The Written Word
for September 5, 2001

What sort of concrete policies will we see from the Liberals in the next, say, two years?

To answer that question you really have to know what the financial picture will look like and here we can only guess – but the guess can be an educated one.

The United States is just short of being in a full scale recession. If they don’t pull out quickly, we will certainly join them. And this will put a lot of pressure on a government that has raised, and very substantially raised, the expectation that it will not only balance the budget by 2004 but will start reducing the debt.

It’s really very hard to see how the Liberals can accomplish this. The revenues look to be taking a dramatic drop while the cost of education and health care, especially the latter, must surely rise even if present standards (which by all accounts are far too low) are to be maintained.

The Liberals could, of course, simply continue to run large deficits relying on the hope that the essential services we expect are maintained, and thus voters remain happy with them - plus expecting that no matter how bad they are we won’t allow the NDP back for at least a decade.

I suspect that the Liberals will try a combo play. They will announce, before a year is out, that things were so much worse when they took power than expected that they will have to postpone balancing the budget. Glen Clark got away with this in 1996, why shouldn’t Gordon Campbell? Then I expect that both ICBC and BC Hydro will be at least in part privatized with the funds going into a health trust to fund the one thing that can make a big difference to the system – a meaningful Long Term Care program.

One of the main reasons the health care system is under such pressure is that there are so many acute care beds occupied by long term patients. As the population ages, the situation becomes exacerbated exponentially. Mr Campbell, reckoning, probably correctly that he can win in 2005 no matter what he does may well gamble that selling assets and using them to fund a long term solution to health care may just take care of 2009 as well.

If this sounds like a bit too much prescient wisdom to place on a political leader remember that there has never, in modern times at any rate, been a premier who is not faced with any foreseeable opposition. He can afford to gamble the next election.

What we do know is that health care and to a slightly lesser degree education will be millstones around his neck if he doesn’t present the public with real solutions. In addition to using funds from sales of assets I look to Mr Campbell to allow much more private capital into the system. The feds and the NDP will squawk but in the case of the feds their influence in this area is fast becoming illusory and Mr Campbell, arrogantly but probably correctly, assumes that they’re not a real factor.

Is this what’s going to happen?

I think so but can’t of course, be sure. What I do know is that Mr Campbell, a relatively young man, has tasted unexpected defeat before and is not likely to court it again. He wants to be another W.A.C. Bennett. If he could bull shit past 2005 he would do it but he’s smart enough to know that he can’t likely get away with that.

I may be wrong on the method but I feel pretty confident I’m bang on as to what Mr Campbell knows he must start doing soon.