After setting the record for the largest deficit in British Columbia history only two years ago, Gordon Campbell‘s Liberal government is about to close out 2004/05 with B.C.’s largest-ever surplus, at around $2 billion.
With the February 15th ‘Golden Era’ budget have the Lie-berals made the decision to reduce poverty and re-invest in public services for the benefit of all British Columbians? According to David Schreck, at Strategic Thoughts, the answer is: no.

The 2005 budget threw a few crumbs back to the masses in an attempt to buy forgiveness and the election, (translating) into a benefit of $34 a year compared to more than $20,000 a year they gave to top income earners in 2001. The spending side of the budget also looks like crumbs when the announcements are put in perspective relative to past cuts: if all of the monies for the homeless that were announced in Budget 2005 went just to the City of Vancouver, it wouldn’t scratch the surface of the problem; as well, under the Campbell government’s plan it will take until 2008 to get back to the 2001 level of funding for adult community living services; and remember June 2001 when the Campbell government announced $1.5 billion in personal income tax cuts … just 11,000 tax filers who report incomes in excess of $250,000 per year, received $200 million in tax cuts, or $20,000 a piece, while the rest of us had our taxes reduced by $34 to $386 a year.

Is B.C. doing better than it was four years ago, and is the current record surplus due to prudent Lie-beral fiscal management? VanRamblings suggests: absolutely not. Why is B.C. running a budget surplus? Could draconian cuts to services to children, seniors, the disabled and the very poorest among us have anything to do with the surplus? Yes.
Are record federal transfer payments to B.C. for health care and equalization a factor in our budget surplus? Yes. Are Crown Corporation revenues adding to the provincial bottom line, including a 50% increase in gambling revenues? Yes. Are large revenue gains that stem from Medical Service Plan premium hikes, tuition fee increases, and windfalls in property taxes and resource royalties also factors? Yes, again.
The next provincial election, May 17th, is only 86 days away. Will you be voting Lie-beral this time out?

With only 163 days to go to the next provincial election, the campaign for the hearts and minds of British Columbians is well underway.
As Bill Tieleman wrote in his November 25th column for the Georgia Straight, “the recent information mailing about the province’s economy … is nothing less than pre-election Liberal Party propaganda, as well as false advertising paid for by taxpayers.”
Where the B.C. budget for 1999 was balanced under the New Democratic government, and the 2000 budget had a record surplus of $1.5 billion, upon their election in 2001 the B.C. Liberals racked up the largest two deficits in provincial history, adding more than $5 billion in debt to the province’s books between 2001 and 2005.
Although Gordon Campbell’s Liberals cut taxes for the rich by $2 billion dollars within a month of their ascension to power, in the following two years the Fiberals actually hiked taxes by $1 billion, most of which hit lower-and middle-income earners.
David Schreck, of Strategic Thoughts.com, also weighs in on the Fiberals reign of mismanagement of the B.C. economy, and the half-truths and outright lies that have been propagated in the thinly veiled, taxpayer funded, multi-million dollar Liberal Propaganda Achieve B.C. ads that have littered the airways and filled up whole pages of newspapers across B.C.
Caring British Columbians are not about to sit back and allow the Fiberals to hoodwink us into voting for them a second time. To that end, the Hospital Employees Union has released this ad, to provide information and historical insight into one of North America’s most regressive governments.

From the lucky ones who swept the trash and filth from city streets or stood for hours on street corners hawking newspapers, to the less fortunate who coughed incessantly through 10-hour shifts in dark, damp coal mines or sweated to the point of dehydration while tending fiery glass-factory furnaces — all to stoke the profit margins of industrialists whose own children sat comfortably at school desks gleaning moral principles from their McGuffey Readers — the struggle to repeal exploitative 20th century child labour laws has become a key feature of the global social welfare movement.
In B.C., though, as eager youngsters headed back to school this week, they did so at the end of the first summer under B.C.’s regressive new laissez (les enfants) faire child labour laws. With legislation passed last November making the specific laws and standards governing B.C. children in the workplace the most backward in North America (including every corner of George Bush’s United States), the children of poor working families in British Columbia face the risk of exploitation by unscrupulous employers.
In a column written by Charles Demers for Seven Oaks magazine, Mr. Demers writes …

The specifics regarding the deregulation of child labour in British Columbia are absolutely breathtaking in their nefariousness and regressive gall … Children as young as twelve are now permitted to work 20 hours every school-week (35 hours in weeks without school, or in the growing number of districts using a four-day week); they require the permission of only one parent to do so; they may work at any time during the day, including graveyard shifts …

Perhaps most frightening is the fact that the province has shifted from an investigations based system of assessing the safety of workplaces employing children to a complaints based system. All that means that not only do we expect a 12-year-old fixing the deep fryer at 2 a.m. to do so for six bucks an hour, but we expect her to assess the safety of her own workplace and, if she feels uncomfortable, we expect her to fill out the paper work to deal with it.

By deregulating government’s role in overseeing the employment of children in British Columbia, the Campbell government has, once again, placed children in harms way, providing no assurance that children will not be more vulnerable to inappropriate work situations, unsuitable or lengthy hours of work, increased risk of injury, higher incidence of school drop-out and economic exploitation. British Columbians ought to be outraged.

Political columnist David Schreck reports in a September 10th entry on his website Strategic Thoughts.com that government ads boasting about B.C.’s employment growth paint a far from accurate picture.
“Released on September 10, just 4 days before Financial Minister Gary Collins’ First Quarter Financial Report is due, Statistics Canada’s August Labour Force Survey doesn’t seem to be ‘on message’ for the Campbell government. Since July the unemployment rate increased from 7.3% to 7.7%, and employment fell by 14,500. Over the Labour Day weekend government ads boasted about B.C.’s employment growth. Less than a week later the numbers came in showing B.C. in 9th position in terms of employment ‘growth’, and in 5th position in terms of unemployment.”
“The Labour Force Survey is a telephone survey of households which, as its name suggests, measures the labour force. Its notion of employment includes self employed and unpaid household workers. The Survey of Payroll Employment, Earnings and Hours is a survey of employers. It measures paid employment. B.C. has not done as well in terms of paid employment as it has in terms of the much broader Labour Force Survey definition of employment. The most recent Survey of Payroll Employment, Earnings and Hours is for June. It shows B.C. in 7th place in May to June job growth. Growth in paid employment in B.C. has fallen behind the average for Canada for the three years since Campbell’s New Era began.”