B.C. Conservatives platform pledges path to balanced books but more deficits first

By Dirk Meissner, The Canadian Press on October 15, 2024.

Conservative Leader John Rustad leaves after a campaign stop in Surrey, B.C., Monday, Oct. 14, 2024. It's the last week of the British Columbia election campaign after a busy long weekend of promises for the B.C. Conservatives, including a new Children's Hospital for Surrey. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl Dyck

British Columbia’s Conservatives are promising to kick start the provincial economy and balance the books with an election platform that forecasts economic growth of more than five per cent and several years of billion-dollar deficit budgets.

B.C. Conservative Leader John Rustad says, if elected, his party’s plans for economic reforms and tax cuts will produce a balanced budget at some point during a second term in office.

He says his first budget would include a deficit forecast of nearing $11 billion, which is higher than the more than $9 billion deficit forecast by the New Democrats.

Rustad says his platform, called a “Common Sense Change for B.C.,” will get the provincial economy growing with strategic new spending, the reallocation of wasteful NDP spending to priority areas, a core review and audit of NDP spending, including a revision of current and planned government capital projects.

He says the platform promises more than $4 billion in tax cuts, including the elimination of B.C.’s carbon tax, a promised rent and mortgage rebate and a reduction in the small business tax to one per cent.

The platform also includes “major operating spending commitments” worth about $1.5 billion in 2025-2026, and $3.7 billion in 2026-2027.

Rustad’s platform, which does not list any tax hikes, says its increased spending and budget deficits will be offset by an additional $10.4 billion in annual revenue by 2030 due to the forecast of an annual growth of 5.4 per cent, compared with the “NDP scenario” of 3.1 per cent growth.

Both growth forecasts are well in excess of most other predictions, with TD Bank estimating 1.9 per cent real GDP growth in 2026 and the Conference Board of Canada seeing growth in the province averaging 2.1 per cent in 2027 and 2028.

“The budget we are releasing today talks about a path forward,” Rustad said at a news conference at the University of B.C. campus. “It talks about what we need to be doing in this province. It talks about how we need to overcome the seven years of devastation we’ve seen under the NDP, with the sea of red ink we have in this province and nothing to show for it.”

Earlier Tuesday, New Democrat Leader David Eby made a late appeal to voters to support the NDP even if they never have before, as the campaign enters its final days.

He said there hasn’t been an election as significant “for a generation,” about one hour before Rustad released his party’s costed platform and just four days before election day on Saturday.

“This is an incredibly close election,” Eby said at a news conference at a housing construction project in Surrey. “Every vote is going to count, right across the province.”

Elections BC said about 597,000 people have already voted in four days of advance polling.

Eby stood at a construction site in Surrey with a sign in the background parodying anti-NDP political billboards put up outside the home of Vancouver billionaire Chip Wilson during the campaign.

“John Rustad will give tax breaks to billionaires and speculators, that’s why they are making signs,” said the NDP billboard.

Eby’s campaign event focused on two of the NDP’s major themes during the election campaign – housing and attacking Rustad’s B.C. Conservatives – especially on what he said is the conspiratorial views of the leader himself and several of his candidates.

Green Leader Sonia Furstenau said Tuesday that Rustad and his Conservatives are “not serious enough to govern” and they “do not deserve the kind of support they’re getting right now.”

Furstenau said it’s “laughable” the Conservatives have taken so long to release their costed election platform.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 15, 2024.