Liberal Party.

[NAB]

Perhaps we should have a School of Traditional First Nations Medicine too... heck, why even stop there?

Nab

[Gone_Fishin]

More racism. But carry on belittling people who practice medicine differently from you, it reflects on the NDP supporters for whom they are.

[flamingfingers]

We already have schools for Oriental Medicine and First Nations Traditional medicine. They are private enterprises, so now does Christy want to take those jobs away from the private sector?

[maple leaf]

Why do the Liberals have to get the former Bank of Montreal chief economist Tim O'Neill to verify if the coming budget is what it is suppose to be.How much did they pay this guy to give the thumbs up to this budget.When they could have had our own auditor general give it a once over.But then John Doyle probably would have pointed out the smoke and mirror show we are going to be subjected to and spoil the illusion for the Liberals.

BY CRAIG MCINNES, VANCOUVER SUN FEBRUARY 18, 2013



How crucial is Tuesday's budget going to be to the credibility of the Liberals in the provincial election campaign?

So crucial that the government has taken the extraordinary step of hiring an outside economist to validate its bragging rights to a balanced budget for the coming year. The report from Tim O'Neill, a former chief economist of the Bank of Montreal, is scheduled to be released Monday afternoon. He was tasked with looking at the somewhat subjective revenue side of the budget equation to assess whether the assumptions on which the projections are based are sound.

The credibility of B.C. budgets has been a hot-button issue since the mid-'90s, when a pre-election budget from the then governing NDP was balanced using what the provincial auditor general later judged to be overly optimistic revenue projections.

Since then, budgeting procedures have been improved to provide more transparency. It's easier to assess whether assumptions are reasonable and to count the mounting debt.

That debt is a crucial concern for whichever party forms the next government because it affects B.C.'s credit rating and limits spending options. At the current level - projected to be $56.4 billion by March 31, the end of the fiscal year - servicing the debt takes 4.1 cents out of every dollar of revenue.

But for all its added transparency, Tuesday's budget won't be telling the whole story about what the next government will inherit. That's because the debt-service charges aren't the only thing tying its hands. Over the past several years, commitments made by previous governments that aren't listed in the budget have become increasingly important.

Under the Liberals, contractual obligations that are listed in the public accounts that come out in the summer have risen by nearly 300 per cent in the past six years to a little over $96 billion.

Contractual obligations are agreements that the government has entered into that require payments in future years. They aren't considered to be debts, but they have the same effect on future governments by limiting the discretionary dollars they have.

"If you want to retrench or refocus you don't have the option of deferring those payments," says NDP finance critic Bruce Ralston.

The contractual obligations have ballooned in large part because of the Liberal government's decision to enter into P3s, public-private partnerships, to provide facilities such as hospitals and roads and through the contracting out of services.

Both of those initiatives have allowed the province to keep a lid on the growth of debt, but it's not clear that future taxpayers will ultimately be any better off because they are paying for contractual obligations rather than servicing debt.

The decision to source new electricity from independent power producers rather than have BC Hydro build new capacity is responsible for more than half of the growth. More than half of all contractual obligations - almost $59 billion - is committed to IPPs over several decades.

The use of deferral accounts by BC Hydro has also created an obligation that will show up in future years as increased costs, a practice that has been criticized by auditor general John Doyle.

The province was able to provide a regional hospital and cancer centre in Abbotsford without incurring new debt, but instead has a contractual obligation rolling out over several years that totals more than $1.1 billion.

Similarly, the Sea to Sky Highway upgrade before the Olympics has left an $835-million hangover. The Canada Line is on the books for $539 million and the South Fraser Perimeter Road for $669 million.

Long-term housing subsidy agreements account for another large chunk - $3.4 billion.

What will be important in the short term is the annual cost, the amount that Ralston would have to set aside next year, for example, should he become finance minister in an NDP government after the next election. If the Liberals hang on, they will face the same limitations.

This year, the obligations of the central government and taxpayer-supported Crown corporations totalled just over $5 billion.

This isn't money for nothing. We are getting goods and services for this cash. But it represents decisions taken today about future years that British Columbians and their government are going to be stuck with.

[email protected]



Read more: http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Contra ... z2LHlB4yfg

[Veovis]

So if they just put out a budget it is a pile of lies. If they try to get independent verification on what they are putting out they must have paid the guy?

Who should they be getting to look at their budget? (Due to recent events the Auditor General may now be biased and I wouldn't blame him, however he would be a decent choice) Is having it reviewed not some form of improvement against their past history of being plain wrong?

If the guy is a card carrying Liberal, sure it looks bad, but to state that he has been bribed to give a thumbs up sounds perhaps a bit libelous to me.


(now if he gives a glowing review of the 100,000,000 fund estimate it will sure look sketchy)

[flamingfingers]

This guy SHOULD know what he is saying, he has 'been there, done that.":

B.C. budget unlikely to repair Liberals' credibility

Opinion: Forecasts have been wildly off the mark for years and don't expect this time around to be any different

By Martyn Brown, Special to the Vancouver Sun February 18, 2013 12:54 PM

Only eight weeks from this Tuesday's provincial budget, the 28-day election campaign will officially begin. And Adrian Dix and the NDP couldn't be happier.

The governing party is still languishing at near-record lows in opinion polls, with no apparent plan to capture public attention or to turn things around. Anyone hoping this week's throne speech would give the B.C. Liberals new cause for optimism must have been sorely disappointed.

All eyes now turn to Finance Minister Mike de Jong for an election budget that he has already signalled will do little to excite. We are told that its main claim to fame is that it will be balanced. To prove that point, the government has hired former BMO chief economist and executive vice-president Tim O'Neill to review the budget's economic and revenue forecasts and their underlying methodologies, processes and material assumptions.

Trouble is, no amount of "independent" validation will ever convince most voters that this election budget is truly balanced. The thing about credibility is, once it's shot, whatever the reason, it's hard to earn it back. When you miss your deficit targets by a country mile four years in a row and have to repeatedly adjust your self-imposed, legally mandated date for balancing the budget, your credibility is bound to suffer.

Such is the situation now confronting Christy Clark's government, despite its best efforts to control spending - a fact that it stupidly diminished by its politically motivated advertising. It just screams "Waste!" It also doesn't help that its current-year budget deficit is half-a-billion dollars larger and over 50 per cent higher than originally projected. And that's assuming the financial picture hasn't further deteriorated since the last quarterly, in November.

No matter how conservative the government's revenue forecasts may be, or how reasonable its forecast allowance or contingency budget might otherwise be, in this election year all that will matter is what happened the last election year. All the "conservatism" that was built into that 2009 budget wasn't enough to offset the fiscal disaster that flowed from the 2008 global economic meltdown. In the space of the weeks that ran from the time that budget was tabled to the updated forecasts that were presented to the finance minister shortly after the May vote, that year's $495-million deficit mushroomed into a projected $2.8-billion deficit. The fact that today's economic picture is completely different than what transpired in 2009 is politically irrelevant.

All that most people will believe is that they can't trust the government's claim to a balanced budget - a suspicion the NDP will be sure to pound home before and after the election, should they happen to form the next government. Whether it was the Harcourt government exposing the Socreds' "structural deficit," or the Campbell government exposing the NDP's deficit, or the NDP's "fudget budget," or the B.C. Liberals' 2009 deficit fiasco - history shows that most election budget claims usually mean squat when the political dust settles.

Moreover, no one remembers that it worked in reverse, in 2005, when the February election budget predicted a $220-million surplus that grew to a projected $1.3-billion surplus by that year's September update. Indeed, the actual surplus that year turned out to be massively higher - over $3 billion. That came on the heels of a $2.7-billion actual surplus in 2004, which had originally been projected as a $100-million surplus.

In 2006, the budget projected a $600-million surplus, yet the actual surplus was almost $4 billion, more than 560 per cent higher than anticipated. In 2007, it happened again. The original estimate for a $400-million budget surplus was only a fraction of the $2.7-billion surplus that was actually realized that fiscal year.

The point is, for better and worse, budget forecasts have been wildly off from the year-end actual results. We only tend to criticize and remember when forecasts go terribly awry. We rarely pay much attention to variances in projected spending versus actual spending, which are also often off by hundreds of millions of dollars. Even this year, with all of the government's best efforts to find savings to reduce its ballooning deficit, expenditures were actually running $87 million higher than budgeted as of the last quarter. Note that O'Neill has not been asked to evaluate the government's spending assumptions for the coming year, which is half the equation of ascertaining whether any balanced budget forecast is credible.

Regardless of who forms the next government, I expect that the pressure on health funding will be far greater than the amounts budgeted for the next three years. So many cost pressures in so many areas have been building, especially since the 2008 crash, that are sure to come home to roost in the next few years, far beyond what even the NDP is likely to acknowledge in its election spending plans.

At this point, I don't think any party is being wholly honest about the real cost of our collective demands for new and ever-better public services. Nor are they being honest about the likely pressure that will be put on the next government to increase taxes. Mark my words, it's going to happen, no matter who forms the next government or what they say in the election campaign.

It won't happen in the first year, especially in this post-HST-debacle world. But unless we are prepared to tolerate structural deficits, or continually declining levels of government service, or unmet capital needs, sooner or later we are going to have to come face-to-face with the "elephant in the room." After a decade of mostly cutting taxes and squeezing waste and efficiency out of government, the tax tide is once again about to turn against us.

A modest redistribution of wealth is likely in the offing that will start by putting more tax pressure back on corporations and higher-income earners. We will also likely see more regressive user-pay models, more hidden fees, licenses and premiums, more surcharges for "premium" services, possibly new health care deductibles and new co-pay arrangements, and even asset-based means testing that determine user costs for assisted living and residential care.

It's not a debate that we will hear much about in the upcoming election campaign, other than firm denials, but unless I miss my guess, it is a debate that will dominate the next decade.

Martyn Brown is the author of the new ebook, Towards A New Government In British Columbia, available on Amazon. He was former B.C. Premier Gordon Campbell's long-serving chief of staff, the top strategic adviser to three provincial party leaders, and a former deputy minister of touris

Read more: http://www.vancouversun.com/opinion/op- ... z2LICwBvgo

[NAB]

Christy Clark's next big trick will be to make deficit magically disappear

And for her next miracle, Premier Christy Clark will now balance the budget.

That will be the general theme of Tuesday's incredible balancing act in Victoria, when the Clark government will make a $1.5-billion deficit go poof and disappear.

There was a time when budget numbers were so secret even the faintest hint of a leak was cause for scandal.

But Clark's Liberals have been telegraphing for months now that Tuesday's budget will be balanced, despite a sluggish economy, depressed revenues and disappearing jobs.

How will the government turn last year's deficit into a surplus today?

For Finance Minister Mike de Jong, that's where the magic act will have to be extremely convincing.

With the Liberals' credibility already at an all-time low because of the HST doublecross, de Jong knows a razor-thin surplus might not pass the smell test.

That's why he's promising to deliver a "sufficient surplus as to be credible" and took the extra step Monday of trotting out a former bank economist to certify that Tuesday's numbers will be legit.

"I have concluded that there are no glaring problems or inadequacies that need to be addressed," said Tim O'Neill, formerly of the Bank of Montreal.

Thanks for that, Tim.

But for everybody else, there will still be a tonne of skeptical scrutiny of a budget miraculously balanced just in time for the May election.

There are typically three ways to erase any budget deficit: Increase revenue. Cut spending. Or both.

All options are politically unpalatable for a party about to face the voters.

On the spending side, the government will almost certainly deliver small increases in health and education Tuesday.

All other ministries will be under pressure and face possible cuts.

On the revenue side, the government won't hike income taxes on voters right before an election.

An increase in corporate taxes is possible.

It probably still won't be enough to sop up all that red ink, so watch for the government to follow through on an earlier threat to sell off "disposable assets" like Crown land and public buildings.

The NDP will call it a fire sale. The Liberals will call it proof of sound fiscal management in a time of global uncertainty.

It still won't be your usual brimming, pre-election goody bag, though, which makes me suspect the Liberals will also make some long-term promises of goodies to come — and all you have to do is re-elect them to cash in.

http://www.theprovince.com/news/Christy ... story.html

[Gone_Fishin]

Why do the Liberals have to get the former Bank of Montreal chief economist Tim O'Neill to verify if the coming budget is what it is suppose to be.How much did they pay this guy to give the thumbs up to this budget.When they could have had our own auditor general give it a once over.But then John Doyle probably would have pointed out the smoke and mirror show we are going to be subjected to and spoil the illusion for the Liberals.

Your buddy Ujjahl should have been so transparent. Wait a minute, he didn't want anyone to find out he was full of FUDGE.

Kudos to the current government for conducting a proper, independent, third party review of the budget to remove any political bias from the document. The taxpayers and voters of this province deserve to know the true contents before the election, unlike the hidden agenda, BS fudge-it-budgets of the NDP years.

[Logitack]

kudos to the current government for conducting a proper, independent, third party review of the budget to remove any political bias from the document.

when the liberals have lied and deceived so often they have absolutely NO credibility. this goes for this "economist" who gave a cursory review. lets wait for a REAL and thorough review ...oh i dont know....by the auditor general to get the REAL story on the liberal fudgit budget!!

[flamingfingers]

...independent, third party review of the budget..

Please tell me how a consultant who is unilaterally hired by someone to do something expressly for them is 'independent'?

The Liberals PAID O'Neill $25,000 taxpayer dollars to simply peruse the projected revenue portion of the budget.

Also, as Gary Mason notes:

Of course, Mr. O’Neill’s report guarantees nothing. He did not look at the other side of the ledger: spending. Granted, this is something far easier for government to control. Mr. O’Neill also did not talk about the potential hit the treasury could take thanks to an ever-softening housing market and a stagnant retail sector.

...and...

Still, Mr. O’Neill gave the Liberals what they wanted, a much-needed stamp of approval. Then again, they wouldn’t have allowed him to present a report that excoriated their budget plans. To have any credibility, the government was going to have to address virtually every recommendation its economist-for-hire made, no matter how costly. The Liberals got off the hook relatively easy.

[Veovis]

Please tell me how a consultant who is unilaterally hired by someone to do something expressly for them is 'independent'?

The Liberals PAID O'Neill $25,000 taxpayer dollars to simply peruse the projected revenue portion of the budget.

Se if someone is hired to do a job it means they are biased no matter what? I see.

Yet having unions write the platform of the NDP is neutral. Funny how people have two very different sets of standards to apply.

[flamingfingers]

^^Unions are NOT 'writing the platform' for the NDP. And what does that have to do with O'Neill being hired to give his blessing to a portion of the revenue side of the budget????

[Veovis]

You seem to think if the Liberals hire someone to review something it's a "bribe" and he's a shill, but that shoe doesn't count on the NDP's foot.

Your ethics are showing.

I think it was a smart move to have someone outside government offices review their budget (or portions at least) as they have had issues with putting an accurate one out in the past.

Same reason that if people can't get their own tax return right they hire an accountant, or people hire plumbers since they can't do it good enough, or why people get an investment broker to manage their money.

You just want to see scandal in ever place you look.

[Gone_Fishin]

Of course, Mason's main point was left out above:

Otherwise, Mr. O’Neill was fairly praiseworthy about a budget preparation protocol that is, he said, rigorous and mostly cautious. And he’s right. The people who work in B.C.’s finance ministry are some of the smartest people around. And government also relies on advice from several outside agencies such as the Economic Forecast Council of B.C. – a group of the province’s top economists – in coming up with its numbers.


When compared to the utterly horrid job the NDP did both in budgeting and staying within budgets, the Liberals look like financial forecasting geniuses in hitting their budgetary targets. But then again, it's easy to shine when compared to a bunch of misfit union activists who have no business experience whatsoever. The Liberals have missed a couple of times, but the NDP outright lied when they prepared budgets.

[Gone_Fishin]

^^Unions are NOT 'writing the platform' for the NDP.

NDP preparing its labour platform hand-in-glove with B.C. Federation of Labour



By MICHAEL SMYTH, The Province December 6, 2012







“It’s hardly a secret agenda,” says B.C. Fed boss Jim Sinclair after The Province reveals the close working relationship between the NDP and the unions over the party's labour policy. “We’ve been very open about the fact that we’re lobbying the party.”

Photograph by: Ward Perrin , PNG


Unions across B.C. are in “extensive” pre-election talks with the NDP, and the party’s labour platform is being developed with the B.C. Federation of Labour, according to a document obtained Thursday by The Province.

The labour organization also poured money and staff time into two recent by-elections, the document says, though the NDP candidates in both by-elections did not list the B.C. Federation of Labour as a donor in campaign-finance reports.

It all has the rival Liberals slamming “heavy handed” union influence in the NDP backrooms, and questioning whether the New Democrats properly disclosed campaign donations from the province’s largest labour organization.

“Adrian Dix tried to fool people that he was a moderate with a modest agenda,” Liberal campaign director Mike McDonald said of the NDP leader.

“He just got busted.”

The 11-page document was prepared for the executive of the B.C. Federation of Labour and distributed at its recent convention. It details the organization’s top priorities and its work with the NDP to achieve them.

“Labour platform is being developed with the B.C. NDP,” the document says.

“This includes extensive affiliate discussions on key issues including the B.C. Labour Code, Workers Compensation Board, trades training and employment standards.”

The document had the Liberals seeing red and on the attack.

“It spells out how big labour is working hand-in-hand with the NDP to develop their policies for them,” said Liberal cabinet minister Mary Polak.

She said business should worry about an NDP government bringing in pro-union labour laws and workplace regulations that will raise their costs and deflate investor confidence.

“It’s clear from the document that this is the same old NDP of the 1970s and 1990s and it could hurt our economy,” she said.

But NDP MLA Carole James said the party is simply listening to labour’s concerns, and the NDP will write its own policy platform, not the labour movement.

“They’re presenting their ideas to us and we’re listening,” she said, adding none of the labour movement’s “suggestions” have been officially adopted by the party yet.

“Only the Liberals would attack us for consulting with people. They’re fearmongering.”

B.C. Federation of Labour president Jim Sinclair said copies of the document were widely circulated at the organization’s recent convention.

“It’s hardly a secret agenda,” he said. “We’ve been very open about the fact that we’re lobbying the party.”

But Polak disagreed.

“Adrian Dix has been saying he’s friendly to business, but business is not writing the NDP election platform — big labour is,” she said.

The document says the B.C. Federation of Labour wants an overhaul of the Labour Code. The organization has already said it wants an NDP government to scrap the secret-ballot rule for certifying a union, requiring a majority of workers to simply sign a union card instead.

The group also wants a “total review” of the Workers Compensation Board, and “fair” apprenticeship rules and employment standards affecting union and non-union workers alike.

Under the heading “Ensuring the NDP Wins in 2013”, the document calls for “creating opportunities for Adrian/NDP to directly engage members. We have to publicly support Adrian/NDP with our members, instil confidence in his leadership.”

On the two recent by-elections — both won by the NDP — the document details work and donations: “The Federation co-ordinated a fundraising drive that raised $120,000 for the by-elections. In addition, staff worked full-time organizing volunteers.”

Yet the campaign-finance reports disclosed by winning NDP candidate Joe Trasolini and Gwen O’Mahony did not list the B.C. Federation of Labour as donors of money or staff.

“It doesn’t seem right,” said Polak, adding the donations should be reviewed.

But NDP provincial secretary Jan O’Brien said the money raised by the Federation was donated to the NDP head office, properly disclosed, and then transferred to the byelection campaigns.

And she said Federation staff did not work on the byelection campaigns directly, so no public disclosure was required — an explanation Polak found “disingenuous.”

The NDP, meanwhile, pointed out that McDonald (the Liberal campaign director) has scheduled a “stakeholder meeting” in the boardroom of the B.C. Business Council next week.

“That shouldn’t surprise anyone,” said Sinclair. “At least we’re being open about our work with the NDP.”

You can read the B.C. Federation of Labour document in its entirety at http://www.theprovince.com.


Read more: http://www.theprovince.com/news/prepari ... z2LOZHhFBV