Quarterly budget report yields surpluses

Posted September 17, 2008 by Sacha Peter
Category: Analysis

The quarterly report was released by the BC Government.

The bulk of the unprojected $970 million extra surplus came primarily from natural resource royalties and bonus bids (for lands) - to the tune of just over a billion dollars. Corporate income taxes were also higher than expected - another $383 million in the government’s bank accounts.

On the downside, personal income tax revenues were down, in addition to the property transfer tax and the provincial sales tax. Forestry has been absolutely slaughtered, down 28% from the already low projections. The carbon tax is only active in the second quarter, so we will have to wait a few more months to receive data on that - although note that fuel taxes were only 2% off budgeted expectations - whoever modeled that projection should be commended.

One buzz-phrase that I have heard introduced for the first time was debt from government operations, which means the debt that has not been allocated to specific government ministries (e.g. Education, Health, Highways, etc.). You are hearing this because the overall debt of the government has been increasing - currently forecast to be 36.7 billion dollars. The debt at the end of the government’s first term in office (March 2005) was 35.8 billion, although the amount from operations has declined from 14.5 billion to 6.3 billion.

The 8.2 billion dollar difference is due to allocation, rather than a reduction in provincial debt. Approximately 2 billion extra debt is allocated to education, 1.7 billion to health, 2.4 billion to highways/transit, and 1.3 billion to BC Hydro. Essentially the current government has done nothing to the current level of debt - it has remained at around the 35 billion dollar mark (plus or minus 10%) since the NDP lost control in 2001.

I am wondering why the Minister of Finance was told to spin the debt figure in this way - simply saying that the debt has remained stable is a more truthful, although a less politically sexy statement. I’m expecting fiscal management to be part of the BC Liberal platform, especially in an economic climate that is going to be less favourable to the province.

As a final statement, whoever produces these reports for the finance ministry should be commended - they are very easy to read documents.

No Comment Yet

No Fall Session

Posted September 12, 2008 by Sacha Peter
Category: Analysis

The government announced yesterday that there would be no fall sitting of the legislature (normally scheduled from October 6 to November 27). The main reason given by the government was that there was no legislation that needed to be advanced in the fall - essentially there were no laws that were urgent matters to be taken forward.

The reaction from the opposition NDP was relatively predictable - that the government is “hiding” from the actions it has taken and that the government is avoid debate on issues facing British Columbians.

The media reaction has also been relatively adverse to the government - more so than two years ago.

The analysis of this decision is as follows.

One is that the NDP made a lot of noise in the 2006 calendar year with regards to the fall session (which was also canceled). I am guessing they did this to discourage the government from doing exactly what they did this time around.

Constitutionally speaking (section 5 of the Charter), the legislature has to be open once a year at a minimum.

Whether the legislature is open or not is rather irrelevant to whether law gets passed - in a majority government situation, the government can open up the legislature at any time, force the passage of law and enact the legislation. An example of bringing legislation through was on May 29, when multiple bills were passed and closed on a single day.

The only privilege the opposition has is being able to delay certain legislative actions for three days - they exercised this right in November 2006 when the government brought in a Special Committee to Appoint a Representative for Children and Youth by refusing leave and filibustering for the next three days.

The BC Liberal government has been facing a lot of heat with respect to issues of “arrogance” - this is seemingly what one of the campaign planks the NDP will be running on. The question they had to make was whether the “heat” the government would take by not having a fall session would be worth the incremental damage they would take by having the opposition formally question them on controversial decisions made over the summer.

I think the government made the correct decision politically - they will be airing out their laundry over the next couple months, and by the time that early next year comes along, it will presumably be all feel-good from there on in.

This would be paralleling roughly what was happening four years ago - the government was trailing the NDP in the polls, but were able to pull it together by the May 2005 election date. Is this their strategy for this time around? If so, will it work?

No Comment Yet

Vancouver-Burrard and nominations

Posted September 7, 2008 by Sacha Peter
Category: Analysis, BC Liberals, By-Election

Arthur Griffiths is applying for the BC Liberal Vancouver-Burrard nomination.

Vancouver-Burrard is going to be split into Vancouver-West End (strongly NDP) and Vancouver-False Creek (Strongly BC Liberal) in the next general election.

Griffiths is running for the 2009 nomination in Vancouver-West End, against David Harper. Vancouver-False Creek (the other half what used to be Vancouver-Burrard) is slated to be Mary McNeil’s seat.

BJ picked up on this far earlier than I did, or the Vancouver Sun.

The question here is - if Arthur Griffiths gets the nomination for Vancouver-Burrard, and wins the seat, is he going to become the shortest term MLA in recent BC history when he tries to get the Vancouver-West End nomination? What if David Harper wins that nomination? Is David Harper going to run for the Vancouver-Burrard by-election? Finally, how much power of incumbency will a winning candidate in the riding have, and who will the NDP nominate in response to this?

There are lots of unanswered questions, all of which have little to do with the outcome of the May 12, 2009 general election, and time will tell.

Both major parties will be spending a lot of money for little gain for the Vancouver-Burrard by-election, other than to prevent the Green party from sitting in MLA in the Legislature for the pre-election winter session.

2 Comments

Impact of Federal Election on BC

Posted September 6, 2008 by Sacha Peter
Category: Analysis

The Federal election is likely to be called at 8:15am (Eastern time), and this means over the next 37 days that the airwaves are going to be saturated with political advertising in the federal domain.

As such, it is unlikely that pollsters will be able to get reliable information on the provincial scene until this election (and likely the municipal election) is concluded.

It has traditionally been the case that when the NDP is not in power provincially, that the NDP does better federally; the NDP federally seriously underperformed in the 1993 (2/32 seats), 1997 (3/34 seats) and 2000 (2/34 seats).

In 2004 and 2006, the NDP won 5 seats and 10 seats out of 36. In particular, 2006 was a banner year for the NDP federally (in BC).

In 1993, 1997, 2000, 2004 and 2006, the Liberals won 6, 6, 5, 8 and 9 seats, respectively. It remains to be seen whether the Liberals will take collateral damage on the carbon tax issue this federal election.

No Comment Yet

Executive pay hikes issues gaining traction

Posted September 3, 2008 by Sacha Peter
Category: Analysis, Scandal

The NDP has been giving a lot of attention on the government’s August 8, 2008 press release concerning the pay increases given to deputy ministers. When this issue initially came out, I did not think it would gain much traction (the press release time was perfect - on a Friday afternoon, the day of the Beijing Olympics opening ceremony). I might be mistaken here.

The media had an opportunity today (via press conference) to interview the Premier, and CKNW has been fairly active in publicizing the executive compensation issue, with a quote of the Premier saying that “I didn’t think I communicated the challenges that we faced”, in addition to stating what was stated on the press release (mainly that the compensation levels are targeted to being third in the country, and the increases being needed to ensure having quality people in the public service).

Attributing the backlash to “a lack of communications” is going to be pour fuel on something that was a candlelight fire - a lack of communications was the rationale that was used for restructuring the MLA pay increase. The initial (November 17, 2005) MLA pay hike legislation was repealed (November 21, 2005) and a commission of three people was set up to study the issue.

Ironically, what the commission recommended was significantly higher than the initial legislation.

Back on the issue of public service executive pay increases, I’m surprised to see this issue still in the news.

No Comment Yet

Angus Reid reports NDP is ahead

Posted August 27, 2008 by Sacha Peter
Category: Analysis, Polls

An Angus Reid poll (Detailed PDF archive), commissioned independently, 802 sampled from August 21 to 25 was released today. It indicated the voting intentions as follows:

NDP 41%
BC Liberal 38%
Green 14%

If this result is verified by another polling source (Mustel, Ipsos, etc.), then this election battle has just been blown wide open. The only possible “taint” to these results might be sample bias from the July NDP-commissioned Angus Reid survey showing BCL/NDP at 41/40, respectively - did Angus Reid use the same sample space?

Four years ago, an August 15, 2004 Mustel poll indicated that the BC Liberals had 40% support, the NDP had 42% and the Greens had 11%. Is history repeating itself?

When looking at the detailed survey results, there are some interesting points:

Gordon Campbell’s disapproval rating is 57% - compared to 43% (using the Mustel June 19 sample). Carole James’ is 38% - compared to 28% (again, against the Mustel poll). It is not known if these results are comparable to the Mustel poll, as slight variations on how the question is asked can influence results. The approval rating results also suggest that a quarter of the province have no idea who “Carole James” is if you asked a random person on the street. Jane Sterk isn’t even on the radar.

If you divide the approval rating by the people who would vote for the party, it suggests that 32% of the BC Liberal voters do not prefer Gordon Campbell’s performance, while 39% do not like Carole James’ performance. Just note this calculation is dividing one number with large error bars with another number with large error bars, so the result is something with a grossly higher margin of error and is most certainly not statistically valid with an 802 person sample (even assuming that the sample is random!).

Healthcare, something that hasn’t been on the media spotlight lately (compared to the Environment) is the top issue for 20% of the people. The economy is second at 14%, tax relief 9%, and leadership and the environment are tied at 8%.

Most people think Gordon Campbell has a vision for British Columbia than any other attribute (including “Cares about the Environment”). The Premier is also seen as being a strong and decisive leader (relative to the other attributes). A lot more people don’t know enough about Carole James to say much about her (roughly 40%), but for those that do, indicates she “Cares about the Environment” much more.

On the bottom part of the results, under “Is honest and trustworthy”, the Premier ranked last (18% said the statement applies, 60% said the statement does not apply), while Carole James was 45% applies, 16% does not. The other major contrast is that more people in this survey thought Carole James “Understands the problems of BC Residents” compared to the Premier.

Gordon Campbell ranked third with “Can manage the provincial economy effectively” (37% said applies, 45% said does not apply), while this was Carole James’ worst attribute (17% said applies, 33% said does not apply).

Finally, in terms of the regional split of voting, the NDP and BC Liberals are neck and neck in the Lower Mainland (40% and 39%, respectively), while the NDP are far ahead on Vancouver Island (49% vs. 33%). The NDP are slightly ahead in the Southern Interior (41% to 37%), while the BC Liberals are significantly ahead in the Northern Interior (47% to 33%).

This information is somewhat contradictory to the prevailing theory that the carbon tax did damage to the government since one would expect it would have the highest electoral impact in the Northern Interior.

The other thought that comes to mind is the federal impact on provincial election results - while political hacks are well acquainted with the difference between the BC Liberal Party and the Liberal Party of Canada, most ordinary people associate the word “Liberal” to mean the same party. While this association has been traditionally positive for the BC Liberal party, as the federal campaign heats up there might be collateral damage done to the BC Liberals in the process.

4 Comments

Clearing up the Kamloops redistribution

Posted August 22, 2008 by Sacha Peter
Category: Analysis

It appears that I was somewhat wrong with my geography in my previous post about the Kamloops riding redistribution. Thank you to the commenter named “fersure” for pointing this out.

The NDP-strong area that was redistributed outside of Kamloops (2005) and into Kamloops-North Thompson (2009) is mainly in the neighbourhood of Brocklehurst, and not Westsyde as previously reported. The neighbourhoods of Kamloops can be found at the city’s website - they have a good online interface.

I have regenerated a map of the area, showing where the river boundaries are, the road network and also including the poll ID numbers. The map is supplied here:

Before anybody asks, the road that extends into the river is actually McArthur Island Park. I’m pretty sure it is not underwater, but my map data certainly appears to be.

2 Comments

Kamloops Electoral Boundary Changes

Posted August 17, 2008 by Sacha Peter
Category: Analysis

About 10 days ago, BJ pointed out in a comment post that the riding boundary changes around Kamloops would result in a change of party support. We will look at both ridings.

In 2005, the riding boundaries split Kamloops roughly into west and east. The west side (including the suburban area of Westsyde North Kamloops and Brocklehurst) was part of Kamloops riding, while the east side was part of Kamloops-North Thompson. Both ridings elected BC Liberal members - Claude Richmond in Kamloops (won 48/42) and Kevin Krueger in Kamloops-North Thompson (won 48/40).

In 2009, the boundaries will split Kamloops into north and south - the southern part will be Kamloops-South Thompson, while the northern part will be Kamloops-North Thompson. The North Thompson riding is much larger as it extends all the way up Highway 5 - a very rural and sparsely area that features Clearwater as the most populous municipality.

A map of the two riding boundaries (Blue is 2005; Red is 2009, and the two Kamloops ridings have been shaded in red) is here - click for a zoomed map:

As the urban core of Kamloops is the more significant population center, we will look at the vote distribution in that area:

As the reader can see, Westsyde North Kamloops and Brocklehurst is extremely NDP-leaning which will sufficiently tilt the balance to making Kamloops-North Thompson a possible NDP seat in the upcoming election.

Kamloops-South Thompson sheds Westsyde North Kamloops and Brocklehurst, making it a BC Liberal safe seat.

My paper-napkin math has Kamloops-South Thompson at 53% BC Liberal, 36% NDP, while Kamloops-North Thompson is at 46% NDP, and 42% BC Liberal. This is consistent with BJ’s projections in his prior comment, and it should be pointed out that interpolating results from 2005 boundaries is not exact since the polling divisions in certain cases aren’t 100% clean.

Subsequent information (and a better map) can be found on the August 22, 2008 article.

6 Comments