BC. Liberal Government promises

B.C. Premier Christy Clark is promising last-minute tax cuts as a way to boost her party’s re-election chances, in a throne speech announcement her opponents denounced as a blatant bid to buy votes. Clark offered “financial relief” to taxpayers in her government’s speech from the throne Tuesday, which she said is a reward for British Columbians who’ve had to make sacrifices during difficult economic times in recent years. The premier provided few details in advance of next week’s budget — except to say the money would not be in the form of a rebate cheque. Instead, with less than three months before the May 9 provincial election, Clark spent most of her time Tuesday attempting to frame the Opposition NDP as the party that wants to grow government spending, in contrast with her proposal to return billions in budgetary surpluses directly back to the wallets of voters. “I just don’t believe government can spend people’s money better than they can,” she said. “So I want to find ways to give that back to citizens and let them make choices about their own hard-earned money.” NDP leader John Horgan said taxpayers won’t be fooled by the false comparison, because they’ve suffered through years of increases on things like Medical Service Plan premiums, auto insurance and B.C. Hydro rates. “The premier has been taking money from British Columbians for the past six years and now she wants them to believe on the eve of an election she’s somehow going to pay them back,” said Horgan. “It seems to me that the government is going to try to buy back support 80 days before an election. I think that’s wrong.” B.C. Green leader Andrew Weaver said the Liberals have no plan for the economy. Clark’s tax cuts could be expensive for B.C.’s treasury. A one percentage point reduction in the PST would cost around $900 million. Eliminating MSP fees would cost more than $2.6 billion. A five per cent cut to the bottom two personal income tax brackets (such as what was funded in 2008 using carbon tax revenue) would cost more than $300 million. The government has also hinted at costly increases to education and child welfare services, as part of its Feb. 21 budget. “We’ve worked long and hard and thought long and hard about what we could do that will benefit citizens most directly and how we could make sure that continues to contribute to growing the economy,” Clark told media at the legislature. “So you’ll see that in a week.” Outside of the financial promise, much of Tuesday’s speech from the throne was a recap of the Liberal efforts to address hot-topic items, such as Metro Vancouver’s housing affordability, rural job losses, transit investments, mining and the environment. There was no direct mention of additional money for B.C.’s child welfare system, after another scathing report by the children’s representative last week into the suicide of teenager Alex Gervais while in government care. Ambitious plans to develop a liquefied natural gas industry — which Clark proposed in her pre-election throne speech in 2013 — have failed to materialize but “remain within reach,” the Liberals claimed in the speech. The government also warned of looming economic uncertainty caused by the protectionist movement in the United States, and a worsening softwood lumber dispute. B.C. Business Council vice-president Jock Finlayson urged government to first focus on tax reforms suggested by a recent tax competitiveness commission, which called for more exemptions on machinery and equipment to increase productivity. The throne speech marks a return by the B.C. Liberals to their traditional argument for small government and low taxes, but it can be confusing for voters to reconcile after years in which government increased taxes on luxury homes and foreign buyers. “They seem to be going back and forth on what their guiding philosophy is,” said Jordan Bateman, B.C. director of the Canadian Taxpayers’s Federation. “I think this election is going to be battled on the ground of cost-of-living, Hydro, ICBC, home ownership and taxes in general.”