FLETCHER: BC taxpayers may hope this is the last NDP budget

Tom Fletcher has covered BC politics and business as a journalist since 1984.The BC NDP government continues to compete with Ottawa for the worst financial performance across our once-great dominion.By now, you may have heard the lowlights of the 2026-27 budget delivered by Finance Minister Brenda Bailey. The current year’s deficit was whittled down to just under $10 billion, but next year’s forecast has it rocketing up to another all-time record of $13.3 billion.Total provincial debt is now forecast to triple as BC nears a decade of NDP rule. This is on top of a bloated federal debt that is now costing $1 billion a week in interest payments, and is rising faster under Mark Carney than it did under Justin Trudeau. Credit rating downgrades may soon make things worse.The latest round of provincial tax increases, including a half-point hike in the lowest income tax bracket and expansion of the provincial sales tax base to services, isn’t enough even to slow the growth of BC’s debt. After seven years of NDP administration, the last three a post-pandemic spending spree supervised by Premier David Eby, the damage is baked in.“Continuing a hiring freeze in the public service” doesn’t help much after the public service has been increased by 40%. The province has a contract settlement with its main public service union after an eight-week strike, and its 50,000 public school teachers are pondering a pre-budget offer that is also likely to land them pay hikes of 12-15% over four years..The most passive-aggressive tax increase is BC’s move to freeze provincial tax brackets and tax credits for three years. This is how inflation is converted to a tax increase, as higher wages move earners into higher tax brackets with no increase in real earnings.But “bracket creep” is difficult to describe in a 10-second sound bite and too boring for an Instagram post, so they’re apparently betting most people won’t notice. The finance ministry estimates it will take in nearly $1 billion in income tax revenue through this move alone, leaving less for groceries and rent.Expanding the provincial sales tax to cover services is a move that effectively reverses the NDP’s long-ago battle to defeat the harmonized sales tax, a fight that sent former premier Gordon Campbell into retirement. Now the 7% PST will be assessed on professional services, including accounting, architectural, and engineering services.Engineering services include things like geology, adding new costs to a surge of mining projects that the federal and provincial governments have bent rules and forfeited title over vast areas of Crown land in an effort to stimulate. The jurisdiction with some of the highest costs and longest permit times in the world for mining has just gotten more expensive.The accounting tax spreads across most businesses, including housing, and the architectural services tax also falls on home and commercial construction. Out-of-reach housing costs are still a huge issue across the province, except for some small towns where people are leaving because the local sawmill or other pillar of the dwindling private sector has gone under..With public sector employment now up to nearly 600,000 people, the budget includes a target of cutting 2,500 positions from the core civil service, through gentle measures of attrition, hiring restrictions, and early-retirement buyouts.There were some obvious ways of reducing the size of government that the NDP somehow missed. For example, they could do without their latest cabinet addition, a Ministry of Infrastructure. A more accurate name would be Ministry of Infrastructure Announcements, since its main role seems to be to add to the number of re-announcements of new schools, hospitals, and such.Speaking of hospitals, the budget includes a new euphemism, “re-pacing” of healthcare capital projects, including a delayed expansion of Burnaby Hospital. The horrible state of overflowing or shut-down emergency rooms seems destined to get worse before it gets better.Also put on hold are seven new long-term care projects, which will increase already long wait times and back up more elderly patients in acute-care beds when there is nowhere to move them to.Tom Fletcher has covered BC politics and business as a journalist since 1984.tomfletcherbc@gmail.comX: @tomfletcherbc

FLETCHER: BC taxpayers may hope this is the last NDP budget

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