FORSETH – NDP may be putting our great-grandchildren into debt
I’LL FREELY ADMIT IT – there’s something about the NDP’s Ravi Parmar that just rubs me the wrong way. And the following just further reinforced that.
Forests Minister Ravi Parmar said in a statement that while Rustad is making claims about an expanded cabinet and promising to force an election, Eby and his team “gets to work on the priorities of British Columbians, like creating good-paying jobs, strengthening health care and delivering a $1,000 middle-class tax cut.”
Let’s look at the claims of NDP MLA Ravi Parmar one at a time, to see how they hold up:
1) Creating Good-Paying Jobs:
Just three months ago, the Business Council of BC expressed a great degree of concern over the types of new jobs being created in out province … and rightly so.
According to StatsCan (July 2024) year over year the total number of people employed in all industries (June ’23 to July ’24) increased by 2.3% — meantime public sector employment increased by nearly 3-fold (6.2%). That report also showed that since July 2022 there were just 5,200 new private sector jobs, compared to 63,000 new jobs in the public sector.
2) Strengthen Healthcare:
“We are struggling across the system, there are system failures across the board in all specialties but we are feeling it the hardest in the emergency room,” said Dr. Aimee Kenrick, president of the Canadian Association of Emergency Physicians (Sept 2024)
‘…doctors say they’ve made “repeated and urgent attempts” to alert Fraser Health and provincial health leadership of worsening conditions in the emergency department but have received “little response.” Despite assurances from the Minister of Health that ‘everything and the kitchen sink’ is being thrown at the staffing problem, we have yet to see any practical solutions” (Sept 2024)
“These are necessities of life and we cannot shut down the E.R., and I’m really concerned when I talk to local nurses and doctors — they’re burning out, there’s a lack of staff,” Williams Lake Mayor Surinderpal Rathor said (Sept 2024)
‘… in 2023 B.C. patients faced a median wait of 27.7 weeks from GP referral to a specialist to treatment, the longest in the province since 1993 (when national estimates were first published). And this measure doesn’t include the wait time to see their GP in the first place, assuming they have one’ ~~ Fraser Institute (Sept 2024)
It seems like it is obvious to all – but the BC NDP – that their approach to healthcare is failing dismally.
3) Delivering a $1,000 Middle-Class Tax Cut:
In fact, what I will call an election bribe is $500 per individual although a two adult household could get up to $1,000. Regardless the bribe, during the provincial election, won’t be delivered until possibly this Spring – this despite the BC NDP promising, “Immediate Relief for BC Families — No Waiting, No Delays”
Right now, jobs are evaporating, investment dollars are fleeing BC (especially when it comes to forestry), and it took a major financial bribe for Premier David Eby’s NDP to eek out a bare majority government.
So much for the above statement by the NDP’s Ravi Parmar.
Let me leave you with one final thought; this from the Fraser Institute:
In 2016/17, B.C. had the second lowest per-person net government debt in Canada at $8,109 per person. Since then, the province’s net debt per person has approximately doubled, and the B.C. government has added more debt per person than any other province. Unless the government drastically changes course, things will go from bad to worse in the years ahead
In the past I worried about the financial future being left for my children and grandchildren. At the rate the provincial NDP are adding to the public service and the provincial debt, my concern is being expanded to include any future great-grandchildren I may have.
Alan Forseth is a Kamloops resident. For 40 years he has been active, in a number of capacities, in local, provincial and federal politics, including running as a candidate for the BC Reform Party in the 1996 provincial election. He is a member of the BC Conservative Party.
ArmchairMayor.ca 
The Fraser Institute, really, that’s who you choose to cite? Wow, what a surprise, a right wing conservative think tank who are funded by big oil, big tobacco and the Koch brothers among others, these “societal do gooders” would of course only support the most sincere nonpartisan organizations so clearly the Fraser Institute writings must be taken as gospel. Please, enough!
Why is our healthcare failing, could it be due to the population explosion in BC, something the provincial gov’t has little control over. We’re the fastest growing province in the country, few provinces have similar immigrantion growth as we have, moreover, no other province has seen anywhere near the growth in migrating retirees from other provinces as we have. I’ve read headlines about young people leaving the province due to affordability issues but nary a word about seniors crossing the rockies, nor about the incumbent tsunami of snowbirds which will no doubt soon arrive as an alternative nesting location to Trumps new America. This is a bit of a concern because seniors tend to be expensive in terms of health care.
I won’t really speak about that pesky little problem of the opioid epidemic in driving up healthcare issues or in particular emergency room visits other than to say that more than half the population of the province is in Vancouver and every port city in the northern hemisphere has the same opioid epidemic. The further away from these port cities these problems lessen, that’s why cities like Edmonton, Calgary, Denver and Salt Lake don’t have these problems on the scale of Vancouver, Seattle, San Francisco and L.A. Kamloops has a proximity issue which is driving the opioid crisis locally and adding to the demand on emergency rooms, it’s not a political issue.
Seniors and the opioid epidemic are placing far greater demand on our healthcare than other provinces because we have proportionally far more and these are the two most time consuming patient cohorts in society. Closures in Clearwater and Merritt medical facilities are due to increasingly high demand in Kamloops. Need I remind you that during covid, BC had been recognized as have the best results in the country and our neighbours to the east as having amongst the worst. Yes we need more Drs. and how do we do that, well we start by building a new medical school which is exactly what SFU is doing in Surrey, but these things take time. Who knew BC would see a flock of snow birds migrating west? Who saw the opioid explosion landing on our door steps? Who could foretell the Spanish Flu would reappear after 100 yrs dormant?
Whilst you’re wondering about Ravi, I’ll let you know what rubs me the wrong way, it’s partisan hacks.
LikeLike
Right-wings think-thanks and supporters will not solve all problems no more or no less than left-wingers will. Freedoms and democracy (aka permissivism) are lost (or totally wasted perhaps) on a lot of people. At this point, as an experiment, let’s bring back a bit more regimented society?
LikeLike
In 2022, about half of international trade was exchanged in US dollars, as were about half of all international loans and debt securities. What does this mean for Canada and our medical services.
Everything we purchase costs us more and almost everything we sell; we get less for it. For example, if we import a $100 item from Brazil, we purchase US dollars to do that transaction. The transaction costs us $130 dollars.
If we look at just our import medical devices into the Canadian totals US$3.2 billion, which represents 42.6% imports in this sector. Just for this import we must pay $4.16 billion Canadian. Once we include all other medical imports the negative effect on our medical services is immense. and we cant blame that on the NDP.
This is exactly the reason why many low value currencies are moving away from the USA dollar Euro and the Pound, and are trading in domestic currencies.
The war in Ukraine is about this. High value currency countries (Canada, UK, Nordic Countries, Germany) benefit as well since their domestic currencies are also used as reserve in trade. It hurts us big time when we trade with USA but not when we trade with countries with low value currencies.
LikeLike
Mac I find this Forseth article very simplistic. When we speak about the BC economy we cannot separate it from the national economy. It’s the international global system as it exists now that needs to change and there has to be political unity in Ottawa on this issue.
The fact is that we pay $1.30 Canadian for every American dollar is the problem not only when we trade with USA but when we trade globally.
Sixty percent of world trade is done in USA dollars so any time we sell or buy on the world market we must access the bag of USA dollars to buy and sell that 60% of others are accessing, thus this demand for USA dollars drives up what we must pay to use USA dollars in trade.
Avoiding the middle man USA dollar can save us in efficiency, fees and uncertainty of the volatility of the USA exchange.
There are other problems as well including agreements such as royalties and tax structure of American multinationals doing business in Canada. These multinationals inflate their US costs in relationship with their Canadian subsidiary thus the subsidiary pays less tax in Canada.
Of course, one of our biggest problems is that we export raw materials and don’t benefit from value added that is outsourced to the manufacturer USA China, India and Mexico. We import 80% of medical supplies and we are fifth in the world in tire imports and on and on.
LikeLike
Alan Forseth easy answer for improving the BC economy is to attack Eby and the NDP.by accusing them of putting our great-grandchildren into debt. How about if we start to unscrew everything that the Conservatives and the Liberals have screwed up over the past twenty or so years through self-inflicted idiocy called NAFTA.
The “good cop” vs the “bad cop” economic scenario will not cut it with me. The NAFTA and FREE TRADE ‘brain trust’ outsourced and deregulated the economy and with it good paying jobs in Canada to help “India, China, Mexico, Vietnam and other low value currency countries” make cheap stuff for us from our raw materials.
All of a sudden, we wake up from a long sleep and wonder what happened to healthcare, good paying jobs, high food prices and why the smoke screen of rebates.
We can place some blame on Jagmeet and his girlfriend Trudy who were doing the tango, while the Conservatives were doing the polka all ignoring the MC, change your partners. I think Rustad was a wall flower listening to that. If we cannot become more productive, we will be forced to choose. Rustad chose the same old partners.
We must become producers not just consumers, we must address climate and social issues to be able to finance our social model. Mr. Forseth the issues that you have identified have to do with our funding values, understanding where prosperity and equity comes from, understanding the benefits of peace and democracy in a sustainable world.
LikeLike
Debt is the “oxygenated blood which supports life” of our economic system. While I am concerned, like you Allan, that the NDP arguably lacks the acumen and the foresight to make debt meaningful, debt in itself is not a problem. So let’s focus on things that truly warrant our attention. For example in regards to the forest industry we need to value-add rather than just exporting sticks which are continuously under the dark clouds of US sanctions. What if we would for example invest wisely in order to send truck loads of pre-fabricated house panels to the US and/or the world?
Further why wouldn’t we invest in preventive medicine rather than the presently expensive reactive type? Do you know that much relief physical and financial can be had by a proper stretching routine? Why therefore is present medicine not focusing more on that? I won’t keep you any longer but hopefully give you a (different) conversation starter.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Declines in net debt at market value were observed in all provinces and territories. British Columbia was the only province (since Alberta in 2016) to record a negative net debt (-$6.1 billion), partly due to a large surplus recorded in 2022. For the first time since 2015. Among all provinces, Quebec (81.4%) and Manitoba (80.8%) posted the highest gross debt-to-GDP ratios, while Alberta (28.6%) and British Columbia (31.9%) recorded the lowest.
LikeLike