Mark Twain said it best when he opined that there are three kinds of lies: Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics. All three were on display in abundance Thursday during Katrine Conroy’s swansong press conference as finance minister.
“I've not seen one from you. And you've got a $5-billion deficit. Are you likely to produce one before you retire?”“We have a plan,” she said. “We have a plan to balance the budget, definitely.”The most recent February budget forecast three more years of provincial deficits, on top of the one finalized Thursday.
That would be a bit rich, however, given that the NDP has attacked the Opposition BC United’s proposal to balance the budget within four years as unrealistic, claiming it would require massive cutbacks, school closures, nurse layoffs and other catastrophic events. Whoever forms the next government will face a herculean task to dig itself out of the financial hole left by the New Democrats.
The NDP government ended the year with a deficit almost 20 per cent larger than the one it passed through the legislature as part of the budget. At $5 billion, it recorded the largest operating deficit in provincial history . Taxpayer-supported debt jumped 25.8 per cent in a single year to $75.4 billion.
Conroy will, instead, go down as perhaps the most extravagant finance minister in the history of the province. She’s overseen an avalanche of spending so immense that at times — especially during last year’s rush to blow out an excess one-time surplus — ministers couldn’t even publicly articulate what they were spending the money on.
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