I had to create a special category just for the BC Liberals: Incompetence
“The final housing-start number at the end of the year remains unknown. But there is one thing we all know for certain after watching the spectacle this spring: many of the New Democratic Party’s political opponents don’t care about the facts, they’re just cheering for B.C. to fail.”
BC Politics
Not long ago BC Libs and friends warned of ‘plummeting’ into ‘economic winter.’ Now, crickets.
Another day, another discussion of housing by B.C.’s legislators. Except this one, on June 10, was measurably different. B.C. Minister of Finance and Deputy Premier Carole James unveiled to the legislative budget committee some show-stopping statistics about housing starts in the province.
Namely, that residential-home construction “has significantly increased over the past three years.” In fact, given April’s statistics, the province was on track to see 51,093 housing starts in 2019. “Which,” said James, “is a very strong number.”
That last sentence may be the understatement of the year.
If B.C. does surpass 51,000 housing starts this year that not only would be a “very strong number,” it would be astonishing and extraordinary.
Yet, James’ utterance received no publicity. Nothing. Nada. Zilch.
Frenzied warnings of ‘economic winter’
Contrast the deafening silence that greeted James’ housing-start revelation to the massive eruption this spring when her 2019/20 Budget and Fiscal Plan estimated that housing starts in the current calendar year would come in at 34,015.
Since 2001, the start of the BC Liberal Party’s 16-year reign in government, annual housing starts in B.C. averaged 30,680, so the finance ministry’s projection for 2019 was more than 3,300 greater than the recent historic average.
And for 2020 and 2021, James’ budget expected to see housing starts of 31,846 and 30,517 — again, slightly above and close to the 18-year average.
No matter. Critics preferred to key off the fact that the number of housing starts had surged upward over the 2016-2018 period to a yearly average of approximately 42,100. That was more than 12,000 higher than the recent average. And so those critics pounced on James and the Horgan government.
“Instead of cutting red tape and trying to turbo charge housing starts to drive down costs,” Jordan Bateman, communications and marketing vice-president with the Independent Contractors and Businesses Association of B.C., seethed in a news release, “the NDP is quietly choking out the market.” Subtly, he gave this headline to his release: “Economic Winter Is Coming to B.C.”
Meanwhile, a budget analysis by the ICBA offered that “the single most troubling number was the projected 30 per cent drop in housing starts.” That sentence later was attributed to Bateman’s boss, Chris Gardner — a former senior political aide to former BC Liberal premier Christy Clark — by Tracy Redies, a BC Liberal MLA.
Formerly run by Philip Hochstein, who announced his retirement in 2016, the ICBA between 2005 and 2017 gave the BC Liberal Party and individual candidates nearly $452,000.
The ICBA budget commentary was dire and unequivocal. “This contraction will be widely felt. It underscores the flaws in a NDP housing strategy that’s based on higher taxes, with little regard for increasing supply, and casts further doubt on revenue projections.”
Not surprisingly, numerous BC Liberal MLAs promptly joined the chorus.
Todd Stone from Kamloops-South Thompson (whose tenure as a cabinet minister featured a multi-billion dollar “dumpster fire” at the Insurance Corporation of B.C.) was so aggrieved at the NDP government’s housing-start forecast that he introduced a motion for debate. “Be it resolved that this House agree that housing supply is critical to housing affordability.”
“The result of this government’s demand-obsessed actions,” Stone advised the House, “are suppressing the construction volumes of rental stock in communities across the province.”
“How tragic,” chimed his colleague, Abbotsford-Mission’s Simon Gibson. “This is the province of hope and excitement for our country. How tragic that housing starts are going down. It’s almost unbelievable.”
The most active housing critic was Surrey-White Rock’s Redies, who declared on Feb. 20, “The budget confirms that under the NDP’s economic mismanagement, housing starts are going to fall by almost one-third.”
She added: “Housing starts are plummeting under this government, which means housing affordability is about to get worse.”
Inside Victoria 