After half a generation of seemingly being suspended on the right, the pendulum of B.C.’s budgeting swung left this week.
Some of the measures in the NDP’s budget are just common sense that was badly overdue: forcing transparency in home ownership, targeting speculators and money launderers, ensuring that people pay the taxes the rest of us are required to.
Others are more aggressive social policies – $5.2 billion in spending, including $1.6 billion for housing and $1,200 monthly child-care subsidies for low-income families. And then there are health-care improvements, more teacher hires, boosts to skilled trades training and a freeze on B.C. Ferries fares.
Some are describing it as something of a Robin Hood budget, as most tax will come from those with the most wealth. School taxes will be going up for homes valued over $3 million. The province is also raising the foreign buyer tax from 15 to 20 per cent and expanding it from Metro Vancouver to include the Fraser Valley, Greater Victoria, Nanaimo and the Central Okanagan Regional Districts. And, of course, there is that steep tax hike on luxury vehicles worth more than $150,000.
The NDP are counting on the fact that no one is going to start a GoFundMe page for luxury car owners or wealthy homeowners.
And they’re right.
The government estimates their new measures will bring in the billions in revenues needed to pay for the rest of their growing social agenda. But those revenues could falter if these policies have their intended effect and knock some sense back into our housing market.
Now we watch and see.
Response from critics has so far been frankly muted.
No budget will please everyone, but it seems the NDP managed to deliver a tax-and-spend bill that will fix some major holes in the safety net without spending too much of their own political capital. Quite the coup indeed.
