KELOWNA, B.C. – B.C. Premier Christy Clark was in her Okanagan Riding today and appeared on Global Okanagan News at 5 with anchor, Rick Webber.
Here is what the Premier had to say on changes to MSP premiums.
{RW}
The biggest financial impact for the general public, I guess, is cutting the MSP premiums for about half of British Columbia’s families?
{CC}
No. More than that. So, two million will no longer pay. Two million more will have their premiums cut in half. For the remaining 800,000, it will remain the same until we eliminated it altogether. But for most people who are paying today, they will see their premiums go down to the same levels they had in 1993.
{RW}
I noticed that my premium has gone up fairly steadily over the last number of years, so what’s changed that you can start going back down again?
{CC}
The economy’s growing! So, we know we’ve got a surplus, we’ve got a growing economy, 202,000 jobs created. Nobody else in the country’s doing that. And so, my view is when government has a surplus it probably means we have more money than we need and why are we taking it? Let’s give it back to people. So in this case, Rick, it’s a billion dollars tax relief for middle-class people.
{RW}
Okay, you chose not to do the actual tax route, but to do the fee route instead…
{CC}
Well, I wanted to focus on the middle class. And you know, when we did our budget consultation all across the province, budget committee – all parties, people didn’t… we asked them what taxes they’d like us to cut, people didn’t talk much about income taxes. They didn’t talk about PST. They said, ‘get rid of my MSP.’ So this is our first step, is to cut it in half, get it to 1993 levels, put a billion dollars back into people’s pockets, and then the next step will be to eliminate it.
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{RW}
And your business supporters will like it because it’s something like a million British Columbians… their companies pay their premiums. So a break for business.
{CC}
Well it is to. So, for some businesses, they will have a contract where they give it back to their employees. So in some cases, if the business pays half and you’ve got a contract, they might have to give all that back to the employee. And in some cases, the employee pays half: they’ll get that part back. In ever case, everybody will get a tax cut as a result of it.
{RW}
The NDP has helpfully provided some quotes of you regarding the MSP, ‘one of the reasons,’ quoting you, ‘one of the reasons British Columbia has an MSP system, and it has for a long, long time, has been to remind people that healthcare isn’t a free service in our province. Have you changed your mind on that?
{CC}
Well I think that was one of the impacts of it. But the problem is, though, I’ve never liked MSP because I don’t think it’s really very fair… it’s not based on the percentage of income. Some people pay it, some people don’t pay it, their employers pay it, so I thought about how do we fix this? It turns out it’s almost unfixable. The system is just too messed up.
{RW}
You’d have to incorporate it into the income tax system some how…
{CC}
And that’s the NDP plan, right? So what I’m saying is look, let’s eliminate MSP, and you just get the money back. What the NDP is going to argue is that they’ll eliminate MSP, slowly but surely, but they’re going to raise your taxes by the equivalent amount. That is taking money out of one pocket so you can add it to the other. In government, that’s not cutting taxes.
{RW}
John Horgan is calling this, ‘a forget everything budget.’ The quote he put out is, ‘Christy Clark wants people to forget that since she was elected the average family is paying more than $1,000 more for hydro, MSP and ICBC fees alone.’ So, instead of taxes going up we’ve had those kind of fees going up over the course of the year. So what do you respond to that?
{cc}
I would say for hydro, our hydro rate is third lowest in North America. We are down at the rates… when you factor inflation, hydro rates are where they were in 1976. But what the NDP will never talk about, is the fact that in British Columbia, in the last year… 70,000 new jobs. What I’ve been focused on is trying to help the economy create jobs so people can work because I think the most important thing you can have in your life is a really good paying job, allows you to look after your family. And that, you know, economic growth is something we’ve been focused on and NDP never talk creating jobs and I think that’s something we’re going to talk about a lot in the next election. Because that really matters to people.
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