The NDP plan is to blame the Liberals, but balance budget

When Carole James stands in the legislature Tuesday she will achieve something not many NDP governments have managed: Three balanced budgets inarow.

Sticklers might say it’s just two balancing acts in a row, or maybe 2 1/2. That’s because James’s first “budget update” in 2017 came halfway through a fiscal year in which the vanquished Liberals balanced the budget the previous spring.

But it will still be her second full balanced budget in sequence. And the fact that the NDP didn’t immediately break the bank and unbalance the Liberals’ books when they seized power in 2017 also counts for a lot.

Premier John Horgan raised expectations of NDP supporters in the election that year with promises of $10-aday child care, affordable housing, scrapped bridge tolls and an expensive poverty-reduction plan. It seemed like a recipe for massive budget deficits. In fact, in the previous 2013 election, then-NDPleader Adrian Dix all but promised the red ink would flow, opening himself to attacks from the Liberals.

The temptation for James and Horgan to borrow billions of dollars, run deficits and spend big on social programs was huge. After 16 years of Liberal rule, the NDP’s traditional supporters in organized labour, social-justice groups and the environmental movement were all calling on Horgan to turn on the money taps.

It reminded me of the first term of NDP government in the 1990s under Mike Harcourt, who earned the nickname Moderate Mike after he promised to balance the budget despite high expectations from supporters.

“If the money’s not there, we won’t spend it,” he famously said, only to win the election and start spending like Kim Kardashian on a shopping spree, racking up massive deficits. The same temptation was there for Horgan and James, but they have so far resisted it, keeping the province’s books in the black.

To be sure, Horgan has been damn lucky. He took power with a strong economy, while Harcourt inherited a recession. And the B.C. Liberals balanced multiple budgets in a row, all making it easier for the NDP to keep the streak going.

Tuesday’s budget promises to increase spending on child care, the environment, housing and poverty reduction, though the spending has certainly not matched the NDP pre-election hype.

Instead, Horgan has wisely kept the budget balanced, while deftly blaming the Liberals every chance he gets fiscal problems that prevent him from doing more.

Unchecked criminal money laundering. Over-priced private power projects. The gag-inducing legislature spending scandal. The famous ICBC dumpster fire.

The New Democrats have expertly painted the Liberals as a bunch of incompetents at best — corrupt malfeasants at worst — and the Libs under new Leader Andrew Wilkinson don’t seem to have much of an answer to it.

The NDP’s plan: Keep the budget balanced. And keep heaping blame on the Liberals for anything that goes wrong.

Barring any surprise tax hikes in the budget, it’s a strategy that has so far kept Horgan in a competitive position with his political enemies.