The B.C. Liberals keep using your money to tell you what a great job they're doing managing the economy and creating jobs, but evidence keeps mounting that their claim to being financial wizards is questionable at best.
First the B.C. government admitted its annual budget would have a much greater deficit than originally forecast. Then the latest job figures from Stats Canada showed the province actually lost more than 4,000 jobs last month.
And last week came the news that a leading financial firm thinks the province's finances are starting to teeter on the brink of undesirable territory.
That bad news, of course, came in the form of two financial downgrades by Moody's Investor Services. While the financial firm kept intact the triple A credit ratings for both the provincial government and B.C. Hydro, it dropped its outlook rating for both from "stable" to "negative."
Both downgrades came because of concerns about the rising debt for both the province and the Crown Corporation, combined with a sluggish economic performance that results partly from slumping revenues.
Under the B.C. Liberals' watch, the provincial debt has grown from $34 billion to a forecast of nearly $63 billion next year. B.C. Hydro's debt has climbed from more than $6 billion to more than $15 billion.
Much of this debt accumulation is the result of an aggressive and ambitious capital spending program. Everything from new schools and hospitals to such big ticket items as the Sea-to-Sky Highway, the Port Mann Bridge, the Canada Line and the Vancouver Convention centre helped balloon the debt.
Few would quibble with much of this capital spending. Everyone wants a new or upgraded school for their kids, new hospital expansions are greeted enthusiastically by local communities, and a reliable power supply needs ongoing maintenance.
People may grumble about spending a lot of money on bridges and roads, until they begin using them. But also adding to our debt has been the cost of accumulated annual budget deficits, as the B.C. Liberals have chocked up six of them while in power.
It wasn't supposed to be like this, of course.
When the B.C. Liberals were in Opposition they passed themselves off as economic-masters-in-waiting, while casting the NDP in the role of incompetent money managers.
The truth is neither party has much to boast about when it comes to balancing the budget. Both parties routinely racked up annual deficits while in office, and each struggled when the economy took any kind of nosedive (my own view is that governments get too much credit when times are good, and receive too much blame when things go bad).
So Moody's has now called out the B.C. Liberals on two fronts. Combined with that spotty track record when it comes to balancing the budget, it's hard to see how the party can turn the next election campaign into being about which party is more competent at managing the economy.
Still, there's no doubt the B.C. Liberals will continue to beat their favourite drum about the so-called "dismal decade" of the NDP-ruled 1990s. But various economic statistics do not support the notion that one party is so much better than the other.
The future does not look particularly promising. The economy will slowly grow, the provincial debt will continue to climb, the government will likely run budget deficits for at least a couple of more years (despite what it will claim in next year's budget), and natural resource revenues are unlikely to spring back to the levels they were a few years ago.
It's hard to see Moody's upgrading its outlook for B.C. back to stable anytime soon. But in the meantime, that taxpayer-funded ad campaign will continue to pat the government on the back about its economic wizardry. I have to wonder whether the voters will buy into any of that magic.
Keith Baldrey is chief political reporter for Global BC
