The stated reason for the short legislative sitting now underway is to legislate approval for the relief cheques to most B.C. families that the NDP promised during the election campaign.
But there’s another bit of business that dropped in MLAs’ laps on opening day last week. It falls under the unstated heading: “Oh, and one more thing as long as we’re here …”
It’s opened up a potential rat’s nest of process issues.
The NDP is giving itself authority to delay introducing next year’s budget by a month. That comes on top of the extra month or so they gave themselves last summer.
Why is new Finance Minister Selina Robinson so reluctant to take her star turn at centre stage? Depending on your political leanings, it’s a multiple choice question. The answers include:
• Because Finance Ministry gnomes have been pushed to the breaking point scrambling on pandemic spending and simply can’t put a budget together in time.
• Because Premier John Horgan’s election call not only double-crossed his minority partners the Greens and bypassed the fixed-date law, it threw an unexpected wrench into the budget process, where the gears are now jamming.
• Because the new government is incompetent and is flailing around. (Liberals and Greens are checking this box).
Robinson prefers answer #1.
“We have a staff that have been working non-stop since the last budget was tabled in February because, recall, we went right from budget into a COVID challenge …. What we’re saying and what they’re saying is that having a few extra weeks to do it justice is what they need in order to demonstrate to British Columbians that we have a budget that will work now and into the future.”
That’s the same situation that applied last summer, when they wrote up the first extension. To track right back to the origins, that one flowed from the earlier change in the fixed date for the election, from May to October. It was a sound move to align the electoral calendar with the budget process, so that people wouldn’t be voting (in May) before B.C.’s balance sheet was fully certified as accurate (in July).
Overlooked in that change was the fact that an October vote jams the Finance Ministry, by shortening the time available for a new government to introduce a budget.
So last summer, they changed the fixed deadline to deliver a budget in an election year from the fourth Tuesday in February to March 30.
A few weeks later — presto! — this year turned into an election year.
Now they’ve decided they need yet another month, so the new deadline in the bill under debate is April 30.
“I certainly wasn’t expecting a fall election,” Robinson told the legislature.
It back-handedly sort of confirms Horgan’s denial that his election call on Sept. 21 was secretly plotted for months. But it paints a different picture of a truly snap election that was called in the middle of the pandemic with little regard for the fallout within government.
There likely won’t be any dramatic impact on taxpayers. Government will still run, cheques will go out. Robinson equated it to adding a “13th month” to the fiscal year, as April funding will continue on the current basis. But there’s potential for a lot of scrambling in the next several months as the delay impacts all the other levels. School districts all have their own budget deadlines, as do municipalities and universities. Most rely on getting a number — any number! — from the government on time.
Robinson insists she’s just delaying it a month. But with the full context, it’s a potential delay of eight weeks or more from the date that’s been cast in stone for years.
Green Leader Sonia Furstenau said one of her constituents lost his business and has to pay outstanding sales tax bills.
“On the one hand, the government is saying: ‘Sorry, deadlines are deadlines.’ Then on the other hand … ‘We need an extension.’ ”
Robinson is taking the heat in the house. (“Boy, I wish we had the old finance minister back,” a Liberal MLA complained.) But it’s the premier who set this up.
He declared to much bafflement while calling the election that it was time to “put politics behind us.”
He put due government process behind him instead.
