VICTORIA, B.C.: The numbers behind the NDP’s budget are starting to crumble, raising new questions about B.C.’s fiscal credibility and what senior government officials knew about flawed natural gas revenue projections.
Economists have found that the NDP government’s natural gas royalty projections overlooked major costs, overstating expected revenues by roughly $500 million per year and leaving an even larger hole in B.C.’s financial outlook.
“This isn’t just an accounting error. It’s a credibility problem,” said Gavin Dew, Shadow Minister for Finance. “B.C. is already facing record debt and deficits, and credit-rating agencies have repeatedly warned about the province’s deteriorating finances. Now they have to ask whether the revenue forecasts they were relying on were wrong, when the government discovered the problem, and why it wasn’t disclosed.”
Even an error of $300 million per year would be more than three times the annual operating budget of the Ministry of Energy and Climate Solutions and larger than the individual budgets of several government ministries.
Even more troubling are questions about when senior members of the NDP government became aware of the problem. Energy Minister Adrian Dix reportedly warned about flaws in the government’s calculations in June. Treaty 8 First Nations subsequently raised the issue directly with Premier David Eby. Yet when questioned by a reporter this week, Eby said he was not familiar with any error in the government’s oil and gas revenue projections.
“The notion that the government had no idea about these discrepancies is ridiculous,” said John Rustad, Shadow Minister for Treasury Board. “Fudging the numbers in the budget is an incredibly serious issue, and British Columbians deserve complete transparency over what happened. An error like this has significant ramifications for the projects and services B.C. needs to fund, as well as for creditors and investors. British Columbians have been let down.”
“British Columbians deserve the dated paper trail,” said Dew. “When did Minister Dix know? When did the Premier and Finance Minister know? Were the forecasts corrected? Were credit-rating agencies and investors informed? Adrian Dix once lost his job as the Premier’s chief of staff after admitting he had backdated a memo during a political controversy. This time, British Columbians deserve to know exactly when he learned the government’s numbers were wrong, who he told, and why the public wasn’t told.”
Dew says the Auditor General should independently examine the revenue forecasts, the government’s internal controls and communications, and the impact of the error on B.C.’s fiscal plan.
“The deeper you dig into this budget, the less it makes sense,” Dew said. “British Columbians can’t afford a government that keeps getting the numbers wrong. NDP math just isn’t cutting it.”
“You can’t budget your way to prosperity with forecasts based on faulty projections,” said Larry Neufeld, Shadow Minister for Energy. “If Premier David Eby wants higher natural gas revenues, it has to earn them by attracting investment and not with misleading projections. The government needs to stop making it harder to do business in B.C. and start getting out of the way. That means less red tape, more certainty, and lower taxes.”
“B.C. can’t afford budgets built on wishful thinking,” said Hon. Kerry-Lynne Findlay, Leader of the Conservative Party of B.C. “A Conservative government would back our natural gas sector, attract investment, create jobs, and deliver a budget that stands up to scrutiny.”