Now the heavy lifting begins.
The new NDP government has set some lofty expectations in all kinds of policy areas – those expectations tend to accumulate when a party spends 16 years in Opposition – and it is bound to disappoint at least some of its special interest group supporters.
But it also inherited a mess of varying degrees from the departed B.C. Liberal government, notably in a couple of Crown corporations.
The worst one of the lot, as I have pointed out here before, is the Insurance Corporation of B.C.
Attorney General David Eby is reviewing an assessment of ICBC carried out recently by EY (formerly Ernst & Young), and intends to cast an even wider net as he goes looking for solutions. It’s not an easy mess to fix.
The former government drained ICBC of well more than a billion dollars from 2010 to 2015 and weakened its capital reserves. The raid on the Crown’s bottom line falsely strengthened central government’s bottom line at the expense of ICBC’s financial security.
On top of that, the cost of settling accidents and repairing vehicles damaged in accidents has skyrocketed in recent years, to the point that a discussion about “capping” the amount that can be awarded in most accidents has to begin.
I don’t envy Eby’s task. He will have some hard decisions to make, and some may undoubtedly be unpopular. It’s a price he may have to pay to keep auto insurance rates from increasing more than 30 per cent.
Another Crown corporation is presenting some challenges for rookie Energy Minister Michelle Mungall. While in nowhere near the bad fiscal shape that ICBC finds itself, BC Hydro has more than a few issues to address that were kicked down the road by former government.
Chief among them is BC Hydro’s continued reliance on “deferred” payment of some expenses. It’s a practice that alarms the province’s auditor general and the amount of money involved now reaches billions of dollars.
BC Hydro’s debt has also rapidly increased (it’s expected to almost double from 2010 to 2019, to $23 billion) largely because of required upgrades and maintenance of its massive network of dams, generation facilities, power plants and transmission lines (even power poles).
But the Site C dam, if it is completed will add another $9 billion (at least) to BC Hydro’s bottom line, so it’s doubtful Mungall can simply maintain the status quo while keeping electricity rates from escalating.
On the high expectations front, Transportation Minister Claire Trevena set the bar pretty high when she was the Opposition’s BC Ferries critic, demanding the government make the ferry system part of the highway system. Such a move would require a huge lift in the government subsidy of BC Ferries, and so far she hasn’t said the new government will actually go that far.
The NDP, while in Opposition, was fairly merciless and scathing about the Children and Family Development Ministry. But anyone even remotely familiar with that ministry knows what complex and often tragic cases it inevitably must deal with, and where the outcomes are so often bad.
Will things dramatically improve in that area to the point of matching the NDP’s demands while in Opposition? I rather doubt it, but the bar has been set, and set high.
And then there’s housing.
While in Opposition, the NDP tried to make that the out-of-sight housing prices and the rental vacancy crisis could be laid squarely at the feet of government. The expectations of would-be owners and renters are enormous here, and I doubt they have the patience that is likely required to improve things no matter what the NDP, now in government, actually does in terms of new policies.
The list goes on: health care wait times must be reduced, the tolls on the Port Mann Bridge must disappear, the K-12 education system must be given hundreds of millions of dollars in new funding, scores of daycare centres must be built, and on and on.
It’s a long list but as an NDP cabinet minister tells me: “I’d rather be trying to solve these problems than just complain about them.”
The NDP will undoubtedly come up short on some of these expectations. But then again, governments always do.
Keith Baldrey is chief political reporter for Global BC. Keith.Baldrey@globalnews.ca
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