Premier Christy Clark鈥檚 sa国际传媒 Liberals could have written a throne speech to inspire British Columbians with a vision of the future, but instead they kicked off the election campaign with vague promises and wishful thinking.
With three months before voting day and the government down in the polls, the Liberals had a chance to use Tuesday鈥檚 throne speech to revive their fortunes with a document that would inspire British Columbians and get them out to vote.
The centrepiece of the speech takes a page from Alberta鈥檚 book and uses resource revenue to create what Clark calls a 鈥淧rosperity Fund.鈥�
It would use royalties from liquefied-natural-gas projects to create a fund that could see more than $100 billion in revenue over the next 30 years. The money would be used primarily to pay down the $56-billion debt, but will also go toward social programs.
The revenue should start flowing in 2017, when the first of five planned natural-gas projects is expected to be running.
Using this new revenue to pay down debt and fund programs is a good use of the money, but pinning one鈥檚 hopes on plants that haven鈥檛 been built and money that is decades away is risky. As an election strategy, it鈥檚 also too uncertain. Voters need something they can grasp now, not four to 30 years down the road.
Many of those voters will recall that Alberta has had a similar fund for 40 years, and yet Premier Alison Redford is talking about bringing in a sales tax to save her province鈥檚 devastated finances after decades of overspending. A savings account is handy, but not if you keep running your chequing account far into the overdraft to lavish gifts on all your friends and relatives.
Once voters read past the news about the Prosperity Fund, the rest of the speech offers thin gruel.
A new organization will try to make Vancouver 鈥渢he hub for Asian and South Asian corporate offices and investment activity.鈥� Like the natural-gas industry, that鈥檚 something that depends on events far outside sa国际传媒鈥檚 control.
The government also offers 鈥渁 renewed commitment鈥� to small business owners, without saying what that means or what difference it will make to small businesses.
It promises new measures to support families, including better access to early-childhood services and childcare, and help for families saving for post-secondary education. Intriguing, but again, no specifics to grab.
In health care, the speech offers 鈥渋mprovements for patients in rural and urban areas as well as improvements to primary health care that will have lasting benefits to people throughout our province.鈥� Health care is always near the top of every British Columbian鈥檚 list, so ears are eager for word of something that will make a big difference. If improvements and lasting benefits are on the way, why not tell us what they are? Build up some buzz to carry into the election. But no, we鈥檒l have to wait.
The speech offers no way to measure success. The Prosperity Fund figures are so far in the future, no one now in government will ever be held accountable for them. The other promises include no numbers or benchmarks. How do we know what success looks like?
And more to the point, how do the Liberals expect to achieve success at the polls with a document as thin as this?
In 2001, Gordon Campbell drove the Liberals to victory with his New Era campaign, which gave supporters and voters something to rally behind. The Liberals of 2013 had the golden opportunity of a throne speech to do something similar. They let the opportunity slip and handed the New Democrats the chance to write the agenda.
