Only thing certain in B.C. right now is uncertainty

This column was written before the federal budget was released Feb. 27. My redneck coffee buddies cautioned me not to vote for the socialists in the last provincial election or we would return to the dark days of the 1990s.

It is almost a year into the NDP mandate and the lights are still on in the province.

I am certainly not an economist, having taken only Economics 101 over 45 years ago. I do know investors crave certainty.

We have had anything but certainty as the provincial government wrestles with important decisions like Site C, Kinder-Morgan pipeline, trade wars with Alberta, fish farming, ICBC rate increases, BC Hydro debt and natural gas fracking.

Just having these discussions indicates that Premier John Horgan appears to be “not friendly to business.” Provincially, we have been riding a housing boom similar to the one we rode into the last recession.

The provincial Liberals positioned themselves as the only party capable of managing the economy.

It begs the question, “Does provincial government policy actually guide the provincial economy with so much uncertainty afoot?”

What does influence B.C.’s economy? If you were to believe Justin Trudeau, infrastructure spending is what is driving our current prosperity. I am hard-pressed to think of any major federal investments in BC.

We are incurring a huge federal deficit and not just the “small” $10-billion one Mr. Trudeau promised during the election.

Liberal Paul Martin said when he was finance minister that deficits are bad and we needed to suffer austerity to balance the budget or plummet into recession. When will Mr. Trudeau’s Canadian Infrastructure Bank actually kick-in?

If we discount Canadian policy as an economic driver, are we then not just riding on the coat tails of the United States?

The U.S. economy has been on a tear since the mid Obama years. Mr. Trump has accomplished very little other than bailing on the Paris Climate Accord and giving a tax break for corporations and the rich, preferring to concentrate on dismantling anything Obama.

You would think that a pending nuclear war, the healthcare fiasco and immigration conflict are enough to cause the uncertainty U.S. investors loath.

It is almost as if the trite slogan of Make America Great Again is enough to encourage the capitalists to open their wallets.

We bottom 99 per cent can only hope that the Reagan-Thatcher “trickledown effect” theory works as promised by Mr. Trump’s unfair tax cuts.

It appears to me that as a province we do not have much control over our economy. Getting back to my coffee buddies, if there is a future downturn in the economy, they have another reason to influence my vote, whether it is Mr. Horgan’s fault or not.

John Dorn is a retired tech entrepreneur living in Summerland.