Editor, The Times:
I have written several times in a blog I have, in media releases, and in letters to the editor that government cannot continue with uncontrolled spending as it has for the past decade under the BC Liberals, and in the decade before that under the NDP. In fact, I became well aware of this when I ran as a candidate for the BC Reform Party in 1996.
That said, I am delighted with many of the DRAFT policy ideas that have been proposed, and put together, by hundreds of members from the BC Conservative Party – and which I am certain will be approved by the membership later this month at the party’s AGM in Nanaimo.
One of these is a proposal for multi-year budgeting and funding, where appropriate, to enable government to effectively plan and transform services to achieve greater efficiencies, effectiveness, and streamlining of services to citizens.
I believe that government ministries, in most cases, are afraid to look at the long-term because the focus is always on seeing results “Right Now”. How will we know however if we are getting the results hoped for, in projects being implemented today, when often it will take multiple years of a plan to see that?
Multi-year budgeting will allow for the opportunity to project outcomes along the way, and more importantly show how larger expenditures of revenues at the start of a program can result in long-term savings. This I think would be especially important in health and social services ministries where more and more it seems we are headed to “re-active” solutions, rather than looking to long term “pro-active” solutions and outcomes.
John Cummins and the BC Conservatives having been saying for some time now that its polices will be developed from the ground up and will contain the common sense ideas of everyday people … it looks to me like a good start is underway.
Alan Forseth, regional director
BC Conservative Party
