This week the premier promised to eliminate the property transfer tax, which would leave a $1 billion hole in the province’s treasury. But when asked about making up the revenue shortfall, she flip-flopped, saying “I wouldn’t characterize it as a promise. I would say it’s something that we would like to do. A promise is something we believe we can do.”
Even the premier can’t take herself at her word anymore.
Here are just a few of the premier’s other broken promises:
- “We are working hard to try and reduce total costs for everybody.”- Christy Clark, Globe and Mail, May 24, 2012
Status: Fail. Clark’s Budget 2015 hits families with another four-per-cent hike to MSP premiums, a six-per-cent hike to hydro rates, ferry fare hikes, and higher tolls, park fees and ICBC rates.
- “…at least one LNG pipeline and terminal online by 2015,” – Christy Clark’s “Canada Starts Here” document, September 2012
Status: Fail. Not even a single final investment decision has been made to build an LNG plant, let alone one being operational by 2015.
- A prosperity fund, which will “exceed one hundred billion dollars over the next 30 years” and eliminate the provincial debt and the provincial sales tax – Throne speech, February 2013
Status: Fail. The fictional prosperity fund sits at a balance of zero.
- “Debt-free BC” – Christy Clark election campaign bus, May 2013
Status: Fail. Debt has risen faster under Christy Clark than any B.C. premier in history. This week’s budget shows B.C.’s debt projected to hit $70 billion by 2018.
- “Every British Columbian who wants a family doctor is able to access one by 2015” – “GP for Me”, BC Liberal platform, May 2013
Status: Fail. New Democrats exposed this week that hundreds of thousands of British Columbians still don’t have a family doctor, and the health minister admitted they won’t by the end of the year or into the foreseeable future.