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EDITORIAL: MSP misses mark

In this week’s budget, B.C. Finance Minister Mike De Jong presented the Liberals as careful managers of the public purse strings, whose prudence with the public dime could soon give way to outright prosperity. Many folks in B.C.

In this week’s budget, B.C. Finance Minister Mike De Jong presented the Liberals as careful managers of the public purse strings, whose prudence with the public dime could soon give way to outright prosperity.

Many folks in B.C. could probably be forgiven if they don’t see themselves reflected in the happy economic state described by the finance minister – particularly if they are trying to pay ever-increasing MSP and BC Hydro bills with a paycheque stuck in neutral, or happen to be among those shut out of the housing market, which Tuesday’s budget did little to address.

The prosperity envisaged in the minister’s optimistic speech isn’t equal opportunity. But budgets – and budget speeches – are as much about politics and optics as they are about reality.

Nowhere is this more apparent than with the government’s dogged insistence on retaining the regressive Medical Services Plan premium, which many other provinces have scrapped.

Yes, health care consumes a massive portion of the provincial budget. But there’s no logical reason that MSP premiums shouldn’t be rolled into provincial income taxes. Doing so would make the payments fairer, since currently people of relatively modest means and the substantially wealthy pay similar premiums. It would also be more efficient, since the MSP system comes with a bureaucracy that costs a significant chunk of provincial change each year.

The only reason for retaining MSP as a separate charge is political – to create an illusion about income tax levels. But a tax is a tax is a tax.

That’s something most British Columbians are already painfully aware of.

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