STAMER – Until I can see a plan that restores affordability, revitalizes our natural resources, improves health care access, and exercises some kind of fiscal responsibility, I will continue to stand in opposition to this budget

The following is a condensed version of Kamloops – North Thompson MLA Ward Stamer’s speech in the BC Legislature, on Tuesday afternoon (02/24/2026)

I’d like to delve into Budget 2026 with the understanding that, very similar to what we had last year, there seems to be an awful lot of promises in this budget, with not a lot of substance, because, again, it’s a three-year budget.

A lot of times when we’re starting to determine exactly what is going to be spent or provided this fiscal year, there’s a lot of grey area, because it’s a three-year budget. So now people will say, “Well, that’s how we do things around here.”

Well, obviously from the looks of the deficit and the way it’s growing, that’s really not what our side would want to continue. That’s why most of us, if not all of us, have been very critical on the delivery of this budget.

I rise to speak to Budget 2026, a budget that will not define only the fiscal direction of the province but the living reality of our seniors, working families, forestry communities and patients across B.C. Again, budgets are not abstract documents. They’re incredibly important. And no, as the Finance Minister has stated, this is not a balanced budget.

Only the NDP would believe in alternative truths. A balanced budget is revenues and expenses that balance equally, not a bunch of talk about: “We’re trying to balance our investments and keep our economy rolling.” Well, that is not what a balanced budget is, certainly not for people that try to balance their cheque-book on a weekly and monthly basis, like many of us do.

A budget determines whether a senior can afford to remain in their home, a forestry worker can keep their job, a family can manage their mortgage renewal, a patient can find a family doctor and a rural emergency room can stay open. This budget is actually asking British Columbians to pay more, through higher taxes, frozen indexation and expanded consumption taxes while offering no credible path back to balance. Not in the foreseeable future. Certainly not in the next three years.

No comprehensive forest stabilization plan, which we’ll get into a little bit later, and no structural reform to fix a health care system under serious strain.

Our BC deficit is now pegged at $13 billion. Debt continues to outgrow at a pace that was unthinkable a decade ago. Interest payments are now hovering around $5 billion a year. To put this into perspective strictly from a structural perspective, at the end of this year, we’ll have a structural deficit of $154 billion. In three short years, that will climb to $210 billion.

Structural deficits require structural reform, not just new taxes. When a government normalizes deficits, they normalize tax increases. Again, the truth is that only 8 percent of this budget is actually going to cut capital investments. The other 92 percent is basically in expenses.

Just think about that for a minute, when we talked about a balanced budget and the minister trying to balance investing money into our future in infrastructure projects. According to the budget, only 8 percent of our total budget is going into capital expenditures. The other 92 is in expenses and operating costs.

When the government normalizes deficits, it lets everybody down. It lets our seniors down. It lets our retirees down.

When we look at increases in costs — groceries, fuel, prescription medications — many of our seniors are living on fixed incomes. They can’t absorb shocks. They can’t absorb these sudden increases. Yet this budget will increase the lowest income tax bracket, freeze the tax bracket indexation, obviously expand the PST to way more services.

I’d like to talk about that just a little bit, if I could. This is right out of Securing BC’s Future. Last year it was “Let’s build a stronger BC” So now we’ve got a new tag line: Securing BC’s Future.

It says right here: “Removing PST exemptions from some goods and services that were once deemed essential but are not commonly used anymore, such as clothing repair materials, services related to clothing and footwear, knitting, basic cable television and land-line telephone services.” They will now have PST added.

Well, guess who uses just about all those services still? Our seniors. So, thank you very much for doing that. I would suggest that those are essential.

The other thing they need predictability in is in health care and accessibility to that health care. They also need help in more medicines being available in medicare. How many people here in this room know of people that have ended up, as they age, getting into a health care situation and now having to pay five, six, a thousand a month on prescriptions that aren’t covered. 

That has to change.

We have to make sure that it is affordable for our seniors to be able to stay in their homes as long as they can and not have to be going to the hospitals because there’s nowhere else to turn.

Let’s talk about working families if we can for a bit. We were talking about families and some of the significant challenges that we have with working families. I mean, mortgage renewals now are coming back, coming up for significant interest renewals.

Grocery bills? Rising. Child care expenses? Rising. Transportation costs? Rising. Insurance premiums? Rising. As I mentioned earlier, many housing insurance premiums have doubled in just a few years.

Again, our wage growth hasn’t been outpacing inflation. Is there anybody in this room or anybody out there in TV land who honestly believes that our inflation rate is 3 percent? I don’t. I don’t think any of my colleagues do. That’s the challenge. There’s no way, if we don’t get a rein on some of these costs, that we’re going to be able to not only afford it for ourselves but for our families and for our seniors.

I also wanted to talk a little bit about some of the capital plan projects that have been delayed.

This is a government that doesn’t like saying “delayed.” In their futures budget, they talk about delivering beds more efficiently, long-term beds. But they’re going to adjust the timing of the delivery of those because they’ve now determined — and it’s because of their policies — that they can no longer afford $1.8 million per bed. These are the facilities that may be affected on the timing of delivery, with no end dates: Abbotsford, Campbell River, Chilliwack, Kelowna, Delta, Fort St. John, Squamish.

They also say “re-paced”. Again, they don’t like using the word “delayed.” Now they’ve got a new word. It’s called “re-paced” or “TBC.” They haven’t even told us what that is. It could be continued, cancelled, whatever.

Yes, I will thank the government for finally — after almost, I think, 30 years since it started between subsequent governments — getting a cancer clinic in Kamloops. I want to thank the government for at least starting our cancer clinic in Kamloops.

But again, as the member for Kamloops Centre and myself have said, they should be to the same standard as what’s being built in Nanaimo and in Surrey, and it’s not happening. We want to make sure that we’re on the same level playing field as all our municipalities of similar size. We should be making sure that that cancer clinic is built properly.

Then when we talk about health care. Yes, the government is trying to make improvements in health care. We have seen more doctors added to the health care opportunities. Yes, slowly people are getting access to doctors, but I think we’re still at almost a million people that don’t have a family doctor.

Even if you have a family doctor and you have a child that has a fever tonight, there’s a pretty good chance that you’re not going to be able to go see your doctor. You’re going to have to go to an emergency room and could wait for six or eight or ten hours just to get a prescription for something to bring that fever down. Those are the kinds of challenges that we have in this province.

We need more walk-in clinics, and we’re not seeing those results, specifically on the investments that this government is saying that they’re making. We’ve got seniors that are on longer wait-lists for everything from knee replacements to hip replacements.

Again, when we talk about debt, if we start looking at what’s going to happen in the next two or three years, and we start approaching in the neighbourhood of 8 to 9 to 10 percent of our overall budget being used for interest payments. That is going to diminish the ability of us to be able to continue with the service levels that we are enjoying today. That’s the realization of what happens when you start growing the debt exponentially, and that’s exactly where we are right now.

The other side (NDP) will talk about ‘growing the economy’.

That was part of our election campaign, and we had ways and we had policy to show exactly how that would occur.

Now they’re just trying to pick up the ball and say: “Yeah, we’re going to try to do that too.”

Well, if any indication of how they’re going to be able to do it, was last Friday at the Board of Trade, there was a resounding NO from the business community.

“We don’t believe you. We don’t trust you. We’re not going to do that. We’re not going to follow your policies.”

Opposing this budget is not opposing the comparisons between what we would do and what they would do. Now, we hear lots of chirping from the other side about, “Oh, you guys would do this, and you guys would do that,” without really looking strongly at our policy.

During the last election, one of the falsehoods put forth was that we were going to cut $3 billion in health care. That was a complete fallacy.

It was… there’s another word for an exaggeration ...but I’m not allowed to use it here. That’s exactly what it was.

When we asked the media, “Why don’t you ask the Premier where he’s getting this $3 billion from? Quantify it. Explain where they’re going to cut,” he didn’t have an answer. So, the media just walked away.

That’s unfortunate, because we were going to expand health care. We were going to change the way health care is delivered in this province, and we’d be utilizing equipment that isn’t even being used a hundred percent of the time right now. But because of the system that’s in place, we can’t use it. Those are some of the structural changes that this side would do when we are government.

When we have a fiscal budget that’s done responsibly, it has measurable outcomes. This budget does not.

We should have health care outcomes.

We should have rural economic stabilization.

We should have stabilization across the board.

How much money was, in this budget, identified to all those municipalities that are trying to balance their budget and all the pressures that they’re receiving right now in water and sewer and schools and roads and hospitals? We’re only seeing a fraction of that, and we haven’t seen any new money in this year’s budget. None whatsoever.

Budget 2026 expands spending without adequately restoring affordability. It increases debt without a clear path to balance.

The minister is famous in saying: “Well, we’re going to balance the budget someday.”

Well, when is that someday? I don’t know if I’ll live long enough, if this government stays in power, for that ever to happen.

It fails to deliver transformative health care reform despite record spending — another billion dollars a year this year in health care alone. It neglects a comprehensive forest recovery strategy. For seniors that are struggling between groceries and heat, many of them are now looking at food banks. I’m almost ashamed to say that. After working so hard, they’ve had the result of that.

It’s disappointing for so many families that are stretched thin, families that are trying to work within their means, working extra shifts, trying to balance childcare, trying to balance everything under the sun and still having a tough time at the end of the month. Reminds me of the old saying, “there’s lots of month at the end of the money.”

British Columbians deserve better, and until we, I, can see a plan that restores affordability, revitalizes our natural resources, including forestry, improves health care access and exercises some kind of fiscal responsibility, I will continue to stand in opposition to this budget.