The time has come to tell Premier Gordon Campbell "we told you so." Yes, the provincial Liberal leader did a flip-flop when he announced his government would engage in deficit spending. But this now commonplace observation misses an important point. Premier Campbell has a long record of reversal - his recent conversion to deficit spending is just the most recent example. And the pattern of behavior surrounding these reversals raises disturbing questions about his leadership.
Too often, he has taken dogmatic positions - castigating anyone who holds an opposing view, including those who may have a better understanding of the issue. Then, when circumstances demand he capitulate and adopt another opinion, he embraces it with the zeal of a "reformed sinner."
So it is with his latest conversion. Premier Campbell wasn't just dead set against deficit spending. He reinforced that position with the Balanced Budget and Ministerial Accountability Act - designed to "outlaw" deficits. At the time, those who knew better were annoyed by his inability to appreciate that budgets are an instrument of public policy not its end.
Yet, everyone in his caucus and among his senior staff in government would automatically defer to him - "Napoleon is always right." Fine. But a price is also paid for such uncritical deference to someone who does not systematically understand government instruments.
Allan Warnke, a Malaspina University-College political science professor, served as the provincial Liberal MLA for Richmond-Steveston between 1991 and 1996.
Yet, as long as no one calls him on his inadequacies, the premier can continue to exercise poor judgment and gets away with it. So now, another lesson has been learned the hard way. And Premier Campbell must now rescind his own legislation.
It has now become apparent the premier has some difficulty understanding government - aside from its prestige. The only question remaining is how long the public is willing to tolerate this situation.
The answer will emerge only in three months.
Well said.
The problem for me is not that the Premier is now flip-flopping, but that the original "balanced budget" act was driven by utter naivete, hubris, and probably a good dose of political opportunism, not by any common sense understanding of how to "manage" government or an economy in a complex, ever-changing globalized context.
The Premier's fiscal policies of the last 8 years - including massive "stimulus" spending on capital projects in the context of a global economic party that would have boosted the province's economy all on its own - over-hyped BC's real estate bubble and will likely make the coming hangover all the worse for many British Columbians.
The balanced budget act also seriously skewed government spending priorities: in order to keep the debt off the books, Campbell was forced to starve key government programs to maintain the appearance of fiscal responsibility, all the while shovelling our tax dollars off the back of the capital budget train, with the result that our Provincial debt is now way higher than ever.
And the starved programs included the very social programs that could have boosted individual resiliency and made British Columbians more able to cope with what lies ahead - as opposed to, say, entering a recession with the worst child poverty rate in Canada.