KNOX — B.C.’s new budget is a bit like regifting

Jack Knox grew up in Kamloops and now writes about life in the province’s capital.

COLUMN — It was like opening the presents under the tree and finding last year’s gifts, rewrapped.

Or cracking open a new book and realizing you had read it before.

Here’s what was new for Victorians in Tuesday’s provincial budget: Not much.

No McKenzie interchange, no magic fix for the Malahat, no more money for ferries. Mostly, what the capital region got was a few references to previously announced, largely completed projects.

Maybe that’s what happens when you fail, for the first time since 1952, to elect a single MLA from the ruling party. Or maybe it just reflects a government with little wriggle room, desperate to avoid a deficit.

To be fair, Finance Minister Mike de Jong didn’t dangle a lot of shiny stuff in front of anybody, anywhere on Tuesday.

A tax credit on children’s sports equipment will put a little money in parents’ pockets — $12.65 per kid, to be precise — costing the government a total of $3 million a year. But that will be more than offset by increased medical premiums that will bring the province an extra $96 million annually.

What else? Teachers who volunteer as coaches will get a $500 tax credit. Awesomely, the province is revitalizing the Super, Natural B.C. tourism brand, taking us back to the 1980s (must mean a racquetball revival is next). There was something about access to the renminbi financial market, which looked like a typo but is apparently a big deal for those doing business with China.

The most notable local benefit was to Greater Victoria’s high-tech sector, where the growing video-game industry will be happy to hear that the interactive digital media tax credit, due to expire this year, has been extended to 2018.

The tax credit was also expanded to take in post-production film work. That helps a sector that was also thrown a bone in the 2014 budget, which made it more attractive for film and TV productions to come to Victoria.

The budget does talk about having $28 billion worth of approved capital projects in the works around B.C., but not much of that will trickle down on the capital. The bricks and mortar stuff they announced for Victoria is pretty much done already: the new Oak Bay High, the two West Shore schools that will replace Belmont Secondary this fall, the revamped trades facilities at Camosun College. It was a bit like hearing a man announce his intention to become a father while the mother is giving birth.

Up-Island, construction began last August on Campbell River and Comox Valley hospitals that are due to be finished in the summer of 2017. (And let’s not forget a quasi-government project, B.C. Hydro’s $1.1-billion John Hart dam replacement, due to be completed in 2019.)

The budget talks about $2.9 billion for transportation projects, including SkyTrain’s Evergreen Line and a big highway interchange in North Vancouver, but we won’t see much on this side of the moat. The Liberals continue to be tax-and-spend Democrats on the Lower Mainland but live-free-or-die Republicans on Vancouver Island. We’ll have to wait until the release of a 10-year transportation plan, B.C. on the Move, to see if the province has any interest in funding local priorities such as the McKenzie interchange, estimated to be an $80-million to $100-million fix.

There were nuggets of information to be mined in some of the budget documents. For example, there was no direct mention of funding a capital region amalgamation study, but the Community Ministry’s service plan did say it would “support communities in assessing/changing local government structure by contributing to a shared understanding about the facts and implications of proposed restructuring.”

It was also interesting to read that the Royal B.C. Museum expects this year’s big Gold Rush exhibit to be a good draw, but not as good as Vikings, which exceeded expectations. There were also some intriguing references to strengthening the museum’s ties to China. But while the museum’s budget will inch up, no increase in the provincial government’s contribution is expected through 2018.

Really, though, the big news for Victoria was how little new this budget had for us at all.

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