The
Campbell government's news release promoted the February
2006 budget with the headline "Budget
2006 Concentrates on B.C.'s Children". Some say
it could be called Sherry's budget, in honour of Sherry
Charlie, but she isn't the only child whose name is associated
with the Campbell cuts. An alternative is to call it "Ted's
Budget" in anticipation of the report
that will be released by Ted Hughes on April 7th. The
budget tried to support the claim that it concentrates on
children by saying that an additional $421 million would
be available to help vulnerable children and their caregivers;
the fine print noted that the $421 million is over four
years. If that makes budget 2006 the "Children's Budget"
then consider what the
September 2005 mini-budget should have been labeled; that's
when Finance Minister Carole Taylor announced $143 million
per year, $569 million over four years, in corporate
tax cuts even though not a single word was said about that
tax gift during the May 2005 election campaign. When the
Campbell government had a choice it put corporate tax cuts
a year ahead of restoring cuts to child protection, and
it gave 35% more to corporations than to child protection.
Budget
day marks not only the budget speech and the release of
various budget documents, but it also marks the release
of the Third Quarter Financial Report and of service plans
for every ministry and crown agency, as required by the
Budget Transparency and Accountability Act. The updated
service plan for the Ministry of Children and Family Development
contains sickening pablum about the "five great goals".
However, as advised in a September
27th, 2005, article in StrateticThoughts, the Ministry
has finally included "Rate
of recurrence of child neglect and/or abuse by family"
as a performance measure; it is listed as the first measure
for the first goal and first objective of the ministry.
That's a big step from apparently ignoring outcomes in previous
service plans for that ministry.
It will
take a lot more than recognizing some important outcomes
for the Campbell government to redeem itself after years
of cutting services in the Ministry of Children and Family
Development. It is almost impossible to trace changes in
the ministry's budget since categories are aggregated and
major programs like day care are shifted from year to year,
but the "estimates" (the "detailed"
figures that go before the legislature) indicate that the
words "child protection" have not appeared as
a line item in the Ministry's budget since February
2002. At that time, "child protection and family
development" had a budget of $596.0 million, down from
$621.6 million in the previous year. In this year's budget
the government promised to set aside $100 million over three
years for future enhancements to child protection and family
support services. Child protection services were cut by
$25.6 million between 2001 and 2002, and we don't know precisely
how much more they were cut in the four years since then;
it looks like $100 million over three years doesn't begin
to equal more than $128 million in cumulative cuts over
the five years since 2001.
If on
the eve of the tabling of the Hughes report on child welfare,
the Campbell government cannot buy credibility for restoring
cuts to child protection, how can it expect to have credibility
on any other aspect of its budget? The budget for all government
spending in all ministries is reported as increasing from
an estimated $25.824 billion in the year ending March 31,
2006, to $26.752 billion in the year ending March 31, 2007
- an increase of $928 million (3.6%), but various fudge
factors (forecast allowance of $850 million, contingencies
- new program $320 million, and contingencies - negotiating
$420 million) total $1.59 billion before counting underestimates
of key revenues sources like property purchase taxes and
natural gas royalties. The Campbell government has a hard
time hiding its embarrassment of riches; it certainly isn't
using much of those monies to restore damage done in its
first five years.
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