Government’s budget is not really balanced

Re: “B.C. budget cuts 2M MSP premiums in half,” Feb. 22. Over the past several years, the B.C. government has touted that it has a balanced budget, and almost always the press carries that statement. You did in your article on the front page: “$50-billion balanced budget.” This is untrue. On the operating account, the budget figures show a projected balanced budget with some surplus each year: $1.4 billion in 2016/17 and dropping each year to $223 million in 2019/20.

However, the capital account is almost all borrowed money, seeing the provincial debt increase in each of the four fiscal years from $66.6 billion in 2016/17 to $77.6 billion in 2019/20.

What the government (and the press) should be saying is that they are projecting a balanced budget on their operating (current) account, but that on the budget as a whole because of borrowings on the capital account, they will incur a deficit, thereby increasing the overall debt of the province.

When one says “balanced budget,” everyone thinks that the government is balancing all its revenues against all its expenditures. And that is a logical conclusion. But it masks the facts: Operating, balanced; capital, not balanced. The budget, which is operating and capital (as defined by the government itself), is therefore not balanced.

The government is spending more money than it is taking in.

Really, the press should have some budget-knowledgeable people to correct the government on its misleading statements. Brian Peckford Nanaimo