No provincial election in the immediate offing, so no whiz-bang budget 2016 for B.C., just a lot of boring book balancing.
Considering that most of B.C.’s provincial brethren are nowhere close to achieving the same, and with Canada’s new federal Liberal regime embarked on sunny ways with taxpayer chequebook in hand and annual federal deficits set to balloon well beyond its original $10 billion estimate, boring looks pretty good for business out west.
Say what you will about Christy Clark and her cheerleading for a liquefied natural gas boom that’s nearing multibillion-dollar bust, her government continues to deliver on its commitment to being fiscally prudent. That’s encouraging for B.C.’s economic integrity.
Finance Minister Mike de Jong’s 2016 fiscal plan is the fourth consecutive balanced budget from a Clark regime that, over the past five years, has managed to keep government spending lower than the rate of B.C.’s economic growth. Budget 2016 forecasts surpluses for 2016-17 ($264 million), 2017-18 ($287 million) and 2018-19 ($373 million) while allocating $1.8 billion to pay down B.C.’s operating budget debt and $12 billion for infrastructure en route to a 16.3% debt-to-GDP ratio by 2018-19.
Laudable. Even staunch Clark Liberal critics would have to concede that, especially given the state of global equity markets and the collapse of commodity and energy prices.
However, it’s not all blue skies ahead on the West Coast.
Despite the Clark government’s initiatives in balancing operating budgets and controlling spending, the province’s overall debt continues to climb and is projected to hit $72 billion in 2018-19.
The Liberal refrain of B.C.’s resilience via economic diversity, meanwhile, will be severely tested if the province’s core industrial economy, which continues to be driven by such out-of-favour but fiscally fundamental pursuits as resource extraction and energy transmission and exports, is depressed for the long term.
Overall, however, boring is keeping B.C. business pulses beating, which is better than what government budgets are doing in many other North American jurisdictions.
