January
11, 2002
Damage
Control on the Depth of Cuts
Finance
Minister Gary Collins is up to mischief again. Now he's
claiming his cuts aren't so deep. Looks like they will just
take an arm, an eye, and both legs off the body politic
rather than half the body!
In October
he produced his infamous
chart showing a three year freeze for health and education
and a 35% cut for the rest of government. Now, a week before
massive layoffs are announced and four weeks before his
first full budget, Collins is saying that he is backing
off from $500 million in cuts for the Ministries of Children
and Family Development; Human Resources; Water, Land and
Air; and Community, Aboriginal and Women's Services.
Collins
isn't credible with his damage control. On January 9th,
Vancouver Sun columnist Vaughn Palmer first reported that
government was looking at backing off on some of its cuts.
The next day the Vancouver Province, in a story headlined
"Grief counselors hired for fired civil servants",
claimed "…Collins said ministries dealing directly
with people will not have their budgets cut as deeply as
previously planned." The Province went on to say that
"about half a billion dollars will be handed back"
as if the public knew how much was cut and should now appreciate
the restoration. The fact is that those ministries and
the programs people depend upon will be severely damaged.
The
budgets
for health and education (K-university) account for 65.7%
of government spending. Children and Family Development
is another 6.3%, Human Resources is 7.7% and Community,
Aboriginal and Women's Services is 2.3%. If they were also
frozen (which is actually a cut relative to rising costs),
that would be another 16.2% for a total of 81.9% frozen.
That makes it almost impossible to pay for the reckless
tax cuts. In fact, it would require almost the entire
elimination of all of the rest of government - the courts,
the police, environmental protection and caring for our
forests to name a few.
When
one looks at the actual numbers, no one should think children,
developmentally disabled adults or anyone else is off the
hook. Government may be feeling the heat and it may
know that it needs to do damage control, but the only
real damage control will be to back off from the horrible
cuts about to be inflicted on families throughout British
Columbia.
January
10, 2002
Feeling
the Cuts
January
has brought with it first hand experience of Premier Campbell's
New Era. It is one thing to read in the news papers about
worries over cutbacks, but it is quite another matter
to feel them.
On
January 1st we saw the first changes
to Pharmacare. User fees for seniors went from the
dispensing fee, usually around $6.00, to a fee of as much
as $25.00. For someone used to paying $12 when refilling
two prescriptions, it is quite a shock to suddenly be
asked for $50. There are thousands of such unhappy folks
throughout BC today, and this is just the start. They
are joined by people who started the New Year with a visit
to an optometrist, a chiropractor, a physiotherapist or
a podiatrist only to be shocked by fees fives times larger
than the last visit.
Those
cuts that people are now experiencing total about $145
million ($15 million for cuts
announced in October for eye exams and Pharmacare
and another $129.4 million for cuts announced in December).
While that is a lot of money, it is a lost decimal on
the amount that the Campbell government plans on cutting
over the next three years!
Those
unhappy seniors can look forward to income tested Pharmacare
beginning January 2003. Then those $25 bills won't stop
when they reach $275 for the year. In 2003 many seniors
will pay the full cost of their prescriptions until the
bills total $1,000 or more. By that time it will be
hard to find anyone who hasn't been hurt by a cutback.
It will be little comfort to think of the 8,000 British
Columbians who received over $200 million per year in
tax cuts from the Campbell government. That's no misprint,
just 8,000 of the highest income earners in BC received
14% of the benefits or about as
much as the bottom 1,673,000 income earners. That
is bound to comfort the senior who just got hit with the
bigger drug bill.
A
phone call, letter or visit to one's local MLA might help
that representative of the Campbell government feel the
pain.
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