Human Resources Minister Murray Coell made statements over the holidays that suggest he might back off on his plans to make BC the first province in Canada to kick people off welfare on the basis of an arbitrary two year time limit. He said he is waiting for reports from his field offices that will provide estimates of the number of people who would lose assistance; when he refused to release numbers earlier this year, he promised to make information available by the end of January.

What is available is the Ministry's "service plan" which shows that its spending of $1.6718 billion last year was to be cut to $1.4175 billion this year, and to $1.2206 billion next year. Almost all of the cuts are planned to come from the budget for "temporary assistance", i.e. from the category that would be affected by the two year rule. Government's plan calls for that budget to drop from $699.2 million last year to $451.3 million this year, and to $283.4 million next year. The Second Quarter Finance Report for 2003 showed that the plan for cuts in the Ministry of Human Resources is "on target" with no surplus or deficit in the welfare budget anticipated at the half way point in the fiscal year.

Can Coell cut a further $168 million from the budget for temporary assistance without introducing further draconian measures like the two year limit? The number of single employable men receiving assistance fell from 22,553 in October 2002 to 11,759 in October 2003; the number of single employable women fell from 11,779 in 2002 to 5,978 in 2003. It is not clear whether Coell might be able to achieve his budget target without further double digit reductions in caseloads. Coell's policy may have more to do with his predetermined budget target than it does with good social policy. He needs fiscal room to be reasonable and to back off from policies that could push even more people onto the streets and into crime. On February 17th his revised "service plan" will be tabled together with Collins' budget; what he says in late January about estimates of the number of people who will suffer as the result of his two year rule can be taken as foreshadowing budget day.

The amount of money scheduled to be cut from Human Resources next year, $168 million, is less than the combined annual tax cuts ($206 million) given to the top 7,920 income earners in BC on the first day after Campbell was sworn in to office. When combined with the further $70 million scheduled to be cut from the Ministry of Children and Family Development next year, almost a quarter billion dollars is scheduled to be taken from BC's most needy in the last year before the next election.