‘At the end of the day (our) track record will speak to credibility’

“That one was the budget from hell,” said Colin Hansen, who was finance minister at the time.

“That budget was like standing on a pile of sand as the tide comes in, and you feel it eroding on you day by day.”

Campbell chose to scramble for cash after being re-elected to try to honour his promised figures. He accepted $1.6 billion from Ottawa to sign on to the Harmonized Sales Tax, but the subsequent public revolt over the unpopular tax led to his resignation.

“It would have been prudent for sure on his part, and much more politically wise, I would say, to just be honest,” said Martyn Brown, Campbell’s former chief of staff.

“You wouldn’t have had to do the HST had he done that.”

The public is sophisticated enough to understand that today’s global markets can be volatile and require numbers to change, said Brown. But Campbell – like Christy Clark – spent years in opposition scoring political points off the NDP’s fudge-it budgets, and clearly feared the electoral wrath of delivering his own.

If B.C.’s forecasts worsen this election, de Jong said he’ll feel an obligation to highlight those vulnerabilities to the public.

It’s especially key at a time when U.S. President Donald Trump’s protectionism agenda, and a worsening softwood lumber dispute, have added risk to the provincial forecast.

“If something begins to change, it may not be possible on the fly to specifically quantify, but I think there is an obligation to alert people,” he said.

Some have accused de Jong, who is notoriously frugal, of deliberately underestimating annual revenues to deliver larger-than-expected surpluses that can then be claimed were the result of prudent fiscal management.

“The criticism I get more often now is you’re too cautious. You’re too careful about these forecasts. And I’ll take that criticism, because I still think the world is a volatile and unpredictable place.”

“At the end of the day,” he said, “(our) track record will speak to credibility.”

Former finance ministers say a key public protection against fudged budgets is the professionalism of provincial Treasury Board staff, many of whom are longtime non-partisan civil servants who keep the revenue forecasts away from political interference.

“I have absolutely no hesitation in saying the public can feel very comfortable that politicians do not, and I’m certain would not, try and put their finger on the scales to try and tip it to their benefit in terms of those assumptions,” said Falcon.

“How much revenue is coming in is not a number you get to play with,” added Hansen.

Former NDP finance Minister Elizabeth Cull said budgets are about political choices and “they reveal values about what’s important to a political party” that is crucial for voters.

“There’s no doubt, going into an election year, the pressure is on the finance minister to present the best possible scenario,” she said.

“You’re going to be looking at everything really closely and saying are we being super conservative?

“Are we being too optimistic? Where is the right place to land?”

Cull took immense criticism for her 1995 and 1996 budgets, which together comprise the fabled fudge-it budgets.

She even ended up in court to defend her figures.

Cull added: “There was pres- sure from the premier’s office to deal with the political agenda and also the experience I had personally with Ministry of Finance staff being conservative, which is kind of where you want them to be, you don’t want them to be reckless, but on the other hand you want to apply some judgment.”

Former NDP finance minister and Prince George MLA Paul Ramsey said his legislated reforms after Cull’s budget scandals put the emphasis on professional civil servants safeguarding the facts and figures. It allowed more transparency for the public to “lift the hood and look at the revenue projections item by item,” said Ramsey.

“But they have to look,” he added. “And nobody reads budgets.” The 2000 Budget Transparency and Accountability Act made significant reforms that are still in place under the B.C. Liberals, said Ramsey.

“It blew up much of the fiscal inventiveness that governments from W.A.C. Bennett on had used,” he said.

“We deliberately, by legislation, threw that bag of tricks away.”

Budgets contain three-year financial forecasts, but the public should only take seriously the most recent year, said Ramsey.

And even there, he said the public has to be realistic about the level of accuracy they can expect in what is still just an estimate.

“They expect a level of accuracy for some reason in government budgets that they would never expect in their personal budgets,” said Ramsey.

“The politicians have partly done it to themselves, over-promising and under-delivering, and finding excuses.”

The financially-illiterate news media are also to blame, he added.

One of the most frequently proposed reforms for the modern budget would be to move the fixed election date to the fall, leaving time for a February budget to be debated and passed, and for the year-end public accounts to be released in July.

The Opposition NDP proposed on Thursday a private member’s bill that would move the election to October, but it is not expected to gain any government support.

“I’d be surprised if there’s anybody in the Ministry of Finance involved in the budget process that would not prefer to see a fall election,” said Hansen.

But that’s not under consideration by government, said de Jong. “There’s certainly no plans at the moment on the part of the government to make that change,” he said.

“I think there will always be no matter where in the calendar the election is it will be possible to develop an argument that the government has tried to take advantage in some way. I think it’s more important the date be set and established and know where it is.”

The criticism I get more often now is you’re too cautious. You’re too careful about these forecasts. And I’ll take that criticism, because I still think the world is a volatile and unpredictable place. — Minister Mike de Jong