The BC Liberals cooked the books for the sake of optics? Ah, say it isn’t so. They lie, cheat and steel, so cooking the books isn’t all that surprising.

Just my opinion, but they haven’t yet hit the lows the NDP have hit. C’mon, Conservative Party, git yer butts in gear!

With this one the BC Liberals have now sunk deeper than Enbridge’s crude oil gunk in the Kalamazoo.

John Doyle is reporting the BC government has understated its deficit by more than half-a-billion dollars.

You are not telling us anything new, as just a citizen I could have told you that when Gordon Scambell was in 10 years ago!
The thing is, is anyone going to do anything about it? No one will be held accountable.
Everyone in the Liberal caucus will be given raise’s and promotion’s. It makes no wonder that there is voter apathy.

Generally Accepted Accounting Standards are only for accountants, auditors and other people concerned with accurate and consistent financial reporting to worry about. That stuff isn’t important for the Provincial Government it would seem, LOL.

Generally Accepted Accounting Principles that should be! Yikes, long day. LOL.

“Doyls says, “In 13 of the last 17 years,”

Yep, the NDP was very good at cooking the books too, that’s what the above blip is hinting at!

If we assume the NDP was shady every year, that would take away 5 of the 13. So the Libs are at 8 outta 12. 67% way to go team!

Really? I don’t believe that could happen,our BC liberals don’t tell lies.

The method of bookkeeping used by the senior levels of government is deceptive in any case, so unless that’s going to be corrected, what the Auditor-General is telling us now really doesn’t amount to much.

Governments don’t use double-entry ‘accrual’ accounting, the same system that’s used by every other business they often compare themselves to. They have nothing that compares to a business’s Capital Account, and we never see any figures that would equate to the Provincial, or National, Assets. All we see is the Liabilities ~ the Provincial or National Debts.

Socredible is right in that governments do have different methods of accounting than private sector organizations. That said, I don’t think you can say they are “deceptive”. They are different because governments are not for profit entities so the manner in which their accounting systems developed reflect that.

I don’t think the issue here is whether the accounting systems could be improved (although that could certainly be debated), I think the issue is that the statements do not meet the criteria and standards that have been established.

To clarify, the audit opinion provided means that certain parts of the statements don’t meet GAAP, the rest would.

It is true that governments are not (supposed to be) “for profit entities”, NMG, but under the rules and conventions of double-entry accrual accounting ‘profit’ is NOT defined as an excess of Receipts over Disbursements, but is always finalised on the Balance Sheet as an increase in ASSETS over LIABILITIES. A Company’s Profit and Loss Statement is NOT analogous to what that Company took in in ‘cash’ over the fiscal period.

The conception most people have of a balanced Budget is that the government is funding all its ongoing expenditure through taxation, and not going further into debt. This would mean that ALL government expenditure, much of it for Capital assets lasting years into the future (roads, bridges, schools, hospitals, etc.), is supposed to be recovered fully from taxation in one and the same fiscal period. No business could, or does, operate this way. Their prices would have to be astronomical the first year they opened for business! So much so, that no one would, or likely even could, buy off them. Can you imagine Save-On Foods, for instance, trying to pay for the whole new store, and all the Capital costs entailed in building and equipping it ~ a store that might last for twenty years or more ~ from the sales it makes in the FIRST year? No one would be ‘saving’ anything there if that were the case, I guarantee you that! But that’s (just part) of what we’re faced with in the current inane way our governments do their books. And we wonder why our taxes are so high! Lets get some accounting that actually REFLECTS the real physical FACTS attendant in the economy. Then we can start to progress to the full potential this Province and country is more than capable of physically achieving for the greater good of ALL.

GAAP standards change over time, they are not set in stone, and quite often nowadays there are actual things happening in the world in the way in which certain things are done that the ‘accounting’ hasn’t quite caught up to yet.

Governments are not immune from (having to) do many things in ways previous governments never did things when it comes to financing themselves. This is nothing new. And though I’m not a fan of the BC Liberals in any way, shape or form, they are not really doing anything here that the NDP didn’t do, too. Or other governments, at least dating back to, and most certainly including, WAC Bennett’s Socreds.

So long as we are unwilling or unable to look at the basic problem (of why each successive cycle of production/consumption is not fully ‘financially’ self-liquidating), we are fated to see Auditors-General increasingly chastising governments for deviation from GAAP.

The NDP did not destroy BC’s economy. They did not get transfer payments because the federal Liberals would not give them any so our economy would collapse. The BC NDP, however, rose above these financial problems and found new markets for its products and left the province with a billion dollar surplus, which the BC LIberals quickly lost when they came to power and have never recovered.

Yes astro, the BC NDP was so proficient at finding us new markets that BC became a “have not” province and started receiving federal transfer dollars as such… Good grief

“but they haven’t yet hit the lows the NDP have hit”

LMFAO!!! that’s funny!!!

Yup, the NDP were so good they got reduced to 2 seats in 2001.

No matter what argument you use, or how long you argue, you can never convince most people in BC that the NDP has anything to offer this Province and its people other than more tax increases

The make up of the NDP by its very nature make them unable to be proficient in Government. They are for all intents and purposes, a band of socialists who for the most part work for the Government or some Government funded entity. They have no vision, beyond finding more tax dollars so they can increase their salaries. To say that they are idea impaired would be an understatment.

How much has BC received in xfer payments since the Libs have been in power? Just askin

Ooooooh the socialist hordes! Wouldn’t want an economy like Norway’s now would we?

Norway has offshore oil. Would the NDP allow us to drill for some offshore here?

BTW, just what is the price of gasoline in Norway? Where, so I understand, the State owns the oil company that extracts that offshore oil. Do Norwegians pay substantially less for their gasoline and other petroleum products than other countries? How about other taxes? Lesser or greater than here?

I’m guessing you know the answer to these questions, socred.
High fuel costs and big time taxes, a great social safety net, and high environmental standards, full employment, surplus budgets, and a large
Legacy fund. I’m not saying the Norge way is perfect but it might make sense to look at how the other big oil producing nations manage their resource, versus copying our neighbors to the south or selling off our assets to foreign interests. Shouldn’t we maximize profits from our resources?

I’m guessing you know the answer to these questions, socred.
High fuel costs and big time taxes, a great social safety net, and high environmental standards, full employment, surplus budgets, and a large
Legacy fund. I’m not saying the Norge way is perfect but it might make sense to look at how the other big oil producing nations manage their resource, versus copying our neighbors to the south or selling off our assets to foreign interests. Shouldn’t we maximize profits from our resources?

Really? I don’t believe that could happen,our BC liberals don’t tell lies.

Actually, govsux, I didn’t know the answers to those questions. Though I guessed they would be like what you’ve confirmed. I like the way the Alaskans have dealt with their State’s oil revenues, which are invested in the Alaska Permanent Fund (protecting the ‘capital’), and the revenues then generated from those investments are paid out periodically to every Alaskan citizen as a dividend (living on the ‘income’).

This can be a substantial payout when those investments are doing well, and each citizen of Alaska is free to do with this dividend whatever they chose.

I have a feeling that if we were to do things the Norwegian way, a substantial amount of what should be paid directly to each of us as individuals would end up being mis-used by those in government in an effort to make themselves look like they were doing something for us we could just as easily do for ourselves, once we could individually afford to do it.

http://thetyee.ca/News/2012/07/25/Norway-Oil-Wealth/

Sorry about the bad link, I’ll figure it out.
The article is biased, no doubt, but some valid points nonetheless.

Well govsux, after reading that article, to me, I think it points out the same fetish with “full-employment” exists in Norway that exists here.

The Norwegians worry about the so-called ‘Dutch disease’ and that their other exports will be priced out of world markets because of oil, and employment will suffer.

They foolishly elevate the making of work as the ultimate end for mankind to achieve, rather than as work should be, merely a functional means to an end ~ that properly being the provision of all the things we need and desire.

They mix up a Biblical moral proposition from the 1st Century, “Let no man amongst ye eat unless he has first worked,” an entirely reasonable proposition in an age when every man HAD to be harnessed to the plow, because there wouldn’t BE enough food grown otherwise, with the economic proposition of today, where scarcity has been physically vanquished, but ‘financially’ the accounting doesn’t quite know how to represent that yet.

So instead of changing the ‘figures’ to fit the physical ‘facts’, what do we do, in our collective state of conditioned moral confusion? We try to change the ‘facts’ to fit the ‘figures’! And make artificially scarce (through exhorbitant prices and taxes) what actually exists in bountiful abundance.

This acts as a disincentive to the very thing we often say we’re trying to achieve ~ a wiser use of natural resources. For we focus on ‘making work’ ~ having “full employment”, at any and all costs ~ instead of providing a sufficiency for all, as ‘individuals’, based on the potentialities of ever improving technological progress. All because we think the rules governing those ‘figures’ are somehow set in stone, and can’t be modified. Well, they aren’t. But God only knows what more we’ll all have to endure before we finally find that out.