Two back-to-back beverage announcements and dozens of news releases in the last week leave the strong impression an election is coming.
On Monday, Finance Minister Mike de Jong went to a dairy farm, goofed around milking a cow and then spent $1 million in taxpayer money to get kids to drink more B.C. milk.
Everything is political from here on in, so the moment warrants close attention.
I didn’t even know kids drank milk anymore, so I was caught off-guard. Are the B.C. Liberals forcing old-school nutrition beliefs on new-age juice-boxers? Or is it a return to traditional values to the benefit of children — ourmostpreciousresource — and farmers?
And what about the money? The government says 1,400 schools registered in an official program “will be offered local milk, free of charge” for kids in kindergarten to Grade 3.
But wait a minute. There’s no such thing as free milk. They make that clear later on. A health authority paid $3 million this year to keep the program running. And de Jong’s milk money brings the total to an astounding $26 million over eight years.
There was a time when parents were responsible for feeding their kids. But those days are gone.
What about the Liberals’ no-subsidy policy? Will the B.C. Conservatives kill the milk giveaway? Will the New Democratic Party double it? Is Big Milk dictating school nutrition? Is this fair to Okanagan apple growers?
I was just getting my head around all that when another beverage move was made, one that hits closer to home.
Energy Minister Rich Coleman is also the minister responsible for booze. (B.C. Liberals think of booze as an energy drink.)
He is “intent on helping rural agency stores [those remote gas stations and corner stores that are allowed to sell liquor] succeed.” So he lowered the price of liquor by two per cent. This is the kind of bombshell that can swing an entire election. Cheaper booze is the most nakedly obvious political ploy in the book. So it was puzzling to see how downplayed it was. Just a routine news release, with no photo-op.
A closer reading showed why. The rural agency stores get a 10 per cent discount on the liquor they purchase from the government. Coleman was announcing that the discount will go up to 12 per cent. But it looks as if that’s where the discount stops. There’s nothing about the two per cent savings being passed on to consumers. And there’s lots about how good this is for the rural agency stores. Meaning they get to keep the money.
The announcement would have been buried under all the other good news emanating from government in any event.
Although the school seismic-upgrading project has been underway in B.C. for years following a carefully engineered plan, Premier Christy Clark suddenly found $584 million to announce this week. More accurately, to re-announce, since it’s part of a bigger chunk that was committed in February’s budget.
That is the biggest chunk in a cascade of pre-election funding announcements. All told, it amounts to more than $700 million in spending that has been announced, re-announced, committed or planned since April 1.
It includes money for arts scholarships, a new Surrey office for Crown counsel, a breast-milk program in Vancouver, 4-H clubs, seniors care and a host of other ideas.
And if there’s a focus to the spending spree, it’s skills training. That’s going to be one of the battleground issues in the campaign, and the B.C. Liberals need to clear some room, after months of NDP criticism about the Liberal jobs-training program.
So included in the blitz so far are nine separate announcements about more than $21 million in funding for various job- and skill-training programs. They’re training miners, funding youth-employment programs, buying millwright equipment and promoting trades training.
The blitz will likely run through to next week, when the official election campaign begins and the taps get turned off.
It looks like a desperate spending spree to get re-elected. But most of the money has sloshed through the routine approval channels for months or years. It’s more of a re-announcement spree than a spending spree.
So just have a glass of (free) milk and enjoy the show.
