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Something Ventured
May 6th, 2005
Four More Years
“In this life you can lead
If you only believe
In order to achieve
What you need
You can never give up” – Shaggy, Hope
With all eyes on the mess that is our federal government right now and an
economy that is chugging along, the BC election is almost a non-event. Four
years ago I wrote a column just before that fateful election dissecting what the
NDP had done for the technology industry in BC in its 10 year rule. Their
efforts for our industry can be summed up in the following paragraph:
Now, to be sure, the technology sky was falling in spring 2001 and it was clear
that with everything else going poorly in the economy a tight fiscal policy was
the best course for the new Liberal government. Even with that bleak picture
and very tough decisions that would make the government unpopular, Premier
Campbell followed through on his promise to focus on the future of BC and
create a Premier’s Technology Council (there is no Premier’s Forestry Council,
by the way) that he personally would chair. He made tax code changes,
employment act changes and generally listened to the PTC’s recommendations
for change. This is about 1000x more than the previous administration, which
is odd because the technology industry is generally non-polluting, young and
urban in its make up and very successful in BC in the 90’s despite zero
attention from the government. I guess the NDP ignores us because tech isn’t
unionized. Hmmmm. I don’t want to rant on unions, but if you go see the
movie version of Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by my favourite authour,
Douglas Adams, you will see that the union mentality is well represented by the
Vogons. Mediocrity is celebrated and red tape bogs everything down to a
humorous crawl. Wait… the NDP acted exactly the same way in power. And
Carole James… no, I’ll get in trouble.
What about the performance of the BC Liberals then? Why should we vote for
them as technology workers? Why not the Green Party (the only mention of
technology in their platform comes here:
http://www.greenparty.bc.ca/frames/frame404.html) ? You should also know
that the Green Party seems to have the same prevailing thought as NDP that
big corporations are essentially evil. But they at least acknowledge that
contract, casual and part-time make up a big part of technology workers and
the industry needs special treatment.
Let’s look at what has happened during the BC Liberal’s four years:
-
Technology weighted NASDAQ – On May 17th 2001, the NASDAQ was at
2,086, down from 13 months prior when it was a ridiculous 5,000+.
Today it’s at 1,986. Hmmm, not much lift there… but it bottomed in
2002 at 1,280. This is the trend of the economy as a whole during the
Liberals current mandate. It got really tough in the first year, then it
recovered nicely and seems much stronger today.
-
A few of the local successes in technology were public before the Liberals
took power. PMC-Sierra was at $39.28 on May 17th, 2001, it is $7.52
today with no splits. Ballard Power was $88.50 on May 17th, 2001, it is
$4.54 today, again with no splits. Angiotech was split-adjusted $18.50
on May 17th, 2001 and it is $17.90 today. MDA was $25.50 on the 17th of
May 2001 and it is $28.00 today. Once again, with the exception of
Ballard, these stocks went much lower in the late 2001, early 2002 period
and have been steady or recovering since.
-
BC’s GDP at market prices grew a mediocre 0.9% in 2001 (essentially
recession level) and then had 3.3%, 2.5% and 3.9% growth in the
following three years. This is one indication that the economy is healthy
and growing again and forecasts for 2005 are higher than 4% in some
economist’s minds.
-
According to BC Stats, technology employment was 27,400 workers
going into 2001 and was 31,800 workers going onto 2004 (the most
recent count). The High Technology GDP in BC has come down from
$3.7B at the end of 2000 to $3.5B at the end of 2003 (my guess is that
2004 was higher…).
-
The most interesting indicator in the economy and one that can be most
closely tied to BC Liberal policy is overall capital investment. The
government has created many policies towards getting businesses to
spend money in the province. In 2000, the last complete year of NDP
rule, it was $21.8B in BC. In 2004, the number had grown to $29.1B, a
34% increase. Considering that there was an 8% increase over the five
years of Glen Clark/Ujjal Dosanjh NDP, this is a roaring success and
should payoff down the road.
-
The 2010 Winter Olympic Games were awarded, as has the 2006 World
Junior Hockey Championship, the 2005 Grey Cup, the 2006 World Men’s
Curling Championships, the 2007 FIFA Under 17 Soccer World
Tournament and a host of other world class events.
-
Tourism dove in the aftermath of 9/11 but has recovered very strongly in
BC. The BC Liberals accomplished what the NDP could not do and got the
Trade and Convention Centre expansion started to attract big
conventions and trade shows, including some key technology events,
boosting tourism dollars nicely.
The commodity prices of oil and lumber have spawned the greatest recovery
for BC as our economy is still largely commodity based. The NDP is right in
saying that the prime reason for the economy being charged up now is due
to these factors and not particular government policies. But the party ruling
over a booming economy almost never loses (Tony Blair just rode that to
victory despite the Iraq question in the UK). So the best thing that the BC
Liberals did was fix the election date and have it fortuitously land at this
particular part of the economic cycle.
Gordon Campbell may look like some sort of reptile and his discretion when
having eight glasses of wine for dinner is not an example for us or our kids,
but he will be our leader through 2009 as we build out for the Olympics.
Most importantly for we technology sector folks, he will continue to listen
and act for us. And that alone is worth my vote.