The BC Conservatives and BC NDP have unveiled their economic platforms, and while they both vowed to balance the budgets, the latter admitted that before going down, the deficit would increase further.Conservative leader John Rustad, on the other hand, said his government would get to work cutting unnecessary costs to reduce the deficit, and eventually eliminate it altogether by the end of a second term."David Eby turned a $2 billion surplus into an $8.9 billion deficit — the worst in BC's history," Rustad lamented. "We will eliminate the deficit, but we will do it responsibly, without slashing essential services."He explained that to restore "fiscal sanity" to the province, the party would "think like a taxpayer" before introducing new spending bills, and identify and eliminate non-essential spending.While introducing his platform, Eby outlined a further $1.6 billion in spending for Fiscal Year 2025-26 and $1.2 billion in Fiscal Year 2026-27. That spending, along with the planned saving measures, would put the deficit at $9.6 billion and $7.6 billion, respectively.When asked about the ballooning deficit, Eby told reporters that the party has "been transparent about our spending plans," noting that more money is needed to pay for essential services. He maintained, however, that the deficit would eventually go down over time.During at an event at the Greater Vancouver Board of Trade in which all three major party leaders were grilled over their financial policies, Eby's recently-announced tax cut was brought up. When questioned over how he planned on paying for that billion-dollar promise while balancing the budget, he said "we're not gonna make people pay for that." He suggested growth in the economy would help bring in more revenue for the province, and help eliminate the deficit.
