By Vaughn Palmer December 11, 2009
Premier Gordon Campbell says 2009 has been the “toughest” of his 25 years in politics. Let the record show that the roughest spots were mostly of his own making.
Jan. 1. The year dawns with mounting evidence that provincial revenues are sliding downward along with the economy. Still, Campbell’s position is a matter of record: “We are not going to run a deficit in the province of B.C.”
Feb. 2. “I hate deficits,” says Campbell at a press conference where he announces that his government will nevertheless be running one. But he insists it will be minimal and temporary.
Feb. 3. A key member of the government’s economic forecasting council weighs in with a warning before budget day. “If I could, I would lower my 2009 economic forecast,” says Helmut Pastrick of B.C. Central Credit Union. “I trust the forecast allowance and contingency reserve are large.”
Feb. 6. “Is it too late to submit a revised forecast?” asks a representative of the RBC Financial Group. “The outlook is increasingly dismal for B.C.”
Feb. 10. “We’re shocked by the recent scale of job losses, the steep housing start drops in the province,” reports CIBC World Markets. “We’ll be lowering our B. C forecast as a result.”
Feb. 17. Forewarned, the B.C. Liberals are not forearmed. They table a bare minimum deficit of $495 million and, for the first time in a decade, the budget contains no forecast allowance as a safety margin in case revenues slide.
March 26. The Ontario government announces it will harmonize the provincial sales tax with its federal counterpart. Will B.C. follow suit? No comment.
April 23. Week two of the election campaign. “The deficit will be $495 million maximum,” Campbell continues to insist. Meanwhile, his party advises the restaurant association of its position on sales tax harmonization: “The B.C. Liberals have no plans to formally engage the federal government in discussions about potential harmonization.”
May 7. The premier has what he will later describe as “probably a four-minute conversation” with his deputy minister. She tells him that just one month into the financial year, revenues are already off by “$200 million to $300 million.” Four months will pass before he shares this news with the voters.
May 14. Two days after being re-elected to a third term, Campbell has “a relatively casual meeting” with the deputy minister of finance. He is advised the projected deficit is now “between $1.1 billion and $1.3 billion.” The premier orders finance “to go out and find out how we’re going to meet our budget target of $495 million.”
May 25. Finance Minister Colin Hansen has an idea. At a conference in Quebec, he sidles up to his federal counterpart Jim Flaherty, and gives him “a heads up” that B.C. is “considering changing our previous position of opposition to the HST.” Object: collecting an estimated $1.6 billion in federal transition funding.
June 10. At the cabinet oath-taking, Hansen tells reporters “if I were in a position to table a budget today, it would be a deficit of $495 million more or less.” Later he will explain that this is because “I knew that I would be recommending the HST to my cabinet colleagues.”
July 10. Hansen drops the first shoe. “I am not optimistic at all that a $495 million [deficit] number is anywhere near possible.”
July 23. The premier and the finance minister together drop the second: the HST is coming to B.C. “This is the single biggest thing we can do to improve B.C.’s economy,” says Campbell, who has been premier for eight years and never previously mentioned the need for the HST.
Sept. 1. The Liberals table a revised budget with a deficit six times larger than Campbell’s supposed “maximum” from the election campaign. Hansen confides to reporters that midway through the campaign, his deputy minister advised that revenues were already off “to the tune of $200 million to $300 million.” Prompted by that admission, Campbell fesses up to the similar campaign chat with his deputy.
Sept. 3. Ipsos Reid releases the results of an opinion poll that asked the question: “Do you believe the Liberals intentionally misled voters about the province’s worsening financial situation during the spring 2009 election campaign?” Three out of four say overwhelmingly, yes. Only one person in 10 believes the Liberals were truthful.
Dec. 5. Any thought that voter anger might be fading is dispelled by another Ipsos Reid survey. Some 82 per cent of British Columbians are opposed to the HST. Just one in 10 likes it, suggesting that support may be confined to economists, masochists and members of the cabinet’s immediate family.
Dec. 7. “There is so much information that I might be privy to,” says Campbell in a year-end interview with Jonathan Fowlie of The Vancouver Sun. “We don’t have a good way of communicating that — of bringing the public into that full conversation… There is not a problem that government can solve unless citizens are solving it too.”
Hence his decision to keep them in the dark and tell them as little as possible.
© Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun
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Somehow, I think, the people of this Province are being shafted. MLAs’ are not allowed to speak against government policy and so they are not represtenting the people who elected them. No one speaks for the people becuase they are not allowed. 84% of British Columbians oppose the HST, but no one listens. Fascist Government in B. C. and Dictatorship in Ottawa. So much for freedom.
The HST is more than another tax increase. It is a blatant assault on our democratic system! If we let our premier get away with implementing the HST, we will have proven that it is okay for the government to completely ignore the wishes of the vast majority of the citizens, that it is okay for politicians to keep voters in the dark about important issues (such as the size of the provincial deficit) until after the election, thereby preventing voters from having any say in how those issues should be dealt with, and that it is okay for politicians to promise one thing before the election and do the exact opposite as soon as they are in power. On top of all that, we will have shown that it is okay for them to insult us all by dismissing our well-founded concerns about the HST as being simply an aversion to paying taxes — as if the people of BC were all nothing but a bunch of cranky children who won’t eat their vegetables and who need to be told what’s good for them. That shows how much respect our politicians have for the public they are supposed to serve: none.
If we let them get away with this, who knows what they may do next. Why stop at taxation? The law will not protect us. If something they want to do is prohibited — no problem — they’ll simply change the law. They just demonstrated how easily and quickly they can do that when they changed the law in order to make the HST legal.
Simply voting for a different political party in the next election won’t make any difference. No matter which party we elect, if they know we will let them get away with doing whatever they want, then they will do exactly that. They would not care any more about the citizens’ wishes and concerns than the current government does. It’s time we used our democratic powers beyond the ballot box, or we may end up losing them!
Fortunately, we don’t need to storm any Bastille to stop the HST and to remind our politicians that their duty is to represent the people. Under the Recall and Initiative Act, BC citizens do have the power to force the government to introduce a Bill into the Legislature that would quash the HST or to put such a Bill to a public vote — if enough registered voters sign a “Citizens’ Initiative” petition, such as the one that the Fight HST group says they will launch in early 2010. Let’s make sure that initiative will be a success! Let’s make 2010 the year the people of BC took action to save their democracy from being subverted by dictatorial politicians and their “Big Industry” allies!