Advice garnered for the budget: Spend more on everything, cut nothing
The Vancouver Sun
16 Nov 2006
By: Vaughn Palmer

EXCERPT

VICTORIA - The legislature committee on finance completed its budget consultations Wednesday, with a call for the government to consider spending more on ... well, many, many things.

Child care. Housing. Hospices. The ambulance service. Home care for seniors. Mental health and addictions.

Children with special needs. Developmentally disabled adults. Women's shelters. Arts and culture. Environmental protection.

Post-secondary education. Adult basic education. Aboriginal education. Education for those on income assistance. Students taking English as a second language.

Infrastructure, too: Rural roads and bridges, public transit, municipal water systems and the Gateway project....

And -- this was actually first among 36 recommendations -- the committee wants to "allocate a portion of uncommitted revenues towards repayment of the provincial debt." As if any revenues would be left uncommitted after all the other recommendations were implemented.

Still, that wish list wasn't ambitious enough to satisfy the Opposition. Barely was the B.C. Liberal majority on the committee out with its recommendations when the New Democratic Party minority put out a press release expressing "disappointment."

Government members hadn't really listened to many of the public submissions, according to the NDP. Most notably, they'd ignored numerous calls for relief from high tuition fees at universities and colleges.

The New Democrats also called for more specific increases for child care, women's shelters and affordable housing than were detailed in the government report.

No price tags on any of this. Nor did the Liberals or the New Democrats offer any suggestions for reductions in the current $34-billion spending plan.

Finance Minister Carole Taylor had asked that this year's pre-budget submissions take such a balanced approach.

"There are places where you would put more money; there are places where you would pay less money," she said hopefully.

"If we can draw the public into really thinking about where the give and take should happen, then I think we will be better off."

Nice try, minister. But though the committee gathered a record 8,000 submissions -- written, on-line and in person -- almost nobody went for the idea of tradeoffs. "The committee received a multitude of options on where government could spend more," the final report says. "[It] encountered few witnesses who were willing to express specific opinions on where the government could spend less."

Some grumbling about the proposed outlays for the 2010 Winter Olympics. Myriad suspicions about "waste" in the bureaucracy, though no specifics.

But that was all: "We did not receive a sufficient level of responses to adequately assess where the public believes budget reductions could be made."

In accounting for the lack of response to Taylor's challenge, the committee tried to be charitable.

Maybe people are too busy getting on with their lives "to conduct a line-by-line analysis of provincial budget documents." Maybe, given more detail about the implications of cuts to certain programs, they could venture a list of priorities.

Maybe.

Then again, why should the public and interest groups suggest budgetary tradeoffs when the Liberals themselves can't be bothered? ...

If Taylor is really serious about the need for more balance in the budgetary dialogue, she could start by having a chat with the chief promise-maker, her boss.