April 9, 2009
Today the NDP released their platform which again confirms their irresponsible and dishonest agenda for B.C.
Their plan includes over $1 billion in new tax hikes on job-creating industries that only compound the devastating impact of their job-killing policies such as moratorium on clean energy development, scrapping the softwood lumber agreement, and putting hundreds of millions in new costs on small business that will eliminate thousands of jobs and alienate billions in investment.
Not surprisingly, this plan rests on committing to over $3.6 billion in new, unfocused deficit spending with no end in sight -- proving that the NDP was patently dishonest when they voted to balance budget by 2011/12 just two months ago. The combination of this massive spending with their unrealistic projections for new revenues guarantees structural deficits carrying years into the future. This is further compounded by the NDP’s deliberate underestimation of the true cost of many of their spending and policy commitments.
To top it all off, their plan includes cancelling $300 million in previously announced capital projects. But they will not say which ones they would cancel. Is it BC Place Roof? Is it the Port Mann Bridge? Is it the Northern Cancer Centre? Or is it some of the hundreds of new schools, roads and health care facilities that government has announced over the last several months? They refuse to answer.
The fact is that Carole James has broken her promise to sound fiscal management and honest budgeting. It is a dishonest agenda for the future that will kill jobs, cancel projects and burden future generation with massive structural deficits. This is not unlike the strategy of the NDP in 1991, who promised discipline and sound management, and then made the province pay for years to come.
More information on
NDP platform.
