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Victoria — B.C.’s Opposition NDP leader says voters may not want his party to campaign on a balanced budget in next year’s provincial election.

John Horgan laid out his path to the May 2017 vote in a wide-ranging interview with The Vancouver Sun this week, in which he said that the recent victory of Justin Trudeau’s federal Liberals on a deficit spending plan and the lack of discussion about fiscal issues in the American presidential race shows voters may be less interested in balanced budgets than in previous campaigns.

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“The voters are not as in-sync as the gnomes in Zurich and the bond raters about the importance of making sure everything comes out aligned in the end. And I have serious reservations about how the Liberals got to that balanced position as well,” he said.

“They are balancing it on the backs of consumers. They talk about austerity and how they are holding the line, and they are, (but) by reducing services. I think the public is tired of that, and the Trudeau success, and the complete absence of any discussion about real budgetary issues in the United States, tells me politics is changing and the focus on the annual budget is changing.”