Dear editor,
In following the campaigns of the various parties I find the claims of the B.C Liberal party becoming more and more bizarre.
They are running on having a balanced budget, a budget that just about everyone but the most gullible Liberal supporter knows is a little more then another “fudgit budget” with a substantial deficit no lower then $750 million.
The bond rating agencies all agree on this, as does the media.
To make it look like it was balanced they included non-existent profits collected from BC Hydro and ICBC that were created by Enron-style accounting tricks, as well as proceeds from the sale of assets that have not been sold.
If you or I tried this with our chequebook we would land in jail.
The truth is when the B.C. Liberals entered office the debt was at about $32 billion dollars. It’s now close to $69 billion, $10 billion of which they have accrued since Christy Clark came into office, $4.5 billion through using BC Hydro as a Liberal Party mad money account to fund “projects” like the not-so-smart meters and grid that many despise.
Next comes the claim that B.C. will be debt-free by 2030. This is based on $100 billion worth of fantasy-based revenues from a liquefied natural gas industry that not only is not established but barely exists aside from a pilot plant in Kitimat.
You would need a half-dozen or more in operation to bring any real revenues at all — on top of that each liquefied natural gas plant could cost over $1 billion to build, and even if the plants and investments in place it would take at least five years before any of them would be up and running.
I have my doubts about whether the natural gas industry would be willing to take such a hefty risk, there is no guarantee that the price of LNG in Asia will be the same or better a decade down the road, if they can use hydraulic fracture drilling to extract massive amounts of gas here they can do it anywhere.
This is a shot in the dark from a governing party so desperate to hold onto power that they will say and do anything.
Remember what they said prior to the 2009 election after delivering a prior “fudgit budget?”
“The HST was not on the table,” they said. Well up until April you were still paying it, and you and I were the ones that had to put a stop to it through a citizens’ initiative and referendum.
What did our B.C. Liberal MLA do about it? Well, he sat on his hands, ignored his constituents, behaved like a good little soldier, and was rewarded with a cabinet post. Remember how they used $6 million of our money to pay the legal fees of Basi and Virk, the two charged in the BC Rail scandal, in exchange for a secret plea bargain deal?
What surprise can we expect from the B.C. Liberals if they manage to lie their way back into office this time, a tripling of hydro rates? A return to the HST? Something else?
This party cannot and should not be trusted again with the reigns of power, they have zero credibility with a record of lies, incompetence, condescension, profligate spending, corruption, arrogance and vindictive behaviour.
In my opinion, every B.C. Liberal MLA deserves to be thrown out of office.
A. Foster,
Courtenay
