It is a sign of true political mismanagement when a government can offend and alienate even its base of support. But David Eby’s BC NDP administration is hard at it.
As it bargains with its largest union, it has abruptly discovered—stumbled upon, more like it—a term called austerity.
Most of us know this term, but it is far, far off-script from a government that has spent and taxed and restrained prosperity so as to create record debt and deficits—probably $14 billion this fiscal year—and prompted a degrading of the province’s credit rating.
This, a government that inflated the size of the public sector and suddenly signals it can’t afford all the hired hands.
One that took too so long—pretty much until last fall’s election campaign—to recognize the pain of unaffordability for British Columbians and now offers its employees 3.5 per cent over two years as another inflation surge approaches—don’t take my word, the premier is basically warning so.
Now, after high-spending sermons it is preaching fiscal prudence, a “balanced budget bargaining mandate,” and is passing the collection plate to its workers. Now, it says, is the time for restraint. Now, it says, workers must bear rigour that doesn’t extend to itself.
Disclosure time: I am not, by nature or politics, a big supporter of large unions or an ever-expanding public service. I believe government should do fewer things well, not more things poorly. I worry about the recent public-sector sprawl in British Columbia (five times the private sector growth over the least five years), the institutional inertia that comes when organizations are oversized, and the growing distance between those who deliver services and those who pay for them.
But one of my earliest schoolings in managing a workplace with a collective agreement was that you get the union you deserve. Better things happen when you behave.
A second, related lesson was that any bargaining needed to reflect the state of your organization and be in keeping with how its finances were managed. There had to be congruence between the talk and the walk or there could be no credibility with, or respect from, the other party across the table.
What it meant was that you couldn’t suddenly penny-pinch with organized labour amid difficult times if you weren’t in turn running a tight ship or already contending with operational strain. The fiscal house needed to be in order to morally expect workers to be disciplined about their demands.
But that is what the government is trying to pull off in its contract talks with the British Columbia General Employees’ Union (BCGEU), and not surprisingly it is being called on it. If you’re not fond of this government, you have to be fond of the rock and a hard place it has created and now occupies.
To be clear: I’m not arguing for runaway public compensation, but for coherence—and that’s an allergic term for this regime. It’s fairly simple: if a government wants to hold the line on costs, it has to demonstrate discipline before it demands discipline. It can’t gorge itself on the public purse and then expect the people it employs to diet. You can’t lecture about limits when you’ve shown none of your own. You don’t get to max out the public credit card, then shame the cashier for asking for a raise.
For all its talk of equity, the Eby government has crafted a double standard: belt-tightening for workers, indulging for itself.
What it reveals—what it confirms for anyone still wondering—is a government of profoundly poor planning. What it shows is that fiscal restraint is a one-way street for this political squad. What it risks—and we will see the results before long—is whether the walls further close on Eby in a hollowing out of the traditional source of his party’s political sustenance.
In private enterprise, you’d be laughed out—maybe just shouted out—of the room for pleading poverty after such a spending spree. But in government, the consequences are softer—until they’re not. Until morale drops. Until service erodes. Until the public, including the government’s historic backing, loses faith and looks for a government that leads by example.
Kirk LaPointe is a Lodestar Media columnist with an extensive background in journalism. He is vice president in the office of the chair at Fulmer & Company.
