 Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining me here. Today, I'm going to walk you through the budget. So we're going to start with something that I think is important, which there's been a few people that have talked about fiscal credibility. I actually think fiscal credibility is something very, very important. I can tell you that in the world we live in today, politicians aren't going to be judged by what they say or what they promise, but actually what they do. And they'll be judged by their track record. So I want to take a minute to just talk about track record. Now, we were elected in 2001. We inherited a structural deficit, as many of you will recall. And you will note that in 2001, we had a budget deficit target there that we outperformed in 2001 substantially. You will see in 0203, same thing. The deficit's larger because we undertook a 25% personal income tax cut, you may recall. But once again, in 0203, we outperformed the budget target at public accounts. And of course, public accounts being the end of the year where you roll up and finalize all the numbers. 0304, same thing, outperformed budget target. 0405, outperformed significantly. And then during the next few years, while we were running surpluses, we were paying down debt and reducing taxes to put British Columbia in a more competitive position. You can see in 0809, the storm clouds of what became a global economic meltdown were already being evidenced in the numbers there. We just very slightly outperformed our budget target in 0809. And 0910 is where we got it wrong. 0910 is where, you'll recall, we had predicted a $495 million deficit. We ended up at a $1.5 billion deficit, so we're off by $1.3 billion. And folks, I'll tell you, nobody is happy to be off, particularly by that amount. But the one thing I can take some solace in is the fact that virtually every other jurisdiction on the planet also missed targets during the midst of the global economic meltdown that was triggered by the Lehman Brothers Collapse. Now in 1011, what is interesting is you can see we outperformed the other way. So we had a $1.7 billion forecast deficit. We outperformed by $1.4 billion to the good. We almost balanced our budget in 1011. And I think that that is why British Columbia has enjoyed seven successive credit rating upgrades with the credit rating agencies. It is not because we talk a talk. It's not because we make promises. It's because we deliver consistently on outperforming our budget targets. That is what fiscal credibility is built on. You may not always get it right. You hope to always get it right. But I think our record of performance demonstrates how important that is in meeting, in fact, exceeding our targets in every single year except the global economic meltdown year of 910. Now the next slide shows the historical debt to GDP track. And again, the same is true for our taxpayers supported debt to GDP ratio. So we have consistently overperformed. But what is instructive about this slide and debt to GDP, as you know, is a key criteria that credit rating agencies use to determine the credit worthiness of sovereigns like Canada or British Columbia or Germany or what have you. And what you can see here is that over the years, we have successfully been paying down debt, reducing the debt to GDP. And we got ourselves very low until we had the global economic meltdown. And then we stepped forward with a significant capital investment program to make sure that as we were facing those very uncertain economic times that we were heavily investing in the market, particularly in capital. And it was very strategic. It was investments in transportation infrastructure to expand the gateway. It was investments in hospitals, in schools, in the kind of infrastructure post-secondary education that will give us a strategic benefit down the road. And the difference is that British Columbia is in a position where we could afford to do that, where many other jurisdictions don't have that same ability. The other thing that you'll find bond rating agencies in the financial markets look at very carefully is what they call the revenue or the interest bite. And that is how much interest are you paying per revenue dollar that you collect? And in British Columbia, over this next current three-year plan, it's about 4.2 cents per dollar of revenue. It's very low, especially in the world that we're in today. So the next slide just summarizes British Columbia's credit rating. As I mentioned, we've had seven successive credit rating upgrades. We now enjoy a AAA credit rating. And that, by the way, is a very shrinking group of jurisdictions that enjoy a AAA credit rating. And you can see there that outside of Germany and Canada, and there's some others in the world. I'm not trying to suggest there isn't. But you can see that other major countries, including France, the United States, Japan, Ontario, Italy, Greece, of course, you hear a lot about. But they've had sometimes single or multiple credit rating downgrades. And the reason why we believe a triple credit rating is important, and the reason why we want to make sure BC maintains that, is that it means that we can borrow money in expanded markets, because we're a AAA sovereign. We can borrow, for example, central banks will buy BC bonds, where if we weren't a AAA, they would not. It allows us to borrow more cheaply, and we can use those savings, which can be in the tens of millions of dollars to invest in services or to continue to pay it on debt. But it is worth preserving, particularly in the kind of world environment that we find ourselves in today. And that goes to my next slide, which is the kind of challenges we face in the world. You'll recall back in July when I reported out on public accounts when we had that very good outcome of outperforming our deficit target by 1.4 billion. I said to the assembled media at that time that there were two real big concerns that I still had. One was the European economic situation. I felt that it was essentially, at that time, I think I described it as a slow-motion train wreck, but that it was really concerning for me, because it could spiral out of control and be a factor that we have no control over. The second issue had to do with the US situation. They were involved in debt negotiations at the time, and I said I was very concerned about what the outcome may be in terms of the United States economic performance. And you can see there at the beginning that first graph shows in January 2011 sort of the consensus forecast in Europe was for a 1.6% real GDP growth. You can see now in January 2012, the consensus forecast is in fact that they will spend 2012 in a recession with negative 0.3% real GDP. So prudence is important in an uncertain world, and certainly the situation in Europe is complex. There's been some encouraging signs, but again you have to be careful because it is Europe. Things can go up and down, but they are forecasting about a 1% real GDP growth in 2013 in Europe. The next slide is the US consensus outlook, and you'll see again back in January 2011 the consensus outlook was 3.3% in real GDP growth, and that started to trend down. And you'll recall in November when I met with the Economic Forecast Council and I held a second quarterly report, I said at the time I was not prepared to commit to a balanced budget. And the reason I couldn't responsibly do that I felt at the time was I didn't know whether the bottom was gonna continue to fall. I saw what was happening in Europe. I could see the trend lines in the United States, and I just could not responsibly make that commitment, so I said that I was gonna wait until the end of January and really watch what the numbers were, particularly end of November, December, and perhaps some early numbers in January. And I did spend a lot of time watching those key indicators. Now the good news is that we have seen some, in some cases almost dramatic turnaround in the United States, but I don't wanna be overly confident here, but we have seen some good numbers, particularly in rail shipments, we've seen some good numbers in terms of reduced numbers of the public that are applying for welfare benefits in the US. We've seen strengthening in the job numbers. The kind of things that have now seen the consensus forecast in January, 2012 has now improved a little bit from what it was in October and started to improve in November, but it's now 2.2%. And so they are in a sense forecasting that 2012 will be at 2.2. What's important for all of you in this room to know is that when we put together our budget for 2012, we are assuming a growth rate in the US GDP of 1.4%. So we are significantly below what the consensus average is, but again, we think that that's important that we build in that kind of conservatism into our budget. The next slide shows what the employment situation is and obviously the employment situation in British Columbia has been pretty good. We've got the highest level of employment that we've had in history. Last year we created 18,000 new jobs in British Columbia, roughly 50-50 in terms of full-time and part-time. But again, it doesn't mean we're out of the woods, but we are enjoying now a 6.9% unemployment rate and I think with the right focus that we are maintaining in this budget on growing the economy and making sure that we create a climate of confidence, we do feel that the employment picture is something where we may enjoy some upside. The next slide talks about retail sales and I think this is important to recognize. In fact, if you drew a dotted line up there in 2010, you would note that that's when the HST was introduced and you've heard some talk that since the HST, you know, nobody's buying anything and people are holding off purchases, you can see that there's never been a time in history when we've seen more consumer spending in British Columbia. So I just think that's helpful to have a little bit of perspective. We've got good consumer spending in British Columbia. You'll also notice that we bounce back quicker than most of the other provinces from the downturn and the reason I would argue is that our economic fundamentals are much more competitive allowing us to rebound a lot quicker than some of the other jurisdictions. Having said that, I do believe that we are in a period where we are going to see slow growth for some time to come. It is not going to be the typical recoveries we used to see that were often called V-shaped recoveries. We're not planning for that, at least in British Columbia at all. Others can be more optimistic. We're certainly not going to be. The next one shows housing starts and again, housing starts have been generally flat. We saw in January in uptick a 26% start in housing starts that's encouraging but what we're seeing across the country is a slowing in housing starts and so it will not be a surprise to you that you will see that there's been some emphasis in this budget on the kind of things that are going to bring confidence and encouragement to the housing sector. The HST announcement that I made last week was a big part of that, raising the threshold from 525,000 to 850,000 effective April 1st this year will be an important signal to the housing sector and more importantly to purchasers that there has never been a better time to go and purchase a new home. Also with the secondary and vacation home sector, the fact that they are now also able to take advantage of that $850,000 exemption amount is going to be very, very significant, we believe, for the housing sector. The next one is extremely important because when you're putting together a budget, your GDP assumptions are perhaps the most critical assumption that you can make in the budget and as you will note, we have an economic forecast council, it's made up of 15 of some of the most sophisticated economists from around the country. They come together, they look at all the different numbers that I haven't got time to go into but essentially they come out with a consensus forecast. We then have taken their consensus forecast and we've discounted that further to add an extra level of prudence. That is important because the differential is material. So let me put it to you this way. If I, for example, just use the independent forecast council numbers in our budget, the difference between what we are using and what they are suggesting is going to be the real GDP growth in the economy would be up to half a billion dollars in our current fiscal plan. So I hope that they are right and I hope that we are wrong but we have to plan on the basis that things could be worse than the best economists in the country happen to believe and I think that extra degree of prudence and caution is really important. The next slide shows how the gap has widened. So you see budget 2011 there, you will recall that in 1112 we had a requirement as a result of the HST referendum to repay the federal government $1.6 billion. We are required in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles to book all of that hit in 1112, which of course pushed our deficit up considerably. You will recall in the second quarterly report we were looking at a deficit tracking at about 3.1 billion. We're ending up again just under two and a half billion. So that is a good news story from a finance minister point of view. But you will also see in 1314 that the challenge for us to get to balanced budget was worsened to the tune of about $706 million in gap that we have to fill to meet our commitment to British Columbians and frankly our commitment to the markets that we would get back to balanced budget. Now about 500 million of that is the loss in revenues going from an HST to a PST and the balance was just the slowing economic growth that works its way into the outer years too. The next one shows managing government expenditures and I'll tell you, I think that this is the new reality for governments. Some governments haven't gotten this message yet and some may be forced to make very unpopular decisions but we have really started to bend down the growth in government expenditures. In other words, controlling government spending. So you can see that before the economic downturn we were averaging economic or average economic growth or spending growth of about 5.9% from 910 to 1112. We've bent down that growth curve to 3% growth and you'll recall there was lots of criticisms about some of the decisions we made but essentially all we shut down and locked down all unnecessary additional spending, travel, whatever it may be right across ministries. We made some difficult decisions to ensure that our budget was going to be manageable on the expenditure track side and you can see going forward in our next, our current three year plan in this budget that we are going to be bending that growth curve in expenditures to 2%. We again have a track record of delivering on the commitments we made just as we have in the last three years just as we will do in the upcoming three years. But I do wanna point out something that's really instructive in this particular slide. And that is, as you know, we've had, we're just coming off a two year net zero wage mandate that we had for the public sector. And I wanna say publicly and I've said it before but I commend the public sector for assisting in this effort to ensure that government does not go down the path of other governments around the world that are finding themselves in very difficult and dire circumstances. But had we put through a 2% increase annually in those two years, we would be looking at this current fiscal plan that we're in, we would be looking at an additional $3 billion of debt. And there would be no way that we would be balancing the budget in 1314. So it is important to understand why as we go forward and we talk about the gain sharing initiative where we are willing to negotiate with the broader public service and identify real savings, productivity improvements and other savings that we can realize that we can put into modest wage increases, but again, while maintaining no overall growth and compensation costs. Because that is the only way in which government is going to make sure we meet our targets. And there is no money in this plan for additional wages just in case anyone had any doubts about that. You can see in managing in the such sector, you can see in health, for example, the growth and spending curve on health. So the spending increase growth, we have been successful in moving that down in the 09 to 012 to 4.8% and over the current three-year plan by just over 3.2%. And this is, I believe, a very important reality for governments today. Too often the whole debate about healthcare is how much we're pouring into the system and not measuring what we're getting out of the system. And we wanna make sure that we are measured on outcomes because in the healthcare system, we wanna know how are we doing in terms of issues like longevity and in terms where we're number one in the country or in cancer mortality rates where we're number one in the country or cardiovascular mortality rates where we're number two in the country or the CHI high measurements that are utilized to say how governments are doing where British Columbia is typically always at the very top or right at the top. Those are the kind of outcomes that we think are important to measure a system by, whether it's health or education or any other part of the such sector, we need to focus on outcomes. And we are very encouraged by what's happening in the health system. So for example, you'll recall, in fact, I happen to have the honor at that time, the privilege of being the health minister, but we introduced, for example, joint procurement. It was called Health Shared Services BC and we forecast 150 million potential savings by doing joint procurement and working together to drive down costs on purchasing in the health sector. In fact, they're now forecast to outperform that 150 that they were looking for in savings over five years and achieve 200 million by 1415. Backoffice consolidation, again, making sure that we don't have replication of security and communication branches in every single part of every single health authority, bringing that together and consolidating another 100 million dollars that can be freed up for frontline services within the health sector. This is about making sure that we do more with the dollars that we invest, whether it's in health, whether it's in post-secondary, or whether it's in K to 12, and that will continue. And in K to 12, you can see that obviously the dollars they receive are not just dollars from government, but they get tuition fees, they get fees from commercial operations or foundations or other levels of government, but they are also being asked to manage within and find the same kind of administrative savings that we are asking the health sector and other sectors to achieve. So you see that in this slide, that clarifies that. So in the post-secondary sector, for example, we're saying in 1314, we want the colleges and university sectors to work together to find 20 million dollars in administrative savings. These are not savings that will come out of classrooms, but out of administration, travel, the kind of administrative costs that working together, they can find ways to identify and improve. And in 1415, there would be another 50 million dollars that we are gonna challenge the sector to identify. That represents about 1% of the $5 billion in total spend that takes place in the college and university sectors. We think that that is something that is very manageable and that the Ministry of Advanced Education will work with the college and university sectors to help them find those very modest savings and to do what is being done already in the health sector and in government. We're also working towards a shared service approach to support student learning in the K to 12 sector. We believe that there are real opportunities to find, again, by joint procurement, by sharing administrative costs without having duplication of administrative costs. We think there is the potential for 3% to 8% annually in savings that can be realized, that can help free up dollars to deal with pressures in a K to 12 system where we are not reducing the budget. The budget maintains at 4.7, 4.7, 4.7 billion in the course of this plan. We are adding $165 million for the Learning Improvement Fund to deal directly with the issues associated with classroom composition. But again, we think there are opportunities for the system to realize the kind of savings that have been generated in health and use those to also deal with other priorities that they may identify. And the next is drawing down contingencies. So you'll recall in budget 2011, we were criticized. They said, oh, it's a stand-put budget. It's a nothing budget. It was put and designed in such ways to give maximum flexibility. We were in the midst of a leadership race. We knew we were gonna have a new premier. The opposition was in the midst of a leadership race. We had a budget that had very large contingencies so that we could manage, rather than putting all the money into budget lifts, we would better keep a chunk of that in our contingencies and manage and monitor caseload growth and other issues that we wanted to do some further in-depth research before we made the decision to transfer dollars from contingencies into permanent base budget lifts. And so you can see here that we are now able to do that, to draw down contingencies, move those dollars into permanent base budget lifts all within the fiscal plan so that we can allow ministries to have some additional resources to meet the kind of caseload pressures or other pressures they may be dealing with, but again, within the context of a responsible fiscal plan. The, in order to get to balanced budget, however, we're gonna have to also work to bridge the gap. So the additional measures that we are announcing to get ourselves to where we can balance the budget, there are some additional measures. We are maintaining the small business tax rate. As you know, we've marched it down from four and a half to two and a half percent. We are gonna maintain it at two and a half percent until we get back into a fiscal surplus position when we can revisit potential, the possibility of further reductions. We are providing a provisional one point increase to the general corporate tax rate, which is the rate for larger businesses. And I say provisional because we put it into 14-15 and it will only be triggered if the very conservative assumptions that we built into the budget are not realized. So by the 13-14 budget, we will know whether our very prudent conservative estimates that we put in place are in fact holding true. If we are doing better than our very cautious estimates, then the corporate tax rate increase will come off the table. But if not, if things, in the unlikely event, that things worsen even beyond our very conservative assumptions, then we will pull the trigger on that. My goal is that we won't have to do that, but we're putting it in there as an extra measure of prudence. With respect to tobacco rate increases, couple of points I'll make about this. When the HST, when we go back to PST, it would result in a cut in taxes on tobacco products. We don't wanna see that happen. So we're gonna make sure that we make that up again with increase in the tobacco tax rate so that we equalize to what it was under HST. But interestingly, when we did our budget simulator where we asked the public to come forward with suggestions, tobacco rate increases was one of the most popular ones, which generally got cranked up very high by the public. You will also see that we've got asset release. So this is referring to, government has on its books at any one time or another, surplus properties in particular, but surplus assets that are non-strategic, they're surplus, they're costing us money, they sit on their books when we could actually turn them into economic generators. And in the past, we have done this, so you may recall in 2002 to 2005, we did a core review. We looked specifically at BC Building Corporation, which doesn't exist anymore, but at the time was our Crown Corporation for managing our property assets. And we identified a number of properties for disposition, they were non-strategic, surplus, and that generated revenues of about $355 million for government. In the normal course of events, government is disposing of properties. What we have done is just under six months ago, we put together a team and we said, we wanna look across government and across the health and education sectors to identify what surplus properties that are non-strategic, that are not properties that we're gonna use that we can put into generating economic activity, and we've identified a very conservative $706 million that we believe can be realized as a result of that review. It is something that is, which includes, by the way, the distribution branch of the liquor distribution branch. So the LDB distribution, we think, is an opportunity for us to get out of the business we don't need to be in and allow the private sector to come in and manage a business much more effectively than government ever can. We're gonna work with the union to make sure the RFP is designed in a way that will protect union interests, the union workers, so that they can continue to transition into what we believe is an opportunity going forward. But the vast majority of what we're talking about here are surplus properties, and I can give you a couple of examples. Right next to the legislature, we have a parking lot that is a parking lot, and it's a parking lot for staff. There is an opportunity there that we can generate a commercial development on that parking lot with underground parking, so there's still parking, and we can actually create economic development on that site. In Surrey, my community of Surrey, we were holding a 15-acre property just north of number 10 for a potential expansion of the Surrey Memorial Hospital. Well, we already made a decision to expand at the existing Surrey Memorial Hospital. It's undergoing the largest expansion, one of the largest hospital expansions in history, almost $600 million at the current site, so we now have this surplus site sitting there that we can sell into the private sector and generate economic activity on those property, on that particular property. Lots of other examples, I've got a site on, again, another Surrey site that I happen to know of, but on the corner of 176 in number 10, that for years was our administrative transportation line painting operation. That's the trucks that go around painting the lines on the highways, and we made a decision back in the earlier in the 2000s to get out of the line painting business. That wasn't a business government needed to be in, so we got the private sector involved in line painting. They're painting more lines than we ever did at a cheaper cost and we no longer have the overhead nor do we require owning that 10-acre asset on the corner of 176 in number 10. It was sold in 2007 for about $7.5 million. There's now a $25 million development property that's taking place, a commercial development center that's taking place. So this is something that is very focused, very strategic and it avoids us having to go to taxpayers for $706 million or having to borrow deeper for the $706 million. It helps to bridge us to the balanced budget and ensure that we will have a growing surplus budget beyond 13-14. We have reduced taxes across the board by almost 40% since 2001, British Columbians now enjoy the lowest personal income taxes in the country if you earn up to $120,000. That means everyone in the province, our nurses, our doctors, our healthcare workers, our teachers, all of them enjoy the benefit of having lower taxes in the province. And you can see the difference that makes whether it's a seniors couple that no longer pays taxes at a $40,000 income level, whether it's an individual earning $20,000 that now only pays $41 compared to 765 and 01 and on you go through the list. The key thing there is we believe that that is an important advantage in British Columbia. When a nervous world of investment and investors are looking around for safe harbors, the things they typically look at are how stable is the government? What is the financial fiscal record of the government? Because if the government doesn't enjoy a AAA credit rating, doesn't have a manageable debt load, then that's really just deferred taxes. And so they factor that into decisions they're gonna make. And of course low personal income taxes are very attractive to workers. And that is a competitive advantage that we're gonna continue to keep and that's why you'll see there are no personal income tax changes forecast in this budget. The next slide, ensuring debt levels are affordable. So this I think is very important because what it shows is what we've done is we've taken our debt. So a debt to GDP is simply your debt in relationship to the size of your economy. And that's that key measurement I talked earlier about that the bond rating agencies in particular pay attention to. And so during the good times, we were able to get our debt to GDP down to as low as 13.3%. When we got hit with the international global meltdown, that's when, and that was the right time for us to invest and particularly into key sectors like healthcare and education, transportation, with the most significant capital investment program in the history of the province of British Columbia. But here is the real key thing is that we were able to do that and we could afford to do it responsibly where so many other jurisdictions today are in the position where they would love to be making those kind of investment. Problem is they just don't have the fiscal room. They don't have the fiscal room because during the good years, they were still raising their debt to GDP. They were still in many cases running significant deficits and passing that bill on to the next generation. And they were not in a position where they could take advantage of the downturn by investing heavily into capital and investing strategically to create jobs and to create benefits for our next generation in terms of making sure they have the best possible capital assets in our healthcare or education sector, our post-secondary sector and our transportation system. So this allows us, and you can see what's happening to our debt to GDP when it peaks at 18.3 and 1415 and it starts to move on that downward trajectory again. And in this current fiscal plan, we still have a very robust capital plan, as you know, 19.2 billion, 10.7 billion of which is taxpayer supported debt, 8.2 billion of self-supported debt, which is typically the crowns, the Transportation Investment Corporation building, the Portman Bridge, Hydro, ICBC, et cetera. But the point is there is still significant investment that we're gonna be making at a time when we're still achieving very good pricing for taxpayers, particularly on the investments that we're making and as I say, building for the future of British Columbia at a time when so many other jurisdictions just do not have that ability. We're also in the next slide enhancing BC's competitiveness, though there we go, enhancing BC's competitiveness and we're doing that in a number of ways. The BC's jobs plan that the Premier announced is a key part of that. That is ensuring that we're going to have a major investments office, for example, that will ensure when we have major investors coming to British Columbia looking to make significant investments in our province, we wanna make sure that we've got a group of people whose only job that they're doing every single day they wake up is thinking about how they can work with communities and get those projects through so that we can see the benefit of the jobs and the revenues that will result. We're also adding more people in key markets to make sure that we are promoting British Columbia investment as a safe harbor in some of those key markets around the world where we wanna ensure that investors are being told about the BC story. We're also going to promote our advantage by having a very focused advertising effort, about $15 million that is going to target key investment decision makers in key markets around the world and domestically because we wanna make sure our own business community is taking the story, the British Columbia story of triple A credit rating, lowest personal income taxes in the country, most competitive business taxes in the G7 group of countries. That is a message that we want our own business community and foreign business leaders to understand because one of the lessons I learned in Europe is this, there is a lot of very scared investment in the world today and that scared investment is looking for safe harbors where they can invest their dollars and know that they've got stable government, low tax environment that will encourage those kind of investments. BC has a story that not too many other jurisdictions can tell, we're gonna make sure we get out and tell that story. We're also expanding the small business venture capital tax credit by an additional $3 million. We announced that earlier, some of you may recall, that will result in a multiplier effect of new investment into small business. We're eliminating the provincial jet fuel tax on international flights. Now this is coming about as a result of YVR in particular came to us with a business case where they have written commitments for 22 additional international flights if the government were to make a decision to eliminate that international fuel tax of two cents. And each international flight results in 150 to 200 new jobs for each of those flights. So we're gonna remove that and we're gonna monitor very carefully the written commitments to ensure we realize that but that is something that has an immediate payoff to the economy and to job creation. We are also going to make permanent the cap on municipal port tax rates. So you will recall that we brought in a cap on municipal port tax rates because we had a lot of complaints from the port sector which is so key to our gateway back in the mid 2000s that they were not making key capital investments because the moment they made it they were being penalized with additional municipal property tax rates. So we put a cap in place and we made up the difference financially to those municipalities. In 2007, because of the success of that program we extended it to 2017, 18. And the results have been nothing short of staggering. Over a billion dollars of investment into our ports. We're talking the Delta port, the Prince Rupert port, Van Term, Send Term, Surrey Fraser port, huge investments in the port but more importantly hundreds and hundreds of new jobs that have been created as a result of that investment. And that again generates jobs, it generates revenues and that's something that we wanna see grow and that has been a key part of the success of our Asia Pacific gateway strategy. So as we go forward we're gonna make that permanent and we are gonna continue to make up the difference to municipalities to ensure that they are held whole but this is a very important part of our platform as we go forward. The next is the new measures that we have for BC families. So first is the BC children's fitness and arts tax credits. We are mirroring these on the federal program so that families can take advantage that when they've got young children that are involved in arts programs or physical activity programs, sports programs that they can receive a modest benefit and when you combine federal and provincial it's for a family of three you'd be looking at about $300 a year in potential benefit for families. So it's one way of trying to help families. We've also made adjustments to the homeowner grant to ensure that all low income veterans can qualify for the homeowner's grant. And by that we mean we're expanding it from beyond what it usually was which was World War I, World War II and Korean vets and we're now saying all war veterans that have been in a war theater will apply for that if they're low income veterans. The second thing we're doing is for individuals that are moving from their home into some form of residential care. It's typically seniors but not always that we are going to provide them an extra one year of homeowner property grant relief so that as they're moving into a residential care facility but they're still in the process of selling their home and if it doesn't sell right away we want to make sure they continue to receive the benefit of the homeowner's grant. We're also introducing a new $1,000 seniors home renovation tax credit. This is to respond to two things. One is to support the renovation sector and the BC economy an important part of our economy but also has the dual purpose of supporting seniors and helping them to maintain and be able to stay within their homes. So it will help cover off expenditures like handrails, like lifts that help you get up the stairs, like walk-in bathtubs. It could be renovations to a room so it could also qualify for families in which they're moving their elderly parent into their home and they need to renovate a room in their home for their elderly parent. All of those things will qualify and we believe that that will generate several hundred million dollars of renovation investment throughout the province but we'll also at the same time really benefit seniors and allowing them to stay within their homes. We also have a first time new home buyers bonus and this is really again a dual purpose objective. We all recognize our children and grandchildren have a challenge trying to get into their first home. We want to create a situation that does everything we can to try and help first time buyers get into that new home. And we also want to help the new home construction sector. And so this is a proposal that will take place effective today, be effective up until March 31st of 2013 and it will provide a rebate, a check to British Columbians that qualify for up to $10,000 to help them purchase their first home. And this is something that we think will go a long way for new British Columbians, new home purchasing British Columbians to get into that first home and help them and at the same time help support the new home construction sector. And as you know, I announced on Friday the increase of the threshold, the HST threshold 525 to 850 and of course we're also applying that on secondary and vacation homes. We are also maintaining BC's business tax competitiveness and this is just a reminder of where we've come from the general corporate tax rate has gone from amongst the highest in the country at 16 and a half percent down to 10. Of course in 1415, we have a provisional 1% increase that I talked about earlier that will only be triggered if the economic circumstances worsen below our very conservative assumptions. We've got a small business corporate tax rate that's amongst the lowest in the country and importantly a reminder that we've taken what we define as a small business which used to be earnings up to $200,000. We now have increased that to $500,000 over the last number of years so that the threshold for a small business has been improved dramatically and that's because we want to continue to encourage the growth of our small business sector and the way you do that is by allowing them to take advantage of that small business rate for as long as they can until they do graduate into a larger business where they would pay the higher general corporate tax rate and again those rates amongst the most competitive in the country. The next is our capital investment program so you can see the accelerated portion of the program as we started to go into the global economic meltdown in 0809 and it continued through 1011, 1112 and it starts to tail off now as we are no longer required to make the massive investment we made during the worst downturn certainly in this generation but we continue with a very significant program and of the program you see going forward in our current fiscal plan, 2.7 billion of that is new incremental capital dollars that we will be investing in key strategic assets in the health and education sectors in particular but also in the transportation sectors. So again at almost historic levels but it is also our belief that these kind of investments are so strategic for British Columbia because at a time when so many jurisdictions are forced to look inward and are forced to focus on all the problems they have of big deficits and huge debts and the inability they have to have any ability to make these kind of strategic investments we are moving forward aggressively to ensure that British Columbia is gonna pull vault past our competitors by making these kind of social investments and economic investments that will pay enormous dividends for our next generation and beyond. And you'll see that the reason why we've been focusing for years on the Asia Pacific gateway strategy and encouraging the investments in the ports and making the strategic investments in transportation infrastructure is because we're trying to diversify BC's economy to take advantage of the fact that we're the only Pacific province in the country and it has been very successful. You'll recall in 2001 when I first ran and got elected we were exporting almost 70% of everything we exported to a single market, the United States and you will see how British Columbia has diversified its export pattern to where we are now very diversified the most diversified economy compared to the rest of the country. So where Alberta and Ontario still rely very, very heavily on a single market British Columbia has been successful in becoming very diversified and that allows us to have a better shock absorber on dealing with problems that may materialize in a certain part of the world. So that's something that we wanna continue we think it's one of our big advantages that we have as an economy and we're gonna continue with the BC jobs plan to expand on that competitive advantage we have as Canada's Asia Pacific gateway to North America and vice versa, we're North America's gateway to Asia and we're gonna continue to grow that. And finally, just going back to what I started with which is prudence. Prudence I believe is extremely important in the kind of climate we find ourselves in today. And there's three levels of prudence that we've built into the budget. I talked about the contingency levels that we now have 300 million and 12, 13, 250 and 250 and 13, 14, 14, 15. The forecast allowance of 200 million and 12, 13 rising to 250 and 13, 14 and 350 and 14, 15. So in other words, half a billion dollars a year in 12, 13 half a billion dollars a year in 13, 14 600 million dollars a year in 14, 15. And we've got a third level of prudence and that is the economic assumptions particularly the GDP growth assumptions very conservative and as I say if we are fortunate and the independent forecast council estimates are right that's another half a billion in potential upside revenues that could be realized for the problems of British Columbia but we're not gonna build a budget on that we are gonna make sure our assumptions are lower than the independent forecast council average and with that folks I will conclude my remarks and I thank you very much.