Prince George, B.C. – The provincial government is expected to deliver its fourth consecutive balanced budget early this afternoon in Victoria.

University of Northern British Columbia economics professor Dr. Paul Bowles expects the government will make a big deal of it.

“They’ll make a big play of the balanced budget and will probably contrast that with other provinces,” he says. “Particularly Alberta where the downtown in the economy is resulting in the government deciding to spend a lot more and run a deficit.”

But Bowles doubts the Province will be bragging about its record on LNG.

“We’ve seen LNG being touted as our province’s big saviour but we probably won’t hear too much about that as no decisions have been made. It’s certainly behind schedule in terms of previous government predictions.”

Elsewhere, he says the government will likely announce some sort of measures to deal with the red hot housing market in the Lower Mainland and possibly changes to how Medical Service Plan Premiums (MSP) are collected.

“So whether you earn $30,000 or $300,000 your payments are exactly the same,” says Bowles. “So that doesn’t make any sense so they’ll likely be some changes to that.”

Simple tweaks, or tying MSP payments to income?

“They might do some tweaks but B.C. is the only province in Canada which doesn’t have it tied to income so if you’re going to take a look at it, then the sensible conclusion to come to is that it should be tied to income.”