The B.C. Liberal government's annual budget usually contains little drama, as the bulk of it is made public as part of the three-year fiscal plan that accompanies the budget presentation every year.
But this coming year may be slightly different. Premier Christy Clark has dropped hints that a few nuggets that are not currently in the fiscal plan may be added when her finance minister brings down the budget on Feb. 16
Those nuggets (whether they qualify as "goodies" remains to be seen) will deal with home buying, Medical Service Plan premiums, and funding for the children and families ministry.
I wrote in this space a couple of weeks back that the time had to come to revisit how those MSP premiums are paid, as they have evolved into a financially onerous "flat tax" for far too many families.
It's unclear whether they will be tied to income levels (as I and others, such as Green Party leader Andrew Weaver, have suggested) but Clark has pledged to make them fairer and more affordable. They won't be eliminated of course (the premiums are forecast to bring in more than $2.5 billion next fiscal year), but hopefully the playing field is made level.
Clark has also hinted about helping first-time home buyers, who are facing enormous obstacles (as in: insanely high housing prices) in Metro Vancouver when it comes to making any purchase. But the premier and her finance minister have also rightly expressed concern over taking any action that leads to an unintentional consequence: harming the existing financial equity thousands of people have built up in their homes.
This is going to be a trickier sea to navigate than restructuring MSP premiums. Taking even a small step when it comes to regulating a red-hot market like Metro Vancouver's housing market can have all kinds of repercussions.
The third "nugget" may be a higher-than-expected budget increase for the children and families ministry. As it is, the three-year fiscal plan shows that MCFD is due a paltry $6 million funding hike (on a $1.38 billion budget) in the coming year.
However, Bob Plecas, a former deputy minister in MCFD, was brought in to review some ministry operations and he has recommended a more significant funding increase of more than $50 million.
There is ample evidence that child protection workers (among the most valued of all civil servants) are underpaid and overworked. Their case files are too long, and their decision-making is often second-guessed.
Then there is the problem of a lack of foster parents. That recent controversy over putting kids in care into hotel rooms has high-lighted the need for more resources in this area, and one way to attract more people to become foster parents would be to increase resources for them.
Will the kind of funding increase needed to address these problems be granted by the usually tight-fisted Finance Minister Mike de Jong? Clark has expressed some sympathy, but we'll have to wait and see whether that translates into more dollars.
There is little to indicate there will be more unforeseen measures. The B.C. Liberals have been able to stick to the spending side of their fiscal plan fairly closely the past few years, which means, among other things, that the health ministry will get a budget increase of about a half billion dollars (yet people talk about "cuts" to health care).
Most other ministry budgets will see minimal increases, as health care alone continues to gobble up about half of all new spending.
And the budget will likely be balanced, even as the world economy teeters on the edge of what could be a serious downturn (although revenues from natural resources may continue to plummet). As for taxes, don't expect anything substantially new on this front, although various fees will continue to climb.
And, almost paradoxically, the provincial debt will continue to climb, as the government continues its aggressive capital spending program ( which includes building various schools, hospitals, roads and that controversial dam in the Peace River valley).
B.C.'s finance minister is known for his predictability and cautiousness. We'll see if he adds a few of those new nuggets to the fiscal plan he unveiled two years ago.
Keith Baldrey is chief political reporter for Global B.C.
