Only 230 days to go to the election. Not for the President of the United States but for our provincial government.
May 9, 2017 is D-day and the BC Liberals are getting out in front. Their first campaign ad - which is, of course, not a campaign ad because that would be wrong - has started to play on television. Perhaps you have seen it. It follows a theme used in the last election of having Premier Clark sitting at a table drinking coffee with a group of "average" British Columbians.
Her opening remarks are: "Controlling government spending is really the foundation, the bedrock, of what we are trying to do because if you look around the rest of the country and you look in the states and around the world, a lot of places are really struggling with unemployment, with joblessness."
Sounds good, doesn't it? After all runaway government spending is a bad thing. And we all know government gets its money from you and me through taxes.
But there is a major logical flaw in this statement. It assumes government spending is somehow linked to unemployment and joblessness. There is causality. It implies uncontrolled government spending is the cause of high unemployment and people not being able to get jobs.
This is a strange relationship for the government to try and make, particularly as many economies around the world recognized the need for governments to spend into deficit after the 2008 economic crisis. Even Stephen Harper and the Conservatives drove up the national debt in an attempt to mitigate job losses and high unemployment.
Controlling government spending is a good thing as is reducing unemployment but there is very little in the way of direct correlation between the two. The statement is fallacious.
She carries on: "So we have to really redouble our efforts and really keep our eyes of the ball, stay focused on what we are trying to do."
Thanks, Coach. Yup, we've all got to give 110 per cent and take one for the team. This statement is the sort of thing you might hear in a locker room at half-time.
It does beg the question who is she referring to when she says "we?" The people of the province? The government? The BC Liberals? If it is the latter two, what does that really say? They haven't been giving it their all up to this point as there is more they could do? This implies they have excess capacity and can redouble their efforts. Not something I want to hear my government say.
If it is the people of the province she is referring to, well, most of the people I know are working as hard as they can. Not sure how we are going to redouble our efforts. Maybe a second or third job?
She continues: "We've got to control government spending. We've got to keep taxes down so people have more money in their pockets. And we have to create jobs for people because if people are working they can look after the people they love, they'll have a little money to spend, you know, you create more and more opportunity. But it all starts with a job."
There are so many ways these sentences are wrong that I don't know where to begin.
For example, saying "We've got to control government spending" is putting it in the future tense, which implies they haven't been doing it so far. Come again? The cuts to the education and health care system over the past decade were not the government's attempts to control spending? They are just now getting around to controlling the province's finances? If so, we are in for a lot of trouble!
Further, keeping taxes down does not really solve anything. The average annual income for a family in British Columbia is $69,150 with a provincial tax of around $3,900. Reducing the tax by a couple of hundred dollars doesn't really make much of a difference, particularly as all of the other things government charges us for are increasing in price.
And the more education someone has, the higher their lifetime earnings. Over the course of a person's working life, a bachelor's degree results in an additional $750,000 or more. So if keeping taxes down means fewer students are able to get a good high school education and move on to university, is it worth it? Is it not short term gain for long term pain?
She finishes: "Academics will call it the economy. I might call it jobs, but what it is, is a way to look after the people you love."
An interesting platitude but shouldn't we be looking after everyone and not just those we love?
With 230 days to go, I am sure we are just at the beginning of a long, long campaign.
