Comparing the NDP budget to the B.C. Liberal one seven months earlier is a contrast between a government with expensive new plans to help people and a government that was, for the most part, standing pat.
But comparing this week’s budget to the Liberals’ desperate throne speech in June, in which they junked their own budget and put billions on the table in a bid to avoid losing a confidence vote, is a trickier proposition. Liberals presented two wildly different fronts in the pre- and post-election scramble.
So figuring out how the NDP plan contrasts with the Liberal agenda depends entirely on which Liberal agenda you pick.
The centrepiece of the February Liberal budget — almost the only newsworthy piece — was a 50 per cent cut in MSP premiums. The premiums — up to $900 for individuals, $1,800 for families — were going to be slashed by half, with the goal of eliminating them completely over the long haul.
The NDP budget this week outlines the same 50 per cent cut starting on the same date, Jan. 1, 2018. Also coming is a review of how to make up the resulting shortfall. The relief will cost the treasury more than a billion dollars, so some tax hikes are inevitable.
The Liberals’ February budget also committed $740 million more to education over three years. The asterisk on that promise was that it was virtually court-ordered, after the government lost the final Supreme Court of Canada decision over the voiding of teacher contracts 15 years ago.
The NDP government is bound by the same decision, but was committed to education boosts regardless. So the new budget has $681 million in new education spending over three years, aimed at hiring 3,500 more teachers, with the promise of more to come.
Liberals made one other major spend before their budget, promising $900 million on a housing push. What happens to that now is unclear, but the NDP budget itemizes $671 million for housing over the next few years and their targets will require hundreds of millions more.
It’s when you get to the Liberals’ last-gasp throne speech that the comparisons get stranger. Facing a formal NDP-Green caucus alliance that was going to unseat them, the Liberals shed all the constraints. They promised $1 billion for child care and early education over four years. Even the NDP couldn’t match that this week. They put a scant down payment down on their $10-a-day child care promise, but most of the funding for that is yet to come.
After freezing income-assistance rates for a decade, Liberals abruptly promised in June to hike them by $100 a month.
The NDP matched that and made it immediate, so the increase will be arriving this month.
Liberals also poached the NDP promise of a standalone mental-health ministry, promising to give it a mandate for increased investments. The NDP budget puts up $25 million for the new Ministry of Mental Health and Addictions, plus $32 million more for a police crackdown on drug dealers, and more naloxone training for responders.
Liberals in June also caved in and promised to start hiking the carbon tax, another NDP commitment. The differences on that front are that the NDP schedule starts a year earlier, and abandons revenue neutrality.
Liberals also borrowed the ideas of ferry-fare reductions and elimination of bridge tolls. The NDP have dropped the tolls, but the ferry-fare cuts (on smaller routes) are still to come.
So comparing who was going to do what and when is a mish-mash of shifting ideas.
Just So You Know: Referring to an NDP promise of a tax credit to first-responder volunteers, interim Liberal Leader Rich Coleman on Tuesday complained in the house that it was in the Liberal budget in February, but the NDP are taking credit for it today.
“Get your own ideas,” he said.
That was an amusing start on the job of criticizing a government that is doing a lot of what the Liberals borrowed and made their own in their brief Version 2 appearance before they lost power.
