Standing in front of hundreds of public officials who are legally prohibited from operating in the red and fretting about how tough it is to reduce the gigantic deficits you are running is a bit … awkward.

But that was Finance Minister Brenda Bailey’s lot in life this week at the Union of B.C. Municipalities convention.

There wasn’t what you’d call a “wave of sympathy” from the local leaders, who spend months every year chopping costs to make expenses match revenue.

It felt more like “cry me a river.”

Premier David Eby’s fiscal record is astonishingly bad, and it’s only this year that it has finally caught up with him. (See the blistering editorial in the Globe and Mail on Thursday)

Nearly every chart associated with the B.C. government’s debt, deficit and borrowing looks like the route profile up Mount Everest now.

Bailey became finance minister in November 2024, and her first budget seven months ago was a tepid affair. She didn’t use the words “debt” or “deficit” once in her keynote budget speech.

This week, she referred to the mandate letters Eby sent cabinet ministers in stressing that cost-cutting is a new high........

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