This is a make-or-break year for the BC Liberals. Unfortunately, their track record has been more of break than make, and if the last couple of months are any indicator, their capacity to improve things appears to be running on empty.
B.C. faces some major challenges over the coming year, challenges that a sensible government would be prepared to take on in a comprehensive and fundamental way. However, those two adjectives aren�t in the BC Liberals� playbook.
One of the major challenges is the B.C. economy. Growth sputters along at an anemic rate of between 2% and 2.5%, a rate that�s well off full capacity, depriving thousands of the opportunity to get ahead. The BC Liberals were supposed to be the party that could and would deliver on the economy. They had a plan. It was incredibly simple. Some might even call it simplistic. It could be summed up in two words: tax cuts.
Those two simple words were going to unleash economic growth like never before. Ten years later, we�re still waiting. BC Liberal tax cuts have failed to deliver the promised economic punch, although they did manage to enrich the top tier of B.C.�s wealthiest and a wide swath of B.C.�s corporate sector. But for the rest of us, it has been pretty thin gruel at best.
Forget for the moment that tax cuts for the rich as a means of job creation had a dubious reputation long before the BC Liberals decided to embrace them. They were, after all, part of the �voodoo economics� that George Bush Sr. thought made little sense. But tax cuts were, for the BC Liberals at least, going to supply a jumpstart to the B.C. economy. Instead, they deprived the provincial treasury of much needed revenue, revenue to ensure that public infrastructure and public services kept pace with what citizens rightfully expect a modern government to provide.
One of the major casualties of a sputtering economy is employment. Before the financial meltdown of 2008-09, B.C. employment stood at about 2.27 million. By December of 2011, the total had only just climbed back to 2.28 million, a dismal 0.7% increase. The BC Liberals fumble to offer excuses for the terrible jobs figures, but none hold up to any scrutiny. Compared with the rest of Canada, our employment growth was half the rate recorded nationally. Even compared with Ontario, where the manufacturing sector has been hard hit, B.C.�s employment growth was minuscule: 1.8% in there versus 0.7% here.
Premier Christy Clark�s so-called action plan for jobs doesn�t leave much room for optimism either. Most of her efforts thus far have been to try to claim credit for federal government fiscal initiatives. Her foray into the Seaspan shipbuilding contract was at least ironic given that it was during her tenure at the Gordon Campbell cabinet table that shipbuilding in B.C. was abandoned in favour of off-shore suppliers for a multimillion-dollar BC Ferries contract for new ships.
But growth rates and employment tallies tell only part of the story for what challenges lie ahead for most working British Columbians. With job prospects getting tougher, more workers are turning to second jobs to make ends meet. Just as many are also looking at longer working hours in their workday or work week.
For these people, and thousands more like them, their paycheque is squeezed by rising prices for food, energy and shelter. Even at relatively low inflation, the impact on take-home pay has been constant because what few pay increases there are don�t offset the steady rise in our cost of living.
In fact, what B.C. needs now is a wage increase, one that fairly compensates employees for keeping our province working. It�s a concept not lost on Premier Clark, who along with her cabinet colleagues and MLAs, voted to have their salaries keep pace with changes in the consumer price index.
It seems on some fronts that the premier is prepared to take action that has an immediate and beneficial impact for her. Too bad she won�t ensure that same benefit is more widely felt. I think we are worth it.��
