With the attention of political pundits focused on the resignation of Garry Collins, not to mention Christmas shopping, it is not surprising that the fourth annual report from the BC Progress Board, released December 15th, went largely unnoticed. Not many British Columbians are likely to wade through the 275 pages of mind numbing statistics found in its two volumes, but the two news releases that accompanied the report are worth a glance. According to the Board's chair, David Black, who is also President of Victoria-based Black Press Ltd., "BC is making progress, but the task of reaching and maintaining a leadership position across all areas of our measurement framework - economy, innovation, education, environment, health and social condition - is not complete and arguably never will be." (emphasis added)

The idea behind $790 million in corporate tax cuts within two months of Campbell being sworn into office, if there was one beyond paying off campaign donors, was to encourage investment. The Progress Board reported that "BC continued to be a middling performer within Canada on business investment (6th, 2003) and productivity (6th, 2003), while its export performance was weak (8th, 2003)." No doubt the government will claim that 2004 will tell a different story once the figures are in. Preliminary figures for 2004 aren't released by Statistics Canada until late April 2005; they are revised in November 2005. There are some preliminary indicators for investment in buildings, but there are no such indicators for the all important figures on investment in machinery and equipment. That is the investment that raises productivity; it fell by 3.0% in 2003 following a 4.3% decline in 2002. The tax cuts were supposed to produce the opposite effect.

For decades British Columbians referred to the portion of the province beyond Hope as "the Interior". In one of his not very successful gambits, Campbell tried to brand the Interior the "Heartlands", which gave rise to many jokes, but no general adoption of the term. The Progress Board has invented yet another moniker, in referring to the Interior as "Regional BC". Volume 2 of the Board's report focuses on the regions of BC, and notes that: "Personal and property crime rates dropped every year between 1994 and 2000 in Regional BC, but increased between 2001 and 2003."

The Progress Board summed up volume 2 by saying:

It could have added that "Regional BC" was particularly hard hit by the Campbell government's cuts. Layoffs and closures of forestry offices, closed welfare offices, and courts turned to circuit courts had a bigger impact on Interior communities than they did in Vancouver and Victoria. Maybe that is why the latest Ipsos-Reid poll shows the Campbell government suffering from a significant regional gap, 10 points behind the NDP in the Southern Interior. Some Liberals believe that the saturation government advertising campaign might produce a backlash; it must be doubly so in the Interior where the experience is contrary to the feel-good image portrayed in the government advertisements.

Thanks to low interest rates and high prices for resources, wood, minerals, oil and gas, BC is making some progress. Unfortunately, the progress has little to do with the policies of the Campbell government which have harmed many communities, whether defined by geography or interest.