SCHOOLS, the courthouse and the hospital will continue to feel the pinch after B.C. Finance Minister Kevin Falcon introduced what he called a "disciplined" budget Tuesday.
The three-year plan, which aims to get B.C. back in the black by 2014, projects a deficit of $2.5 billion by end of this fiscal year and $968 million by March 2013, before the gap finally closes the year after. Falcon proposed to get the province's fiscal house back in order by keeping a tight rein on government spending, increasing MSP premiums by four per cent and selling off some government assets among other initiatives. The plan also assumes energy and resource royalties will rise significantly.
"It's a budget that speaks to the times we're in," Falcon said in a conference call Wednesday. "We're taking the approach that we want to maintain the fiscal discipline we've demonstrated over the last 10 years."
On the North Shore, port operators, including Western Stevedoring and Neptune Terminals, praised a decision to permanently cap their property tax rates.
Port operators said the tax cap has resulted in capital investments of about $400 million on the North Shore in recent years and an increase to jobs on the waterfront.
Darrell Mussatto, City of North Vancouver mayor, said that while that's good news for industry, it will have an impact on local taxpayers. The cap means City residents and businesses absorb about $500,000 of what industry used to pay to the municipality every year.
The budget also included a previously announced wage tax credit for apprentices in the shipbuilding industry. Both health and education - which make up the lion's share of the nearly $44 billion budget - will get very small increases, with the health budget expected to increase about three per cent to $16.2 billion next year. Education funding will go up only one per cent to $5.3 billion, but block grants to school districts will remain frozen.
Irene Young, secretary-treasurer for the North Vancouver School District, said she won't know how that will impact local classrooms until next month when the Ministry of Education announces funding for each school district.
"It's how they distribute that money - that's what could impact us and that's what we don't know yet," she said.
Social services will get a five per cent boost to $2.5 billion and the new justice ministry will get a very small increase of $4 million over the next year.
The Ministry of Advanced Education, however, will be cut by $41 million over the same three-year timeframe.
Kris Bulcroft, president of Capilano University, said in order for the university to move forward in such a tight fiscal environment, it will likely mean more partnerships with the private sector.
Funding for universities has been flat since 2009, said Bulcroft, but the university still has to absorb the costs of annual inflation. "We've already been having difficulty," she said. "We've already been doing a lot of cost savings. . . . We just don't have a whole lot of ways to save further."
There were few handouts for either businesses or average citizens in the budget.
Those that were announced included nods to the construction industry, such as a $10,000 refundable income tax credit for first-time new home buyers, increasing the threshold for the HST rebate on new home purchases to houses worth $850,000 and a renovation tax credit for seniors of $1,000.
Under the budget, families will be paying four per cent more for medical premiums starting next year - an average of $5 a month.
To help raise $700 million over the next three years, the government plans to sell off some of its assets, including properties that it had been holding in Surrey and the Okanagan.
The province also projected revenue increases of $132 million from lotteries, $479 million from natural gas royalties and $149 million from forest revenues over the next three years.
Both Conservatives and the NDP bashed the plan. Conservative leader John Cummins criticized it for "ballooning debt levels, higher taxes and growing spending masked by accounting tricks." The NDP criticized its lack of money for education and skills training.
