“The swift development of effective vaccines, together with stronger than expected economic activity in 2020 has improved the outlook,” Robinson told reporters in a virtual budget presentation from Victoria. Overall spending will increase by $8.7 billion over the three years of the budget, including “permanent funding increases” for health care, education, justice and public safety services and opioid and substance abuse prevention. Overall, Kamloops opposition B.C. Liberal MLAs Todd Stone (Kamloops-South Thompson) and Peter Milobar (Kamloops-North Thompson) felt the budget was disappointing, noting there was no mention of Kamloops-specific items, such as the NDP’s promised cancer centre or a foundry centre for youth.
“From day one, our government has had people’s backs,” she said. “That will never change. We will continue to protect people’s health and livelihoods until the pandemic has passed.”
The government now expects the past year’s deficit to come in at $8.1 billion instead of the previous forecast of $13.6 billion. That’s largely due to higher-than-anticipated revenues, lower spending and the improved performance of ICBC and other agencies, Robinson said.
Still, the government expects to run an even higher deficit of $9.7 billion in the coming year before the fiscal picture begins to improve. It’s unclear when the province will return to balanced budgets.
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The industry is waiting to hear details of how $100 million of new money targeted for tourism recovery announced in the 2021-2022 budget will be spent. It includes support for major attractions. Government officials are working with tourism representatives to “help identify exactly where we need to be investing to support them to get through to the other side to recovery,” Finance Minister Selina Robinson said Tuesday. The other $20 million in new tourism money is targeted for community destination development grants, to develop new infrastructure such as provincial trails and for airport improvements. B.C. announced new restrictions on travel this week as part of its “circuit-breaker” efforts to reduce COVID-19 cases. During the five-week period, tourism operators have agreed not to accept any out-of-province or out-of-health authority bookings for overnight stays for non-essential travel.