NDP fiscal management in B.C. was sound

With the real possibility of the NDP forming the next federal government, Stephen Harper has predictably launched his attack ads claiming that, if elected, the NDP will ruin the economy as, he claims, they did in B.C. in the 1990s.

This myth started with the Gordon Campbell Liberals, who claimed they had inherited a financial disaster from the NDP and a $3.7-billion “structural deficit.”

However, both the auditor general and the Liberals’ own hand-picked fiscal review panel found that the NDP had left a $1.5-billion surplus, the second-lowest debt per capita in Canada, the second-leanest civil service in Canada, and a 20-year low unemployment rate of 6.8 per cent. No structural deficit.

The FRP also found that the NDP’s “accounting policies and financial reporting are substantially sound.” The Liberals managed to take this $1.5-billion surplus budget and, within a year, turn it into B.C.’s largest-ever deficit budget of $4.5 billion.

A 2013 University of British Columbia report found that net debt and government program expenses, relative to GDP, were lower under the NDP than the Liberals, relative to the performance of other provinces.

So much for Harper’s claim that the NDP couldn’t manage the economy.

Over the next month, we are going to hear the same old refrains: “tax and spend,” “fiscal incompetence,” “10 years of mismanagement.” Don’t be duped, do your own research. Don’t let rhetoric influence the outcome of this most important election. Jude Lawrence Cumberland