B.C.’s budget is a ledger and a spreadsheet, and it’s also an itemized list of all the diverse directions the province is going.
It’s the governing party’s right to highlight its favourite figures in the budget and exaggerate or obfuscate where it sees fit. Citizens understand this, which is why in any election year we would remain more guarded with our optimism than an incumbent party, and perhaps not quite so cynical as an opposition party.
Leading up to the May 9 provincial election, some of us in the Harbour City were presented with some helpful information last week. Two days after presenting the budget in the legislature, Finance Minister Mike de Jong took his B.C. budget show on the road to a Greater Nanaimo Chamber of Commerce breakfast meeting at the Vancouver Island Conference Centre.
The minister touted B.C.’s economic diversity, suggesting that trait has been the key to the province’s relative economic strength and also the most important factor for continued vitality. And although de Jong praised Nanaimo’s business community as some of the leaders on that front, most of the people in the room must have discerned that our city has a lot of room for improvement there. We might have an emerging tech industry, but it might not be the sort of economic driver the province would have us believe. Certainly, we need continued diversification in Nanaimo, and with a lack of local economic development leadership right now, provincial leadership is even more important.
There are various ways a government can impact economic diversity, both in the macro, with natural resources policy, for example, and in the micro, with targeted post-secondary and small-business investment. In the coming months, every provincial party will be presenting its economic case for B.C. We’ll hear a lot more about diversification. We’ll hear a lot of different interpretations on what that means and what that should mean. And then, along with a newly elected government, we will need to ensure that diversification does indeed happen here.
