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Some B.C. budgets have big spending announcements, tax cuts, or bold new directions that inspire excited press releases from different partisans or stakeholders.
The 2026 B.C. budget was not one of them.
“A budget that managed to alienate everybody,” said Marc Lee, a senior economist with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, who laughed as he summed up the vibe among stakeholders who attended the budget announcement in Victoria.
While there was some hyperbole, it was hard to find a group that seemed excited about Finance Minister Brenda Bailey’s mix of mild tax increases, 15,000 job cuts, and three straight years of projected deficits over $10 billion.
In her budget speech on Tuesday, B.C. Finance Minister Brenda Bailey said the plan to improve government efficiency and rein in spending includes public sector cuts while still protecting ‘vital front-line services.’ The public sector is forecast to shrink by 15,000 full-time employees over three years under the budget.
“This is absolutely a budget that’s bad news for B.C. taxpayers who are already struggling to make ends meet,” said Carson Binda, B.C. director for the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, which is historically adverse to NDP spending policies.
“This government needs to put down the taxpayer credit card, pick up a pair of scissors, and start finding real savings.”
Iglika Ivanova, co-executive director at B.C. Policy Solutions, which advocates for progressive policy solutions, said the province is on a “slow retreat” from public services and leaving families behind.
“We have an affordability crisis, we have a housing crisis … and we have this government who says, ‘Hold on, we’re gonna, just kind of tread water.’”
B.C. Real Estate Association chief economist Brendon Ogmundson shared his disappointment on LinkedIn posting “my initial feelings about BC Budget 2026 summed up” with a link to the 1992 Sloan song Underwhelmed.
But while the budget may not have overwhelmed people, it fits in with a general philosophical strategy the NDP has taken to budgets throughout its nine years in office.
For the first time since 2008, there will be a universal tax raise in B.C., unveiled in the 2026 budget on Tuesday. The budget also sees thousands of jobs slashed in the public sector. As Katie DeRosa reveals, the plan comes as the province stares at a deficit projection of more than $13 billion.
A history of ‘balance’
In past budgets, NDP finance ministers have often used the framing of being middle-of-the-road — failing to provide the major social reforms that progressives have called for while not tightening their belt as some conservatives might want, even if expenditures have generally risen faster than inflation.
“Our focused, balanced approach is working,” said Finance Minister Carole James in 2018, one year into the NDP’s tenure, projecting a mild surplus.
Four years later, in 2022, Finance Minister Selina Robinson said “our balanced approach makes the investments necessary to respond in a fiscally responsible manner,” while projecting a $5.5-billion deficit.
On Tuesday, four years later, Finance Minister Brenda Bailey spoke in a similar manner.
“This is a prudent budget,” she said, arguing that the province was trying to “balance” the two views of getting the deficit under control while protecting core services.
“This isn’t about rolling out new shiny programs … but we’re not making those cuts that people are calling for.”
Does the context matter?
Given that, one could argue the government’s approach is once again “balanced.”
It is cutting three per cent of public sector jobs, freezing new $10-a-day childcare spots, delaying new long-term care facilities, and making mild increases to a wide variety of taxes, all without reducing spending in any ministry or cancelling any major programs.
“The context matters,” said Lee, one of the few stakeholders in the lockup to be less critical of the budget, even though he wasn’t happy about the reductions in public services and tax increases.
“We do have room to move. We can’t do these [deficits] every year forever. But the numbers are still reasonable relative to GDP,” he said.
But the context also matters financially: when the NDP talked about “balance” in the past, it came with mild surpluses or post-pandemic deficits.
Now it does so with a total debt projected to rise by $80 billion in the next three years.
It means the government needs to hope for a more “balanced” response from the general public than stakeholders who reviewed the budget today — otherwise it will face not only fiscal consequences, but potentially political ones too.
