Premier's bid to save face put Liberals on their HST road to ruin

Vaughn Palmer, Vancouver Sun April 21, 2010
As the B.C. Liberals reel from the backlash over the harmonized sales tax, their troubles can be traced back to a meeting that took place just two days after they won the last provincial election. May 14, 2009. Deputy Finance Minister Graham Whitmarsh was providing Finance Minister Colin Hansen with a postelection update on the budget. Premier Gordon Campbell stopped by for a listen. "A relatively casual meeting," as Campbell recalled it later. But the contents were anything but casual in terms of their impact on his third term of government. "During that meeting was the first time that I heard that the projected, forecast deficit was going to be probably in excess of a billion dollars -- between $1.1 billion and $1.3 billion," the premier advised the legislature during debate last fall. Campbell was taken aback. "I was very concerned about getting those numbers. I actually said to them: 'Why am I getting these numbers now?' " The Liberals had tabled a budget with a deficit of $495 million. Many observers thought the figure was low-balled. But Campbell had insisted, as recently as the halfway mark of the campaign, that the number was a "maximum." (more)