This province is getting boxed around the ears in Ottawa, and that's unlikely to change for a few more years.
The federal government has a majority and a serious budget problem, so it's taking things out on the provinces. Trying to right the fiscal ship means spending cuts that will inevitably be unpopular. Compounding the problem is the drift of the Official Opposition away from the west, and towards central Canada.
As a result, B.C. risks becoming marginalized by the two political parties that have the best chance of forming a government in Ottawa.
The looming closure of the Kitsilano Coast Guard station is a prime example of Ottawa's disconnect with this province. While budget cuts are inevitable when a government faces a serious deficit problem, there are some cuts that are more sensitive than others.
The closure of that station will be neatly contrasted with the fact that thousands of bureaucrats work in Ottawa, running programs that are based in the provinces. While there are job cuts to that part of the federal budget, there will never be enough to dispel the impression that more could occur if it meant saving things like the Kitsilano Coast Guard station.
Former New Brunswick premier Frank McKenna once observed there were more department of fisheries employees working in Ottawa than there were working anywhere near an ocean. That pretty well says it all when it comes to Ottawa's centralized attitude towards the provinces.
The Harper government is chopping other services in B.C., of course. Several hundred jobs in immigration, public health and tourism will disappear, which means service reductions in all kinds of areas.
Of course, many people are unaware many federally funded services are there until they disappear.
But that ignorance does not eliminate public anger over some of those budget decisions. And that anger could be substantial in smaller towns where the cuts are to be felt disproportionately deeper.
There is also a bigger financial headache headed our way. A few years from now, the government will start tying annual increases to healthcare spending to economic growth, which will undoubtedly reduce the amount of healthcare dollars flowing the provinces' way.
Then there's the Harper government's strong support for the Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline, which appears to have significant opposition in this province.
Now we come to the other side of the political equation. Federal NDP leader Thomas Mulcair has made waves with his criticism of this country's reliance on revenues from natural resource exports, which is something that is the backbone of the western provinces' economic makeup.
As I and others predicted when he won his party's leadership, Mulcair appears to be shifting his priorities away from the west and more towards winning support in central Canada. The high price of the Canadian dollar, which partly results from our natural resource riches, hurts the manufacturing base of Ontario, where Mulcair is trying to shore up support.
He knows the path to power in Ottawa runs through seat-rich Ontario and Quebec, and not through the natural resource-rich western provinces, which simply don't have enough seats in the House of Commons to match central Canada.
The Harper government has a majority, and the political reality is that it doesn't have to listen to critics as much as in the past.
And the federal NDP now looks east, rather than west, when it comes to shaping priorities.
Keith Baldrey is chief political reporter for Global BC.
