Explain the logic of this: Telegraph for months to the public, the media, labour leaders, and the 'gimme, gimme' public sector, that government spending will be cut dramatically. Endure the doomsday headlines about how life as we know it will end in British Columbia. And then instead on budget day, increase taxes and increase overall program spending. Huh

Forget that the new B.C. government has every justification for spending cuts, following as it did a group that believed spending would usher in a golden age. (Question: Why is it that tax cuts and less regulation - when the latter arrives - are supposed to work miracles after six months But ten years of tax-and-spending policies that went far beyond Lord Keynes' modest advice, and then predictably failed, have not yet discredited - in some minds anyway - ridiculous notions as government-as-savior Just asking.)

Ignore that and think instead about the public relations debacle of announcing overall spending cuts for months, only to then actually increase spending and taxes in your first budget.

The recent B.C. budget was notable for what it did not contain, say, any overall ministry spending drop within its first year. Look at the B.C. budget and consider ministry spending plus the Premier's office. By that measure, spending will not decline. It will increase - yes - increase - by $33 million. More fun: For some odd reason, the almost defunct Crown corporation Forest Renewal B.C. (FRBC) was included in the budget under the categories noted above. Drop that out of the equation, and again, spending doesn't drop but increases: by $248 million (+1%) this year, to $23.899 billion from $23.8651 billion.

True, total spending will decline (once independent offices, debt interest, the continuing money-vacuum of Skeena Cellulose, and other costs are factored in). But that decline will amount to a neo-conservative, Thatcherite, hard right-wing, ideologically reckless - get this - $81 million drop (from $25.637 billion to $25.556 billion next year). If this is brutal bloodletting of government in British Columbia, get the tax-and-spend crowd a band-aid, because that's all they'll need to survive such "horrendous" and "unprecedented" cuts.

Yes, some budget cuts will occur in some ministries in the new budget year. But again, the reductions are less than one might expect. The spending cuts in the non-health/education ministries amount to 3.2%, offset by a 2.9% rise in the much bigger spending health/education portfolios, thus the overall rise in spending. Most spending and government staff cuts are put off until 2003 and 2004. And the chances of cuts as deep as predicted then are precisely nil. Anyone who doubts that need only look at where program spending has gone since the Liberals took office: up, and up past even their July Fiscal Update estimates which were also increases on last year's NDP budget. Moreover, rare is the government that cuts more in the second and third year of their mandate as opposed to their first.

Over the next three years but especially in this one, Liberal MLAs and the Premier will be blamed for every sparrow that falls from the sky. They will be bashed without respite by those who see government spending as B.C.'s path to economic salvation. All of that, for actual overall ministry spending increases this year of $248 million, and a total spending drop of $81 million. You'd think MLAs rhetorically committed to smaller government might want to actually make deep cuts if they're going to be pilloried for it anyway. You might think that, and apparently, you would be wrong.