BC FORUM News from the Advocate, Spring 2017

What she said, what she did

Some commentators say that Christy Clark is a great campaigner. She certainly makes lots of promises. Here’s a short comparison of what she promised four years ago and what she actually did.

Freeze personal income taxes

• Gave a 2 per cent income tax cut to people who earn more than $150,000 a year. Tax giveaways to the wealthiest 1% average $38,711 per person per year.

Families first

• Hit ordinary families with a huge shift to regressive taxes and fees while ensuring the richest British Columbians pay a lower rate of tax than everyone else.

Provide affordable energy rates for families

• BC Hydro rates up 28 percent.

Affordable housing

• While the dream of owning a home died for thousands of ordinary families, Christy Clark pocketed millions in donations from real estate developers. She refused to close loopholes for speculators.

Improve health care

• Health care spending per person reduced from second to eighth in Canada.

• Access to home support reduced by 30 per cent.

• Access to residential care beds reduced by 20 per cent, while shifting to private for-profit care.

• Failed to meet minimum staffing requirements at nine out of ten residential care facilities.

Recognize the unique struggle facing persons with disabilities

• Took away their bus passes.

Address classroom size and composition challenges

• Fought against it every step of the way until the Supreme Court of Canada ordered her to do so, the culmination of a 15 year battle started by Christy Clark when she was minister of education.

Grow a strong forest industry

• Six fold increase in raw log exports.

• 100 mills closed.

• 30,000 jobs lost.

Create and support jobs in the province’s technology sector

• Government expenditure on information technology: just under $700 million a year.

• Amount that goes to B.C. firms: less than 10 per cent.

• The big winners: multinational corporations.

Support shipbuilding in B.C.

• New B.C. ferries built in Germany and Poland.

Protect our coastline

• Approved a seven-fold increase in oil tanker traffic.

LNG: “It’s no fantasy”

• Hired former Liberal Leader Gordon Wilson as an LNG advocate at $150,000 a year.

• Number of LNG facilities built: 0.

Christy Clark’s “Debt free BC”

• Increased the provincial debt from $45.2 billion to $65.3 billion.

• Increased the debt to GDP ratio from 21.7% to 26.7%.

• Increased provincial debt per capita from $9,969 to $13,942.

• Approved long-term contractual obligations – mostly for expensive private for-profit power generated on public rivers and streams – that now total $101 billion, far higher than any other province.