Vaughn Palmer: Involuntary treatment and promises to first-time homebuyers are in the budget, just not by name, NDP insists
VICTORIA — One of the distractions for reporters this week was tracking the election promises that did not make it all the way into the first budget of the re-elected NDP.
Take involuntary care for the mentally ill and severe drug addicts, people who account for a disproportionate number of random, violent attacks on B.C. streets.
In his bid for the NDP leadership, David Eby vowed to divert those people into care and treatment, with or without their consent. Once he’d secured his hold on the premier’s office, he shelved the promise.
He revived it in the run-up to last year’s election, making it a centrepiece of his plan for addressing public safety, the drug crisis and care of the mentally ill.
After that double reversal, one might have expected involuntary treatment to earn a prominent place in this week’s budget and three-year fiscal plan.
It was nowhere to be found.
Still, Eby insisted that involuntary care was in the budget, albeit not in so many words. The funding was buried in the budget increase for the Ministry of Health.
“It’s not correct that there weren’t resources in the budget for this initiative,” the premier told reporters Wednesday. “The money is there to make sure it happens.”
The first two treatment facilities — one at the Surrey pretrial jail, the other a new facility in Maple Ridge — will open in the spring, says Eby.
The NDP rolled out a $1.29 billion housing plan for first-time homebuyers on election eve. It did not earn a line item in the budget either. There was a passing reference to a dozen and half projects, with 1,400 units for middle income working people that are supposed to be started this year.
Housing Minister Ravi Kahlon says the plan for first time homebuyers is in the budget — incognito.
“It is very much part of the plan,” he told Alec Lazenby of Postmedia Thursday.
“We expect to finalize all the details with our partners in the coming weeks. We actually expect to launch the ability for people to register to purchase homes within the first half of this year. So everything is on track, and the money is going to be in the budget.”
Going to be in the budget? Once the budget and spending estimates are presented to the legislature (as Finance Minister Brenda Bailey did Tuesday), the funding is either in or out.
Perhaps Kahlon expects to tap into the budget’s $4 billion in unallocated contingencies.
The housing minister has played a different game regarding a 90-unit supportive housing project in Richmond, slated for people with complex mental health and addictions problems.
He withdrew the project just before the election, because of a backlash in a community where three NDP incumbents were fighting to hang on to their seats.
Despite Kahlon’s last-minute move, only one of the three were reelected. The survivor was Kelly Greene, who the premier appointed minister of emergency management in the postelection cabinet shuffle.
Once the electoral dust settled, Kahlon announced the project would go ahead after all. Richmond council, justifiably appalled at the NDP’s electoral shenanigans, has so far withheld approval of the project.
The election platform’s biggest no show on budget day was the NDP’s “grocery rebate,” which was going to deliver $1,000 to families and $500 to individuals at a cost of $1.8 billion.
Instead, under the heading of “reducing costs for families,” the budget served up another $110 cash rebate from ICBC, costed at $410 million. Not much consolation there for people without cars.
This is the NDP’s fourth successive cash grab from ICBC since they brought in no fault insurance, confirming again that the scheme is a great bargain for taxpayers.
Just hope you don’t sustain a catastrophic, life-altering injury. Then you’ll be confronted with a take it or leave it settlement from an insurance monopoly, ever mindful of the need to protect the cash reserves necessary to underwrite the Eby government’s cynical givebacks.
The NDP election platform promised $500 million for “more new child care spaces.” On budget day, child-care funding was “flatlined” according to advocate Sharon Gregson. It means no progress this year on the NDP goal of universal, $10-a day child care.
Lastly, there’s the short life of Eby’s vow to build a new patient tower at Nanaimo regional hospital for a cost estimated at $2 billion. He made the promise Sept. 26. It went missing on budget day.
“A new patient tower is literally a decade-plus overdue and will take another decade to build from start to finish,” Nanaimo Mayor (and former NDP MLA) Leonard Krog told Cindy Harnett of the Victoria Times Colonist.
“The rest of the province has not faced the consistent neglect that everyone north of the Malahat has faced for decades with respect to the appropriate health care and delivery of much needed facilities.”
With respect to the mayor, the promise has already accomplished what it was intended to do. It helped the New Democrats shut out the Conservatives and maintain their grip on the three legislature seats in and around Nanaimo.