The Union Strikes Back

Raa ait

Iain Reeve, OP

Columnist

“Today, we are entering a golden decade for British Columbia. The future British Columbians have worked so hard to create is now within our grasp.” —Gordon Campbell

As hard as it has been to keep up with the news over the past week—l’ve been sick and moving house—there’s been one

story I can’t ignore. It’s with baited breath, anticipation, and a dread sense of fore- boding that Pve been waiting for the unveiling of the BC budget by our fearless leaders, the Liberal party. Since the Liberals made BC the first part of Canada to ever carry a fixed election date, May 17 for those wanting to start a countdown, the budget has, for the first time, become the Liberal’s way of telling us why we love them enough to grant them another four years in office. Let’s see how they fared...

Well, the big budget carried one parttic- ular piece of news that everyone likes to hear: tax cuts! More specifically, tax cuts for the po’, the “value” shoppers, you know...students and such. Most, like me, earning less than $16,000 a year will pay no income tax at all. It will save the low- est income earners $320 a month. Not bad. This is actually pretty monumental. It marks the first time the Liberal govern- ment has acknowledged the existence of Vancouver’s poor in legislature—other than to say how much of a pain we are.

Bend

But they figure that because we’re so poor we must also be stupid, and thus willing to fall for tricks like tax cuts right before an election. Not this poor guy.

Next, the Liberals are planning big boosts to everybody’s favourite public institutions: health care and education. A $3.8-billion increase in health-care spend- ing over the next three years certainly sounds interesting. It will likely make up for the health-care cuts, failed attempts at privatization, and mishandling of labour disputes that have marred the Liberal health-care record over the last four years. As for education, all you primary school kids can look forward to a $139-million boost, which should go a long way in upgrading BC’s six or so elementary schools that have not been closed down. We college and university kids get a heap- ing $372 million. All these promises of thousands of new seats would be exciting if not for the fact that no one will be able to afford them, and if not for the fact that very little new faculty is being hired. It has

also been declared that tuition fees will now be tied to inflation. That’s a nice touch. Once again, assuming we have the memories of two-by-fours, the Liberals are reaching out to Joe Student and letting him know they care. Thanks, I’d be sure to come out to Victoria to thank you, but I cant afford a ferry ticket. Sometimes there just isn’t enough change in the couch.

As a union member said in an inter- view following the budget speech, this is something akin to a bank robber stealing $2 million and then turning around and giving back $200,000. The only people who will fall for this are the people who fell for lowering the PST back to 7 per- cent, forgetting it was the Liberals who raised it to 7.5 percent in the first place. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that BC will remember the last three-and-a-half years, and not fall for the old “pay ’em off before the election” trick.

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8 | www.theotherpress.ca FEBRUARY 23/2005