election provincial leaders' debate in Vancouver Oct. 14. Photo by Ethan Cairns /B.C. Broadcast Consortium

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VICTORIA — NDP leader David Eby was asked during the recent leader’s debate how he managed to turn the $6 billion surplus he inherited from John Horgan into a $14 billion deficit in four short years.

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“Please tell us Mr. Eby,“ asked moderator Shachi Kurl, “where did all that money go?”

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The $20 billion black-to-red-ink turnaround in provincial finances is one of the most dramatic differences between this NDP premier and his late predecessor.

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Eby didn’t want to talk about it. Instead, he pointed the finger of blame at the previous B.C. Liberal government for failing to build schools, hospitals and other public infrastructure.

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“The so-called balanced budgets that the previous government delivered were balanced on the backs of British Columbians, and we will never do that,” Eby told the television audience.

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Yet, Horgan balanced budgets. He built schools and hospitals. He managed program spending year by year, mostly delivering surpluses. Eby was a senior member of the Horgan cabinet. Surely, he would not suggest that Horgan did it all “on the backs of British Columbians.”

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Horgan, in a posthumous memoir published last year, says one of this proudest achievements was instilling “fiscal discipline” into the ever-fractious B.C. NDP. “One of the myth-busting things that we were able to do was end the narrative that the NDP can’t manage money.”

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Eby in four short years has thrown that away.

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He’s also saddled the province with a deficit so large that it is hard to come up with a politically acceptable scenario for bringing the books back into balance in the short- to medium-term.

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Eby hasn’t even tried. Critics have struggled with the challenge as well.

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The B.C. Conservatives this week released a 71-page platform that nibbles at the deficit in the short term, while promising progress over time.

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The key, they say, is for the province to grow its way out. Which is pretty much what the New Democrats say, too.

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The Conservatives argue they can do a better job than the New Democrats of encouraging growth, investment and job creation. They also propose to jump-start the process with a $1,000 tax cut in income taxes, costed at $3 billion a year.

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There’s other tax and regulatory relief in the Conservative plan, which the New Democrats have attacked for a range of errors and omissions.

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But a governing party that broke its own promise of a $1,000 rebate after the last election — and that recently confessed to a record $1.5 billion math error (!) in its current budget — can hardly claim to have clean hands on matters of fiscal credibility.

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The most contentious numbers in the Conservative fiscal plan involve the growth projections, particularly the claim that the turnaround will deliver 3.2 per cent annual growth by 2029.