Liberals unveil platform
Premier Christy Clark unveiled an election platform Monday that offered only modest additions to the plans her government has already announced, confirming the BC Liberal Party will campaign as the steady hand that is best for the province’s economy.
In a platform entitled Strong Economy, Secure Tomorrow, Clark announced only a handful of new ideas, such as a five- year freeze on personal income taxes, a 2014 referendum to determine the future of TransLink funding, and a one percentagepoint reduction to the small business tax over the next four years.
“We’re securing our future by ensuring that B. C. is a safe, clean, healthy and affordable place to live for every family in every part of the province, and protecting B. C.’ s economy and families by balancing our budget,” Clark said.
She also promised a core review of all government ministries to find further savings, a plan to cap the interest fees on payday loans at $ 17 per $ 100 borrowed ( it’s now $ 23 per $ 100), and said a B. C. Liberal government would double the number of hospice beds in the province by 2020.
But the bulk of Monday’s document borrowed from Clark’s February budget, as well as her government’s throne speech, which projected a major economic boom once B. C. exports liquefied natural gas to Asia.
Therefore, the platform repeated promises such as a one- time grant of $ 1,200 for parents with kids born after 2007, meant to help families save for post- secondary education or training.
It also repeated a promise to create the B. C. Prosperity Fund, which would hold the government revenues from the projected LNG boom until they can be used for strategic investments, such as eventually eliminating the province’s debt.
“On May 14, we will have a once- in- a- lifetime chance to eliminate the debt for our children,” Clark said.
Finance Minister Mike de Jong — who has long telegraphed an election campaign bereft of the usual spending spree — called the platform right for the times.
“( This) is the kind of approach to fiscal management and public policy that I am convinced the quiet majority of British Columbians want,” he said Monday.
Accordingly, the B. C. Liberal platform only added about $ 200 million in spending over three years to what had been planned in the February budget.
This modest increase will place the B. C. Liberal campaign in stark contrast to the New Democrats, who are expected to roll out new spending priorities as early as today.
In a news conference last week, the NDP announced tax increases and spending shifts they say will yield about an extra $ 2 billion over three years. They have said they will devote all that extra revenue toward new programs.
New Democratic Party MLA and co- chair of the NDP caucus platform committee Carole James said the B. C. Liberals’ platform is nothing more than a collection of broken promises from their time in government.
As an example, she pointed to the promise by Clark to lower the small business tax rate by 2017- 18 to 1.5 per cent from 2.5 per cent.
James said that in 2009, then- premier Gordon Campbell promised to eliminate the small business tax by April 1, 2012. That plan was cancelled last year, with the tax being held at 2.5 per cent.
B. C. Conservative Party leader John Cummins seized on the same issue.
“In Budget 2012, Christy Clark cancelled the small business tax cut promised in 2009. Now the Liberals are making the same promise again, as if they expect British Columbians to believe them this time,” Cummins said.
“As the saying goes, ‘ Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.’ British Columbia’s small business owners will not be fooled by Christy Clark this time.”
But Clark retorted that she believes her platform demonstrates a party that is consistent. “I’ve been premier for two years, for the last two years, and we’ve set up a plan and stuck with the plan with dogged determination,” she said. “And I suppose the alternative, the NDP alternative, is jump from plan to plan, from idea to idea, every month. That’s not how you build a strong and secure economy, that’s how you take huge risks with people’s futures.”
Clark will visit Lt.- Gov. Judith Guichon at 9: 30 a. m. today to officially kick off the election campaign, before holding events in Victoria and Burnaby.
NDP leader Adrian Dix is to hit the road at 7: 30 a. m., after which he plans to hold multiple campaign events across Vancouver.
Meanwhile, Global BC said Monday that a halfhour Liberal- paid television address Sunday evening featuring Christy Clark drew an average audience of 165,000 viewers provincewide, with 114,000 of those viewers living in Metro Vancouver or Vancouver Island.
Global BC said the infomercial “won” its time slot easily, almost doubling the number of viewers attracted to reruns of The Simpsons — which usually wins that half- hour period.