Oh, Yeah... That.

So the province of British Columbia had both a Throne Speech and a new budget foisted upon them in the past few days. You'll notice the difference in headlines, what with one being a somewhat different colour than the other.

But not to fear! The main budgeting for all the enviromental promises made in the throne speech will be showing up next fiscal year, after the Liberals have had a chance for their "climate action team" to study how to actually do things like cutting greenhouse emissions by 30%... You know, a promise first, plan later sort of thing.

The hope is that with the two very different statements made this close together, in the near future they will be conflated in people's minds, turning into one and the same thing: "Didn't he promise to fund that?"

But Friends! Pay those Nervous Nellies never no mind! We have the solution, and it looks an awful lot like past solutions:

Increase taxes.

It's not called that, of course: it's a "surcharge" for those folks who use hydro or natural gas... which is pretty much everyone in B.C. Again, this falls into the province's habit of placing bad news early in the news cycle (50% increase in Medical Services Premiums, anyone?) in the hopes that everyone would forget about them by the time an election comes around. Post-secondary tuition hasn't come down at all, after increasing from $452 million in 2002 to almost $1 billion this year. Anyone notice?

But there's still the issure of whether the fee/tax/surcharge will go through: the B.C. Utilities Commission still has to approve of it first. So as it stands, we've got another year to wait before any serious enviromental funding makes an appearance at all.

Maybe they should have given it more than a week to figure it out.

P.S.: Maybe they could pay for it with a bit of loose change lying around!