Saturday, May 04, 2013

Baffle Them With BS - Part 35: Clark's Credibility Problems

B.C. premier Christy Clark’s baffling campaign strategy is to misinform, mislead and make up stuff
Brian Hutchinson, Apr. 23, 2013, National Post.

VANCOUVER — It’s no secret that Christy Clark’s government has a credibility problem.

For the B.C. Liberal party to avoid annihilation on May 14, repairing damage caused by broken promises and re-establishing trust with the electorate must be priorities. But it seems they are not. Instead of treading carefully, taking pains to ensure that whatever she presents during the election campaign is airtight, verifiable and the plain honest truth, Ms. Clark continues to misinform, mislead and just make up stuff.

The premier spent almost an hour this week speaking with Vancouver radio talk show host Bill Good. He challenged her on a number of claims she’s been making on the campaign trail. Ms. Clark refers repeatedly to her government’s “balanced budget” and its efforts to make the province “debt free.”

"We have balanced the budget,” Ms. Clark insisted, once again. Not really. B.C.’s latest budget, like all government budgets presented at the start of a fiscal year, is just a document based on assumptions. It’s a “plan,” and a “forecast,” but not, as the premier tried to suggest, an achievement.

Her government’s 2013-14 budget forecasts a surplus by the fiscal year’s end. But the plan has yet to be even implemented; the election interrupted the legislative process. 

The province’s accounts are still in the red and the accumulated debt continues to grow. According to the Clark government’s best case scenario, the total debt will increase to almost $70 billion three years hence and won’t be eliminated for another 30 years.

Mr. Good reminded Ms. Clark of all this. “Go ask Moody’s,” the premier fired back. “Moody’s is a debt rating agency that works all over the world and looks at everybody’s budgets and decides whether or not those budgets are balanced. They said [the February budget] was balanced.”

Moody’s Investor Service said no such thing. In a research report released April 4, the credit rating agency noted that B.C. has a “plan to reach a balanced operating budget in 2013-14.” It also noted the plan “did not pass before the election.”

Ms. Clark didn’t stop there. Moody’s, she insisted, “said they are concerned if the government changes, that we are going to have a financial mess again in this province, based on what they saw in the 1990s.”

The credit agency’s April 4 report does not express such a concern. But it does drop the province’s credit rating outlook from “stable” to “negative.” This, says Moody’s, “reflects the risks to the provinces ability to reverse the recent accumulation in debt given a softened economic outlook, weaker commodity prices and continued expense pressures.”

Ms. Clark is a seasoned politician. She knows that voter mistrust is a major issue for her party. She has to be aware that each time she equivocates, she’ll be caught out. Every statement from Ms. Clark and other candidates is being seized upon, scrutinized, parsed to the letter.

Clark will disappoint those who don’t relish four years ahead with a spendthrift NDP government

Media are on hyperbole alert. Voters, too.

If Ms. Clark has a script — of course she does — she does not keep to it. At a campaign event last Thursday, she decided to play up her party’s conservative-oriented support. She claimed that two well-regarded B.C. politicians who served in federal cabinet under Prime Minister Stephen Harper were actively supporting her party’s election campaign. Stockwell Day and Chuck Strahl are “very actively helping us on the campaign and I’m really proud of the contribution they’re making,” Ms. Clark said.

Great. But Chuck Strahl is chairman of Canada’s Security Intelligence Review Committee, the group that oversees Canada’s spy agency, CSIS. As Canada’s chief spy watchdog, a position he has held since May 2012, he is expressly forbidden from playing politics. He cannot make so much as a partisan comment or he’ll damage his own credibility and that of the committee he heads. No one knows this better than Mr. Strahl.

Suggesting that he is assisting the B.C. Liberals in the current election campaign was unhelpful: To Ms. Clark, to her party and to Mr. Strahl, who had no choice but come out later and deny it.

Most won’t admit it, but B.C. Liberals despair of Ms. Clark. She’ll also disappoint others who don’t relish four years ahead with a spendthrift NDP government. The NDP’s policy platform is being released bit by bit over the provincial campaign, now in its second week. To date, the party has offered in bits and pieces a classic tax-and-spend policy, with deficit and debt relief taking a back seat. It’s anathema to a huge portion of B.C. voters.

Provincial Liberals have properly seized upon the NDP plan. They have identified and have begun to exploit the most obvious, ideological differences between the B.C. Liberals and their rivals. But Ms. Clark’s off-kilter musings undermine these efforts and they baffle. It’s their frequency that no longer causes surprise.

National Post
• Email: bhutchinson@nationalpost.com | Twitter: hutchwriter 

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