Perhaps as a pun related to the broken promise not to sell BC Rail, Gary Collins titled the news release on his Second Quarter Financial report "Resilient Fiscal Plan on Track". One can almost hear him crooning, "choo-choo". The word "resilient" means "able to recover quickly from setbacks" or "able to spring back quickly into shape after being bent, stretched, or deformed". Resilient is definitely the way to describe the fiscal plan described in the Second Quarter Financial report; one of the slides presented by Collins (see below) shows $1.238 billion in bad news relative to the budget and an equal amount of offsetting good news. Those are the kind of big swings that keep finance ministers awake at night, although as finance critic Collins never showed much sympathy for his predecessors.

The bad news includes $455 million in costs beyond what was budgeted for forest fires and floods. It also includes $675 million less in equalization payments split as adjustments for this year and last year, however, those figures will be revised several more times before they are finalized in the fall of 2006 for fiscal year 2003-04. Collins is not in a good position to complain about that enormous loss since his original fiscal plan presented in February 2002 included nothing for equalization payments. The new estimate for equalization payments is effectively zero because the full $468 million estimate is required to pay back previous overpayments.

The enormous financial swings due to forest fires, equalization adjustments and windfall natural gas revenues, hide what would otherwise be a major part of the Second Quarter Financial report. The report shows sales tax revenue $100 million less on an annual basis than was forecast when the budget was presented. That is because, contrary to claims of economic growth, sales are slowing. The report notes "Domestic demand remains solid with retail sales rising 3.7 per cent in the first nine months of 2003, over the same period last year." Unfortunately, at budget time Collins predicted that retail sales would grow by 4.7%.

Largely due to retroactive adjustments, a feature of the federal-provincial tax collection agreement, personal income tax revenues are up relative to the budget estimate, but they remain $1.125 billion (over 18%) lower than they were prior to the reckless cuts. Corporation income tax revenues are $22 million lower than estimated, and are $321 million lower than they were before Campbell's cuts. There is no evidence to support claims that the tax cuts will ever pay for themselves.

The estimate for this year's deficit remains a startling $2.3 billion, although that includes a $450 million fudge factor (forecast allowance). The total provincial debt has climbed from $33.852 billion when the NDP left office to $38.745 billion under the Campbell Liberals. That includes debt of the Crown corporations, but Campbell's discussion of BC Rail indicates that he mixes taxpayer supported and self-supported debt; taxpayer supported debt was $25.336 billion in June 2001 and now is $30.497 billion. In just two and a half years in office, the Campbell Liberals have increased taxpayer supported debt by $5.161 billion (over 20%).