It is a fairly predictable shower of spin after every throne speech or budget. Various organizations and political parties immediately supply the media with their responses. In the case of budgets by the provincial Liberals, the response is predictable — the government puts out a budget, the opposing NDP party can find all sorts of things wrong with it, the BC Chamber of Commerce supports it (cautiously, this time), unions are against it, private business is generally in support.

Such was the case Tuesday when the provincial government came out with the first post-Olympics budget. The Olympic talk in the budget involved promises to take advantages of opportunities presented by the Games. The government promised not to decrease funding to health or education, in fact raised the per student funding by a little over $100 per student. They also promised to commit every dollar raised through the Harmonized Sales Tax (HST) and four other revenue streams to health services funding when the HST comes into effect July 1, 2010.

Smoke and mirrors, says Columbia River Revelstoke MLA Norm Macdonald.

“We’re still trying to figure out exactly how but there’s clearly going to be cuts on the ground in Forestry,” Macdonald said. “Part of it is how they budget for forest fires, but certainly people on the ground will be lost.”

Macdonald, the NDP critic for Forestry says there has been a failure in the Forestry portfolio and it cannot all be blamed on the poor forest economy.

“There is nothing they can point to as managing for the future. There are forest health issues that need to be addressed and they are stepping away from their responsibilities.

As for the assertion that funding remains the same in health and education, Macdonald says that may be true but the government knows that current levels of funding are not adequate and will not meet the needs of health and education budgets.

Macdonald reserves his biggest criticism for the HST being targets for health costs.

“It’s ridiculous,” he said. “Public Affairs didn’t get cut. There are well over 200 people there managing the government’s spin. It’s ridiculous to try to spin the HST as related to health now. There’s no mechanism to make sure the HST is spent in one area, it all goes to general revenue. It’s a strange way to try to spin it. It’s taken them seven or eight months to try to convince people on this - they’re desperate. People are very opposed to the HST.”

All in all, Macdonald is not impressed.

“It’s all about service cuts and the HST and it’s completely inconsistent with what was said before the election.”