Christy Clark's Throne Speech
In the throne speech, Premier Christy Clark has indicated the larder is empty. But she is giving everybody a day off.
You have to hand it to new Premier Christy Clark: she didn’t come on all brightness and smiles.
The usually cheery Clark was positively pessimistic in this week’s speech, as she carefully tried to steer through economic shoals on the one hand, and a heating-up public sector labour scene on the other.
First came the bad news: we're all going to have to tighten our belts. The economy is slowing more than was realized only a couple of months ago. Revenues are going to be smaller than forecast.
Unsaid, of course, was the government’s charges to roll back the HST, which by all accounts is going to cost in the neighborhood of $2 billion.
Presumably, this was all to let the public sector unions know that there isn't much in the fridge when they start demanding "more" early next Spring. Already, we’re seeing from school teachers an expectation for some sort of increase. Even though both the teachers and the government are bound by a “no new money” agreement, the government is likely going to have to come up with some kind of plan to feed new money into the system.
Teachers are very powerful negotiators. They know they have on their side all those parents who can’t afford to take time off to care for children who are suddenly idle for most of the day in the event of a strike.
Clark, who also sees an NDP pre-election campaign behind some of the public-sector ferment, tried to paint it all as reasonable management that is “fair” to both the government and the public sector workers.
But the truth is she’s caught between a rock and a hard place and it looks like we’re in for a nasty, lean winter in this province.
Maybe that’s why Clark opted to brighten the gloom a little by creating a new public holiday, tentatively called BC Family Day, in February.
I guess B.C. families can use the day to prepare the gardens they'll need to grow their own food.
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