The provincial election is still more than six months away, but make no mistake, British Columbians, the campaign is on.
On the government side, as expected, it’s spend, spend, spend. The announcements and re-announcements are coming hot and heavy.
For example, Premier David Eby was in Terrace recently to announce $250 million (over five years) for the communities of the Northwest Resource Benefits Alliance. A campaign event if there ever was one.
Is the money needed? Unquestionably. Is the money welcome? Heck, yes. But where is it all coming from? We should be concerned about spending. The projected deficit for 2024-2025 is $7.9 billion followed by $7.7 billion in 2025-2026 and $6.3 billion in 2026-2027. That will bring the total B.C. debt to a staggering $128.8 billion by 2027.
It also means almost doubling the province’s debt to GDP level from 15.2 per cent to 27.5 per cent by 2027.
To be fair, 27.5 per cent is a pretty reasonable debt to GDP level and very serviceable providing our economic fortunes don’t take a turn for the worse.
Still, their narrative is basically ‘look at all the pretty things we’re giving you.’
On the opposition side, it’s all NDP bad and Eby bad. And even though this is a provincial election Trudeau is also bad just because he’s Trudeau.
Currently, BC United and the BC Conservatives (is there really any difference?) seem to be jumping on the federal Conservative bandwagon of blaming everything on the bogeyman in the form of the carbon tax. In the big scheme of things the carbon tax is relatively small potatoes, but it maybe makes a snappy election slogan.
Their narrative is ‘we’re not the other guy.’
That is not an alternative.
But, we get what we deserve. As long as we let politicians get away with campaigning on spending, personality and empty slogans instead of real issues, this is what we’ll get.
We need to start tuning out all the noise and ask: what are you actually going to do? How are you going to do it? How is that going to solve our problems?
As voters, we have to establish the narrative, not vice versa.
— Black Press