{"id":482118,"date":"2026-02-18T03:26:08","date_gmt":"2026-02-18T03:26:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/482118\/"},"modified":"2026-02-18T03:26:08","modified_gmt":"2026-02-18T03:26:08","slug":"vancouver-business-group-gives-b-c-budget-poor-d-grade","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/482118\/","title":{"rendered":"Vancouver business group gives B.C. budget poor \u2018D\u2019 grade"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>After the provincial government announced this year\u2019s budget, the Greater Vancouver Board of Trade (GVBOT) says that B.C.\u2019s fiscal situation is grim.<\/p>\n<p>The business association assigned the budget a \u201cD\u201d \u2013 the lowest letter grade in over six years.<\/p>\n<p>The GVBOT says it is especially concerned about levy increases by expanding the number of businesses that have to pay the Provincial Sales Tax (PST).<\/p>\n<p>The budget provides that professional services, such as accounting and bookkeeping, architectural, engineering, geoscientist, and commercial real-estate fees, will no longer be exempt from having to <a href=\"https:\/\/vancouver.citynews.ca\/2026\/02\/17\/bc-budget-2026-pst-base-expansion-disappoints-business-group\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">pay PST starting Oct. 1, 2026.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Bridgitte Anderson, GVBOT\u2019s CEO, tells 1130 NewsRadio that modest investments over the last few years are cancelled out by those tax hikes, which will impact everyone in the province.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhen you look at the incentive for the tax credit around manufacturing and processing, it looks like a positive step, but it is more than offset by $4 billion in new taxes,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<p>The GVBOT, which represents business owners across Metro Vancouver, evaluates the budget based on three core principles: fiscal management, economic growth, and competitiveness.<\/p>\n<p>Anderson says that B.C. has dug itself a \u201cdeep hole.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe cost alone to service the debt is at $9 billion. How on earth is any credit rating agency going to look at this and not do another downgrade to British Columbia? And so we were really hoping to see a path to a more sustainable fiscal situation.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>She adds that the government failed to come up with a sustainable plan to stabilize the province\u2019s finances.<\/p>\n<p>The budget is expected to reach a record-high deficit of $13.3 billion in the 2026\/27 fiscal year.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt reflects the deteriorating fiscal situation that we are in and a lack of a path to get us out of that,\u201d Anderson said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After the provincial government announced this year\u2019s budget, the Greater Vancouver Board of Trade (GVBOT) says that B.C.\u2019s&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":482119,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194298],"tags":[49,48,55],"class_list":["post-482118","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-vancouver","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-vancouver"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/482118","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=482118"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/482118\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/482119"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=482118"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=482118"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=482118"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}