Not much shiny and new in pre-election budget
If you pay your own medical premiums, Tuesday’s provincial budget was a big deal. If not, well, Finance Minister Mike de Jong didn’t exactly dangle a lot of shiny stuff in your face, not for an election year with the economy relatively healthy.
No Socred-style blacktop politics. No BCRIC shares. No chicken in every pot. No pot in every chicken. No Free Beer Fridays.
There was money for social spending, for education and mental health and addictions, but — MSP aside — not a lot of measures that stuck cash straight in (or took it straight out of) Islanders’ pockets. No PST cut, as had been rumoured. No increased staffing for seniors’ homes, as some had expected.
Perhaps it’s harder to lure voters with their own money these days. Or perhaps we are not, as the commercial would lead us to believe, richer than we think.
Here’s what Victorians need to know about Tuesday’s budget. • The big news, if you’re one of the million British Columbians who pay their own medical premiums and whose family income is under $120,000, is that your bill will be halved next Jan. 1. The savings are less of a big deal to the million whose premiums are already paid by their employers (though their employers will be happy).
As announced last week, disability benefits will rise $50 a month on April 1, going from $983 to $1,033. Fifty bucks might not be that much, but it’s more than others on social assistance will get: Welfare rates will stay flat, as they have for a decade.
There’s an extra $175 million over three years to offset an anticipated increase in the number of people needing social assistance. Most of those will be people with disabilities. That’s a reflection of B.C.’s aging demographic. • There’s $20 million for up to 2,000 more child-care spaces. • If you smoke, it will cost an extra $2.40 per carton as of Oct. 1, when the tobacco tax will rise to $49.40 a carton. (BTW, just 14 per cent of British Columbians smoke, down from 20 per cent in 1999. At this rate, the province should be down to 17 smokers paying $27,000 a pack by the end of the century.) • The province will begin phasing out the sales tax on business electricity bills Oct. 1. B.C is the only North American jurisdiction that has such a charge. • There’s a bit of an extra pay bump for 310,000 public sector workers, those whose union contracts say they’ll get more money if the economy performs better than forecast. They’ll get 0.35 per cent on top of the 1.5 per cent raise they got this year. For most, the increase will kick in this month. • There were no surprise announcements of brick-and-mortar projects that Islanders didn’t already know about. The new hospitals in Campbell River and the Comox Valley will open this fall, but that’s about it. No magic fix for the Malahat was unveiled. The only Trans-Canada Highway work on the Island is stuff we already know about: The McKenzie Avenue interchange that began in September and the four-laning of a five-kilometre stretch through the Malahat Village. • As of today, the threshold for the First Time Home Buyers program inches up from $475,000 to $500,000. First-time buyers can save up to $8,000 in property transfer taxes when purchasing a home costing up to $500,000. They’ll still be reduced to eating carpet underlay, though. • As announced last September, there’s a back-to-school tax credit that saves parents about $12.65 a kid. That should make McGill affordable.
The limiting factor in all this? The debt. Tuesday, de Jong made a bit of a fuss over the fact that the province’s operating debt will soon be down to $1 billion from $10 billion three years ago. He even spoke of being able to eliminate the debt entirely for the first time since 1975.
Ah, but there is debt and then there’s debt. When you add in capital spending and the obligations of entities such as school districts, B.C. Hydro and the B.C. Transportation Finance Authority, the total provincial debt will nudge $70 billion this year, up from $45 billion when Christy Clark took over in 2011. It’s expected to hit $78 billion — or $15,000 per capita — in two years.
It’s bit of a buzzkill for any party looking to lure the voters with their own money.