KAMLOOPS — Holy Mackerel, by the time the election gets here in May, British Columbians will think they’ve died and gone to heaven.
As the days roll by, the money just keeps rolling in.
Have you been paying attention to how many checks the B.C. Liberals have been writing? There’s $150-million for tree planting. The Ministry of Agriculture gets a $2-million budget lift to invest in the Buy Local program.
How about a $29.4 million Student Learning grant to schools, $199 million to increase disability assistance rates, $2 million for a B.C.-Canada international food safety program, and $469.4 million (again, B.C. and the feds) in upgrades for the Trans-Canada Highway?
It doesn’t stop there. There’s $5 million to support the Joint Task Force on Overdose Response, $750,000 in new-project development grants. The Simpcw First Nation gets a grant as part of a three-year $75 million B.C. Rural Dividend.
And all of the above is just since Friday. The government is so busy handing out money it can’t even stop on Sundays — the hits just kept coming yesterday. I guess there aren’t enough days in the week when there’s so much good news to deliver.
But the spending spree might just be starting. We can expect the really big news to come tomorrow — that’s when Finance Minister Mike de Jong will announce the new, balanced, budget, the one in which Premier Christy Clark has promised that we, the taxpayers, will reap the rewards of our hard work.
Can you say “tax cuts.”
Good grief, how much better can it get? How much more of our own money can we be gifted with?
Fasten your seatbelts; we’ll find out at 2 o’clock tomorrow.
mrothenburger@armchairmayor.ca
