You can tell by a throne speech where a government is in the election cycle.
The closer to an election, the more ambitious, exciting and specific the promises are. And the sooner after re-election, the more restrained and vague the agenda is.
Tuesday’s throne speech is the second from Premier Christy Clark’s government in the nine months since winning the election. That further reduces any drama that might have been building about the kickoff of the legislative session.
So the peek at the government’s plans was mostly a brief summary of all that’s gone before. In three words: business as usual.
It’s the fifth speech to mention the liquefied natural gas opportunity. That’s gone from a one-line mention of the potential in 2009 to a big manifesto in 2013 that portrayed it as the trillion-dollar salvation of the entire province.
The B.C. Liberal government is a lot better at writing speeches about LNG than it is at bringing in the tax regime for it. That was supposed to be available late last year, but now it is expected late in 2014.
On Tuesday, LNG was promoted yet again: An “incredible opportunity” that is one of the five foundations of the government’s jobs plan.
There were three newish ideas pitched in the speech. One is a 10-year skills plan, an idea to revamp all education systems to gear up for the widely expected skills shortage.
Another 10-year plan was promised for transportation infrastructure. That will likely become a lengthy wish list of new highways, subtitled: “This is what we’d build if we had the money.”
And a long-term plan to address violent crime, specifically violence against women, is in the works.
They all sound promising. But all three initiatives are about problems or issues that have been studied extensively. There’s planning and there’s doing. And then there’s making planning sound like doing.
The rest of the speech was re-packaged items from the past few years. Six new mines, an apology to Chinese-Canadians for historical wrongs, a new water act and all the liquor changes that have already been promised over the past few months.
It’s a far cry from the February launch of the Liberal re-election campaign. That throne speech — 40 per cent longer than Tuesday’s effort — had about 20 specific promises portraying the government as charging ahead on all fronts. It promised a seniors’ advocate, a school of Chinese medicine, early childhood programs and a host of other items. And there were multiple general visions of a bright future. Most of the specific items are still in the works.
The throne speech from last summer that followed the government’s re-election was a very brief recap of the February one. The two post-election speeches together don’t match the length of the pre-election opus.
Liberals think they’ve put enough on their plate that the third such speech in a year can ease up on specific commitments in favour of reciting familiar themes.
But New Democrat Leader Adrian Dix said: “Even by throne speech standards” Tuesday’s address was devoid of substance.
He said it was pessimistic to the core, in that the Liberals don’t believe they can solve social problems, so they try to ignore them.
It’s more likely that one by-the-way line in the speech drove all the other considerations. And that line simply reaffirmed that the budget is balanced. Balancing a budget in this day and age means cutting spending to the bone. The Liberals got a lot of credit during the election campaign for doing so. But the downside is they can’t afford to address a lot of the pressing needs.
The speech highlighted a view that Clark expressed several weeks ago, that governments face a choice today of “managing decline” or finding new ways to grow the economy. Liberals will continue to paint the NDP as the party of managed decline, while they rely on LNG to grow the economy.
Clark’s sales job over the past year has been one of the most impressive in recent history. The session that’s just underway will start to show whether she can execute on the deal she closed.
