Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow.
No, I’m not a snow lover in the city area and no, I’m not referring to the 1945 classic song by Sammy Cahn, sung by Vaughn Munroe and, in more recent times, by many others.
I am referring to the Liberals’ pre-electioneering “spin-doctor campaign.” The writ has yet to be dropped so that the electioneering can start. However, the Liberals and their spin doctors are dumping loads of “political snow” on us through the media.
There isn’t a day that goes by that the media doesn’t tell us how well the province is doing economically. References are made as to B.C. having the lowest personal income tax in Canada. We are also told that along with the Federal Job Program, B.C. is making monumental inroads. We are led to believe that B.C.’s budget will be balanced soon.
I encourage you to look carefully at the bar graph ad depicting how B.C. has the lowest personal income tax in Canada. You will notice that the first column in blue is B.C.’s. One might not look across the page to the far right. In so doing, check Alberta’s column. It is not in colour, however, it shows about the same level of taxation that B.C. does. Check it out carefully when you see the ad next time. Then there are the federally orchestrated job programs that the Liberals purport to “piggy-back” on. The unemployment rate in B.C. has not had a major downturn recently that I can recall. Where are all of these newly created jobs, in downtown Spuzzum or Coalmont perhaps?
As far as balancing the budget is concerned, do the Liberals mean as it currently stands or do they mean for this fiscal year? B.C. has a debt of about $50 billion. Some of this was brought about by the former NDP governments over a 10-year period and the balance of the debt was accrued over the last 10 years by the Liberals. In order to maintain a preferential credit rating by the financial pundits, there has to be a consistency in financial dealings in order to maintain that rating. B.C. has been paying interest only.
The principal is not going down by leaps and bounds — nor will it based on this payback method. If there is some magic bullet that the spin doctors have not told us about such that it will bring in a balanced budget, we need to know what that is as they are spending millions of our tax dollars to give us a snow-job saying that things are great here in B.C.
How can the Liberals say that they will balance the budget when they have given themselves a 30 per cent raise, paid high bonuses and salaries to 50 upper echelon ICBC executives to the tune of $14 million and set up monumental salary/bonus/severance payout packages for various Crown corporation CEOs? Where is all of this money coming from? The answer is easy: from you and me, the taxpayers. It’s a no-brainer.
In summary, there is pre-electioneering going on being (approximately $15 million) paid for by us as taxpayers. We are inadvertently funding the Liberal campaign through no fault of our own. Other political parties don’t have access to those resources. As for budget balancing and credit rating for this province that Liberals tout as doing so well, why is it that Moody’s Investment Service has downgraded B.C.’s credit rating from “AAA stable” to “AAA negative?”
Is this one of the positive vibes that the Liberals are trying to get us to believe? All in all, we are being snowed. How long we allow this to go on remains to be seen. Who’s to say that any other political party would be any better based on past performances. Maybe we need to look at things a little differently and make some systemic changes as to how this province operates from a governmental perspective.
Ron Barillaro
Penticton
