The list of things that link the current NDP government with the previous B.C. Liberal government is an impressive one.
Both agree on building the Site C dam, wooing the LNG industry, allowing fracking, keeping B.C. Ferries out of central government and spending gobs of money on health care and government advertising.
We can add another item to that list: jacking up the provincial debt by billions of dollars every year. In fact, over the next three years, the NDP plans to increase total government debt at more than twice the rate of the B.C. Liberals’ last three years in office. According to the government’s three-year fiscal plan, the debt is forecast to rise from the current level of $65.3 billion to $77.1 billion by 2020/21, an increase of $11.8 billion.
In their last three years in office, the B.C. Liberals hiked the debt from $60.7 billion to $65.9 billion, an increase of $5.2 billion, less than half the amount over the same period than the NDP plans to spend.
Of course, it should be noted the B.C. Liberals were in power for 16 years and the debt almost doubled on their watch, going from $33.8 billion to that $65.9 billion (although they paid off one key area of that debt – the direct operating debt, which represented accumulated annual budget deficits).
But the NDP, once critical of the B.C. Liberals’ record on debt escalation, is about to go on its own merry spending spree. The government has an ambitious capital-spending plan that will build bridges, rapid transit, schools and hospitals (just as the B.C. Liberals did; voters like this).
A new Pattullo Bridge, the Broadway subway line and Surrey rapid transit lines will cost the government around $4 billion, and indeed the fiscal plan shows transportation project spending will increase by at least that over the next three years.
However, the fiscal plan appears not to include funding to build whatever will eventually replace the Massey Tunnel (potentially another $1.5 billion to $3 billion project). Then there is the debt granddaddy of them all: the Site C dam project, pegged to cost $10.7 billion and rising.
The dam’s costs will not be included on the province’s books until it is in operation, likely around 2024. When the dam’s costs are finally included, our provincial debt levels will likely be approaching $100 billion (assuming the annual increase in debt remains about $4 billion).
Now, this rise in debt is no cause for alarm, as long as the economy continues to perform reasonably well.
Still, this all comes with a cost: interest payments on the debt will be close to $3 billion annually by 2020/21.
So add another item to the-more-things-change-the-more-they-stay-the-same list of common ground areas that exist between our two major parties.
Keith Baldrey is chief political reporter for Global B.C.
