On Thursday,
April 14th the Finance Minister will deliver the Liberal prescription
for a Province facing financial collapse. While there is fear over how deep the
pain might be, a greater concern is that it will not hurt enough.
The Tories
were incompetent, unwise, and reckless. The Liberals are faced with a monumental challenge. This week we will discover if they are capable of answering the call of leadership, or if they, too, will choose delay, as a remedy.
The Budget
is late; it should have been unveiled by the third week of March; the very fact compounds the Government's growing reputation for dither.
On the positive side, the Finance Minister told the CBC we have to fix a "culture of spending". That is probably the most important thing the Minister could have said.
The "Wiseman Plan", of Premier Davis' former Finance Minister, embraced the unsupportable belief that oil prices were cyclical; that the government could keep on spending; all they had to do was wait awhile, prices would rebound. The Tories ran deficits even when oil revenues were at their highest; Wade Locke gave them a reassuring nod.
On the positive side, the Finance Minister told the CBC we have to fix a "culture of spending". That is probably the most important thing the Minister could have said.
The "Wiseman Plan", of Premier Davis' former Finance Minister, embraced the unsupportable belief that oil prices were cyclical; that the government could keep on spending; all they had to do was wait awhile, prices would rebound. The Tories ran deficits even when oil revenues were at their highest; Wade Locke gave them a reassuring nod.
