BUDGET A TOUGH SELL

With its budget tabled this week, the B.C. government may have underplayed its hand. It’s difficult to see what elements of it the Liberals can use effectively in their election campaign.

The reduction in Medical Service Plan premiums will certainly be seen by voters, not as an election goody, but as a partial rollback of the inexorable increases this same government has imposed over the years. Besides, most of the benefit will accrue to employers who pay premiums on behalf of their employees — not that there’s anything wrong with that, but it seems a weak vote-getter.

Had the same money, about $1 billion, been used to reduce personal income tax rates or PST rates (or both), the impact would have more broadly based and highly visible. It would also have encouraged citizens to work, to invest and to consume — and maybe to vote Liberal.

The government trumpeted that Budget 2017 was its fifth straight balanced budget. While balancing the books is to be applauded, recall what the pledge to balanced budgets did for the Conservatives and the NDP in the last federal election. Voters elected the one party that promised deficits.

Moreover, the rewards of balancing the budget are overshadowed by mounting provincial debt, forecast to reach $77.7 billion in 2019. Finance Minister Mike de Jong concedes that the debt-to-revenue ratio, seen at 93.5 per by the end of the decade, threatens the province’s triple-A credit rating should it soar beyond 95 per cent. Not much campaign fodder there.

Eliminating the PST from electricity purchases by businesses is welcome, but exempting other business inputs in addition would have improved B.C. businesses’ competitiveness, spurred growth and won accolades from the business community — a constituency that votes.

Neither can the Liberals make hay with their pledge of $320 million for K-12 education since the government has been ordered by the Supreme Court of Canada to restore funding. The government can hardly tout its commitment to education after losing a 15-year battle with the B.C. Teachers’ Federation.

Of course, there were praiseworthy items in the budget: reducing the interest rate on student loans, $20 million for new daycare spaces, an increase in the threshold for the first-time homebuyers’ program and more money for the beleaguered Ministry of Children and Family Development.

But, overall, this budget could be a tough sell on the campaign trail.