Books aren’t cooked, but the Liberals are

As the precedents and traditions at the B.C. legislature continue to fall like dominoes, another convention was to go by the wayside on Wednesday.

One of the most time-honored rituals of a change of government in B.C. is the discovery by the new bunch that the old bunch cooked the books. That the fiscal situation is much worse — unimaginably worse! — than anyone could possibly have imagined.

The BC Liberals were going to attempt to break that historical pattern today by releasing a fiscal statement showing that the government is awash in hundreds of millions’ worth of unexpected new revenue.

The only problem is that the numbers won’t be audited.

In normal times, the public accounts, the final reckoning on the fiscal year that closed in March, comes in July and is certified by the auditor general, which generally closes down any arguments about their validity.

This time around, the timeline is being compressed by the Liberals because their time in power was running out. A big surplus is about the only thing they have left to stand on, so they want to proclaim it on their terms.

But the auditor general — who is probably leery of getting mixed up in political games — will only sign off when she’s good and ready, which might take another week or so. So there will be a window for the NDP and Greens to dismiss the numbers.

Still, if the Liberal government collapses today, as expected, there’s a chance the seal of approval on their accounting will arrive in the first days of the NDP’s watch.

You’d think taking over a $50-billion enterprise and learning the books are on the upand-up would be good news for the new proprietors. You’d be wrong. Newcomers need all the fiscal leeway they can get. The best way to create more room is to discover the situation is much more dire than the outgoing government portrayed it. It creates licence to do whatever unpopular things need to be done.

So a feature of changes of government going back decades is a rookie finance minister expressing horror at the state of the books. The worse the old government looks, the better the new one appears.

When the Liberals took over from the NDP in 2001, they commissioned some accountants and executives to look things over. The B.C. “fiscal review panel” dismissed the existing balanced budget as a fluke, brought by windfall revenues.

The real picture was a huge “structural deficit,” created by runaway spending. That set the stage for the austerity and spending cuts that dominated their first term.

When the New Democrats took over from the Social Credit government in 1991, thenfinance minister Glen Clark told the legislature: “The fiscal situation we inherited from the previous administration is much less favourable.”

That set the stage for a round of tax increases. It wasn’t the NDP’s fault. They had to do it, to clean up the mess left by the previous tenants.

Further back in time, after the Socreds succeeded the NDP in 1975, they brought in the accountants and determined that, despite the forecast of a surplus, there was actually “a staggering deficit.”

Like everything else that’s happened since the election, this time around it’s going to be different.

Liberals want to head off the execution of this gambit with the invention of a “structural surplus.” That’s the new gimmick used to explain the source of the orgy of new spending in the Liberals’ throne speech.

Green Party Leader Andrew Weaver asked Finance Minister Mike de Jong about it in the house this week.

De Jong reminded him he’s just signed up for a hitch with the party that authored the notorious fudged budgets of the mid-1990s.

But he assured Weaver, as he will everyone today, that “B.C. is performing a remarkable level right now.” (That’s true on many different levels.)

“I know there are members salivating at the prospect. But were they to get the keys to this car, let there be no doubt, the tank is full, the engine is running on all cylinders, and British Columbians are enjoying the strongest economy in Canada.”

Les Leyne covers the legislature for the Victoria Times Colonist. Email: lleyne@timescolonist.com.