When the Socreds left office in 1991 the total provincial debt was $19 billion. A decade later under the NDP it had doubled to $38 billion and this year Liberal Finance Minister Kevin Falcon is projecting that it will reach $62.7 billion by 2013-14.
It has not mattered whether it was an NDP or Liberal government in power in this province; since 1991 the increase in public debt has averaged $1.9 billion a year. In effect the public debt has grown at a rate of 15 per cent per year, far above any expansion of the economy or the rate of inflation.
What’s the point of cutting personal and corporate income taxes, as both the NDP and Liberals have done in this province, if we have had to borrow an average of $1.9 billion per year to pay for those tax cuts?
Further, sooner rather than later, the cost of borrowing that $62.7 billion is going to cost us, the taxpayers, a lot more than the $19 billion debt left by the Socreds.
In politics, if you think something is too good to be true, then it usually is.
Just like you cannot let the social fabric of a society or the environment that surrounds us unravel, so too can you not be fiscally irresponsible in government.
Andy Shadrack
Kaslo