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March 30, 2007
Taking aim at two budgets
Policy analyst says governments failing on climate, homelessness.
GEOFF D'AURIA
British Columbia may not have the authority to implement some of
its climate change prevention plans, said Seth Klein, director of
the Canadian Centre of Policy Alternatives (CCPA), B.C. chapter,
in a presentation to the Sholem Aleichem Seniors program last week.
Speaking at the Peretz Centre March 23, Klein said that certain
provisions in the Alberta Trade,
Investment and Labor Mobility Agreement (TILMA) could make it difficult
for British Columbia to implement the climate change plan that was
presented in the recent throne speech.
TILMA is a trade agreement signed in April between the Alberta and
British Columbia governments. From the provincial government's perspective,
it is designed to facilitate trade and labor mobility between the
two provinces. Klein said that it's a deregulation agreement that
could take away power from local governments and put it into unelected
trade panels, not unlike the North American Free Trade Agreement.
"Here's the climate change plan," Klein said, "which,
by the government's own admission, is only going to be achievable
through some significant regulatory measures, and here's TILMA that
they're bringing in at the same time, which specifically says that
in order for a government to even try to bring in a new regulation,
they have to demonstrate that it is the least disruptive to business."
This was one of a number of pointed criticisms Klein made of the
recent provincial and federal budgets. His views were based on alternative
provincial and federal budgets produced by the CCPA, a left-leaning
think tank.
In criticizing the provincial budget, Klein first talked about the
throne speech, given on Feb. 13. The purpose of the throne speech
is to outline a government's goals for the coming year. Klein said
he, along with a number of environmental organizations, was heartened
by the government's strong language on climate change. He noted
that the targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions rivalled
only those of Quebec and Manitoba.
But because British Columbia generates most of its electricity from
hydro-electric facilities, which don't emit significant amounts
of greenhouse gases, he said that the reductions must come from
the other areas that create significant emissions: the industrial
sector and the transportation sector.
Klein observed that the throne speech barely mentioned public transportation
as a way to reduce vehicle emissions. He said it did talk about
plans to reduce the amount of emissions per vehicle, but that may
not necessarily lead to a reduction in overall emissions.
Even if the emission levels of each vehicle are reduced, he said,
if the number of vehicles on the road increases, the total amount
of emissions may increase. The only way to be sure to reduce emissions
is to reduce the number of vehicles on the road. An effective way
to get vehicles off the road is to improve and expand public transportation.
"And that's where the speech was oddly silent," he said,
"[there was] almost nothing on public transit."
Klein's criticism of the throne speech and provincial budget also
focused on homelessness and poverty. He said that, for a government
that loves targets and for a province with a poverty level that
ranks among the worst in Canada (except for Newfoundland), it had
only one target that focused on homelessness and poverty, and that
target is essentially flawed.
"When it comes to that whole file," he said, "the
only target this government has set has been on welfare case-load
reduction and they indeed have been going down."
But case load reduction does not necessarily lead to less poverty,
said Klein. Case-load reduction may simply mean that fewer people
are looking to the government for help.
"When the City of Vancouver has done their homeless headcounts
– they did one in 2001 and then they did one in late 2004 –
they found that the number of homeless had doubled," he said.
"But particularly intriguing is that in 2001, 15 per cent of
the people in the count were not on social assistance. By the end
of 2004, 75 per cent were not on social assistance."
Part of the problem, Klein said, is in how the government estimates
a surplus when budgeting for the coming year.
"The way that government works is that the money bills have
to pass the legislature in the year in which money is expended,"
he said. That means each ministry must spend its allotted funds
by March 31. Otherwise, Klein said, "it goes into debt reduction."
If the surplus estimate is low, Klein said, then money that can
be earmarked for social programs isn't available, in effect making
debt reduction a priority. And this happens, he claimed, without
debate.
"Cumulatively over the last five years, they [the provincial
government] have misstated the size of the surplus at budget time
by over $10 billion," he said. "That's taking that money
off the table."
Geoff D'Auria is a Vancouver freelance writer.
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