Pre-election advice cheerfully given to B.C. politicians who dream of one day grasping the brass ring of power: Tread carefully as you move through the next 12 months.
NDP leader Adrian Dix will need to pay special attention as he pecks away at Premier Christy Clark and a Liberal government that appears to be in free-fall.
A year from now, he may well be savouring her title and administering programs and policies he and his caucus once condemned but will then find worth keeping.
It was good fun when the NDP ran barking in lock-step support with Bill Vander Zalm's campaign to abandon the harmonized sales tax.
Without shame, they shared the joy of success in that campaign and happily took credit for the ignominious departure from politics of then-premier Gordon Campbell.
When the effervescent Clark forsook her open mouth radio show to take over a Liberal party in undisciplined disarray, Dix and his colleagues found her and a badly rattled government easy targets in a multitude of areas.
The HST was booted, the old provincial sales tax returned - and became an instant juicy target on the Dix hit list.
The Liberals haven't had much luck with tax reform, not even when introducing reduced income tax for everyone or quarterly HST rebates for low-income earners.
Now, as they fumble from HST disconnect to PST reconnect, they appear determined to maintain their record of administrative incompetence.
Finance Minister Kevin Falcon said the return to the PST will hurt low-income families.
It wasn't his choice, he claimed. It was a people's demand via the referendum of 2011, a demand supported by the NDP but opposed by him and his government.
Meanwhile, NDP leader Dix is quoted as saying Falcon was being disingenuous when he suggested the HST was designed to help the poor.
The main aim of the HST, said Dix, was to enhance the provincial treasury and shift taxes from businesses to consumers.
He added that in this latest scramble to bring back the PST, the government could have found ways to "mitigate the burdens on low-income families but have chosen not to."
An interesting word, disingenuous.
It means "withholding or not taking into account known information" and/or "giving a false impression of sincerity or simplicity."
Serious charges, which will surely come to haunt Dix if the latest Angus Reid polls hold good and he finds himself next year in the position to immediately "mitigate the burdens on low-income families" and introduce all the other benefits he thinks the Liberals should be bestowing on us now.
I give the NDP credit for smartly moving to join the anti-HST campaign once Vander Zalm got the brush fire of protest started - although the sight of the NDP and Vander Zalm riding tandem was a little hard to take.
But I'll bet anything up to 75 cents that if Dix is handed the keys to the executive washroom in 2013, he will not recommend any major adjustments to the PST to "mitigate the burdens on low income families."
When in Opposition, it is easy but dangerous to condemn too much or to promise too much.
Delivery is what counts, and delivery, albeit easy to promise from the outside looking in, can be extremely difficult to achieve when the positions are reversed.
So, Mr. Dix, walk softly for the next year.
Not silently, but at every step asking yourself if you and yours can deliver, or will even want to deliver, what you are condemning the current administration for not delivering
today.
You have a year to learn it isn't wise to condemn too much, to promise too much; to understand that what you would like to do is not always possible.
And never forget that we, the electorate, know that every penny a government promises in benefits comes from the dollars it first took from us in fees and taxes.
The new/old PST is scheduled to kick in a few weeks before we next vote, not on the merits of a tax by any name, but on the group of men and women whom we think best able to spend what we have given them. Or will return some of what we have given, but not disingenuously.
