Vaughn Palmer: A new finance minister, but same old tax-and-spend Eby

VICTORIA — It was nothing like a slow summer news day in the provincial capital on Friday as the New Democrats sent out word of a small but significant shuffle of the senior ministers in the government.

Premier David Eby announced he was moving Brenda Bailey out of the Finance Ministry, prompted by her recent cancer diagnosis and the prospect of weeks of treatment.

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But Finance is heading into a fall of endless meetings to prepare the budget to be presented next February.

The plan is for Bailey to remain on medical leave until the Oct. 5 resumption of the legislature. She’ll return as minister of jobs and economic growth, a portfolio she filled previously.

Until then, Energy Minister Adrian Dix will be doing double duty in the Jobs Ministry because the current occupant, Ravi Kahlon, is moving on to Health.

Not as good news a portfolio as Jobs, where Kahlon presided over the ambitious Look West resource development plan.

Kahlon inherits the challenge of explaining how it is the New Democrats — despite doubling health spending and adding tens of thousands of health care workers — cannot keep emergency wards consistently open in many parts of the province.

Yet, for someone who fancies himself a future NDP leader, the new posting is better than finance, where he’d spend much of his time saying no to spending requests from colleagues.

The new finance minister is Josie Osborne. She moves over from health, the spending-est portfolio in government, to one where she is supposed to hold the line against the outflow of cash from the treasury.

“It is a tough time to be a finance minister ,” said Eby in announcing the appointment, adding “I am proud of Brenda for bending the cost curve.”