VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) – BC’s new finance minister is warning next February’s provincial budget could be even tighter because of falling natural gas revenues.

“It hasn’t gotten any easier,” says Mike de Jong, standing with workers at the Interfor lumber mill in Surrey this afternoon.  “In fact, in ways that you’ll learn in a few days, it has actually gotten a little tougher.”

“Revenue from the natural gas sector is down,” he says.  “That obviously takes a challenging fiscal circumstance and makes it even that much more challenging.”
    
De Jong says he will provide more specific numbers when he reveals the government’s latest quarterly fiscal update, scheduled for Thursday.

“It won’t actually be a huge surprise to people who track these things closely,” adds the veteran MLA, appointed Finance Minister last Wednesday by Premier Christy Clark in a cabinet shuffle.
    
In July, then-finance minister Kevin Falcon warned falling natural gas prices would bite more than $200-million out of the budget, but said it would be offset by what he called safety measures and an uptick in other commodities.

De Jong is under pressure to deliver a balanced budget in February before the May 2013 provincial election.

Recent polls have put the governing Liberals well behind the NDP.
    
De Jong also trumpeted the BC Jobs plan at the mill, launched last September. He says Statistics Canada shows BC leading the nation in job growth, with 51,700 new jobs between August 2011 and 2012.

He adds the estimated investment for all big projects under construction in BC is almost $80-billion, up nearly $12-billion since June 2011.

But, NDP Finance critic Bruce Ralston argues the Liberal government’s jobs numbers are misleading.

“[They've] tacked on the August 2011 numbers,” Ralston says.  “The plan was only announced in September, and [in] August there was a blip up in August, so it was about 27,900 jobs in that August, so it makes their overall year-to-year numbers look better.”

“This is one of the reasons why people don’t have a lot of faith in the BC Liberals anymore, because they’re just not credible and this is another good example of it.”
    
Ralston argues the Liberals have failed to keep up with apprenticeship training and offering more opportunities at community colleges, universities and PhD programs.