"Disposing of surplus properties, often with associated operating costs, would appear to make sense. However, these one-time sales cannot be relied on to resolve structural budget imbalances."
Moody's Credit Opinion, Province of B.C., 4 April, 2013
RAISED as a Churchill conservative, one of my reasons for emigrating to Canada was the havoc unions were creating in London's Docklands.
So although I have a strong social conscience, I do not come easily to official socialism.
But faced in this election with voting for the lesser of present evils - or not voting at all - I sure will not vote for a continuance of the past 12 years.
No matter which party prevails on May 14, do British Columbians have a hope of seeing a change for the better anytime soon?
Not if change needs cash in the kitty to fund it.
If the Liberals pull off a majority, they'll keep selling the farm to feed the animals.
If the NDP takes over they will spend four years disarming the contractual and budgetary time-bombs abandoned by their predecessors.
Government-watchers already knew about the exorbitant rates Hydro must pay to the Liberals' independent power producers and Auditor General John Doyle has told us about the risky accounting practices foisted on BC Hydro by the Liberals.
Now, Moody's Investors Services warns that selling-off public assets cannot be used to cover up structural accounting deficiencies.
The Moody's report reveals that, in a last-ditch effort to identify additional revenue sources the Liberals ordered "a detailed inventory review of government properties in 2011," which "identified a number of properties [they] would release for sale."
The estimated 2013-2015 revenue from the proposed off-loading of public assets and associated operating costs is $500 million. In short, Christy Clark's "balanced" budget is in the red to the tune of a half-billion dollars.
That's "fundamentally dishonest" as Gordon Wilson said last Sunday of NDP candidate John Horgan's ill-timed conversation with Kinder Morgan.
In 2001, voters handed the Liberals a 77-2 majority that allowed them to do as they pleased with our assets. The last thing we need now is for the pendulum to swing to the other extreme.
My preference would see a slim NDP majority with a sprinkling of enough Independents and Greens to keep the Legislature co-operative, courteous and constrained.
Our North Shore communities are facing some seriously expensive projects. So if we want candidates to put meat on the bones of their rhetoric, it is up to us and our municipal politicians to apply some specific heat to their feet.
The May 1 letter to the editor from North Vancouver councillors Guy Heywood and Alan Nixon that initiated public discussion about replacement of the Lions Gate sewage treatment plant began that process.
More important to the campaign, that project highlights our need to probe candidates' willingness to modify/improve the well-buffered relationships between Victoria and local governments.
What is meant by well-buffered?
When Victoria wants municipalities to move in specific directions, it creates a buffer - or two or three - to shield ministers from being held accountable for their decisions.
The method is simple: give agencies the "authority" over contentious issues, make it plain which policies and project(s) the province will support but otherwise underfund "the buffers" to keep them and our municipalities in line.
TransLink with its appointed board, Mayors' Council and regional rubber stamp is a buffer.
But TransLink's multilayered decision-making is far from unique. The same model is being used throughout B.C. in capital projects and operations of several billion dollars-worth of other buffer-agencies in the province.
Metro Vancouver and other regional districts are buffers, as are health and school districts.
In a different way, but equally beholden to Victoria, Community Living B.C. and the Crowns - ICBC, B.C. Ferries and BC Hydro - are also buffers.
This is how it plays out locally: The "surplus properties" referred to in Moody's April 4 rating report include parking lots, a Little Mountain property in Vancouver and "old schools."
Aha! Remember when former school trustee, now councillor, Linda Buchanan told City of North Vancouver council that "the school board [had] already spoken with (Education) Minister (George) Abbott" and that the province "had no problem with" the sale of 12 school properties that were "surplus to school district needs"?
Of course Abbott had no problem with it! The idea originated with his government.
Like good little boys and girls and abetted by councillors who approved the necessary zoning changes, cash-strapped school boards are left to field angry community push-back while the minister responsible just shrugs a helpless "what can I do?"
So in 2012, instead of calling the province on the deceitful ruse, our North Shore buffers - the North Vancouver Board of Education and City of North Vancouver council - went along to get along. The city needed the development cost charge revenues.
Similarly, the handsomely-paid executives of Crown corporation buffers have played into the balanced-budget shell game.
Scarcely respectable in its own top-heavy management, ICBC improved the provincial bottom line with hundreds of millions in auto-premium dollars.
Driven by the B.C. Liberals' determination to pad the interests of IPP supporters, BC Hydro is not only being bled dry, the accounting methods forced on it by the province are close to finishing the job.
Meanwhile, going along with Ottawa and Victoria through their Metro buffer regarding a new sewage treatment plant could lead to a bill of another $500 million on the doorsteps of North Shore taxpayers.
Our hope for a change for the better lies in the advice given us by Heywood and Nixon, "It's time to make some noise."
Candidates should swear an oath to the specifics of that change - and resign immediately if or when they betray it.
