Editor,
The 2025/26 fiscal year deficit was going to be around $6.7 billion when it was forecast early last year. Throw in the recent election promises and the budget was revised to a deficit of $9.6 billion.
After the election, the NDP with supposed reluctance reneged on their promise and clawed back the $500 per voter bribe.That should have cut the deficit by $1.8 billion, yet their latest revised budget is now forecast to run a deficit of $10.9 billion. This will be the highest deficit run by any province this year.
Their next order of business was to hand out titles and pay bumps to all but one of their caucus. Using their own figures they will have taken B.C.’s provincial debt to $208 billion by 2027/28 fiscal year. That will have increased our debt five-fold, our annual interest payments on that debt from $1.5 billion to $7.4 billion. Does anybody else think this is inexcusable and not sustainable?
You would think that everybody would be swimming in this cash free-for-all. Yet things in Surrey are markedly worse than when the NDP came to power.
In 2017, the NDP promised that Surrey’s 250 school portables would be eliminated; last figure I saw was we had 360 and no game plan to eliminate them. Our second hospital when it opens in 2029 will increase our total bed count by 168 for a grand total of slightly over 800. For all of Surrey which will soon have a larger population base than Vancouver. Meanwhile Vancouver has over 2,500 beds.
The NDP won four seats in Surrey last election, two of them barely. If they continue to ignore Surrey’s needs, I suspect they won't even win one next time. Let your MLAs know how you feel — time to remind them they govern at our pleasure.
Mike Bildstein, Surrey
