Even if you had just dropped down from another planet this week you would have known that an election was in the air due to the appearance of pricey, graph-ridden brochures festooning the countryside. “Your Surplus, Your Priorities: Building BC Together” is from the BC Liberals (we should get a thank you for paying for this illustrative smorgasbord) and it puts us on notice that we are suddenly not only the owners of a fabulous budget surplus, but we are now going to be consulted about where these riches should be spent.

According to this pamphlet, “Your Opinion is Important” -- which is unsettling, considering how comfortable we had gotten with having our interests and views trampled on with breath taking consistency. It should be noted that the BC Liberals have been consulting with business groups under the guise of the Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government since September and have been able to extract from them exactly what they wanted to hear already. But we can get into the act now and I am sure they will listen to us with great excitement and anticipation; but first, here are a few thoughts on the whole math-challenged mess anyway.

While it appears that they have racked up a $1.2 billion surplus for 2004/2005, the noisy assertion that this surplus is the result of a buoyant economy created by Liberal wizardry -- tax breaks to the rich, deregulation and privatization as well as serious cuts to our services -- is not even close to the truth. We can and should ask: Where did this money come from?

First off, we have seen record increases in commodity prices – lumber prices alone are at near-record highs, up about 50% since the last budget adding around $375 million in revenues. All in all higher resource revenues add up to 60% of the revenue gain for 2004/2005.

In addition, BC has received increased federal transfers for health care - $166 million to be exact.

And if you are tearing your hair out paying for tuition increases remember that proceeds from university and college fees are $350 million above what was collected in 2001/2002.

Since the Liberals arrived in government, ministries outside of health care and education have endured dramatic cuts of almost $2 billion so it is hardly surprising that there is a surplus floating around. If you did not bother paying to feed and cloth your kids, you could amass quite the tidy sum for frolics.

There has been a demonstrable diminishing of conditions in our schools, healthcare facilities and infrastructure. Few working families have not felt the sting. The Liberals have not raised a dime by attention to careful management but instead have robbed one section of the population to shift wealth to the rich. Not only have we suffered the results of these cuts we are now expected to thank the Liberals for doing such a good job of supplying their wealthy clients with a big chunk of the treasury. The tax cuts were covered by slashing our services and these cuts have really only brought us back to where we would have been if the tax cut had never happened.

If the Liberals think this will stand and that this weasel accounting trick will fool us then they are in for a surprise. Perhaps they think that the difficulties they have inflicted in our public education system will have already kicked in and produced a province full of people who can’t add.

Eden Haythornthwaite lives in the Cowichan Valley and is a member of the Community Alliance For Public Education.

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