The Liberal Kamloops-North MLA and environment critic has some concerns with the provincial budget.

Peter Milobar says the province will collect $2.4 billion dollars extra in carbon taxes in the next four years with a tax increase for greenhouse gas emissions.

He says the government right now has only committed about $680 million of that money for efforts to actually reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

“So essentially for 25 cents on the carbon tax dollar, the Green Party and the NDP are saying that CleanBC is a well-funded system. I would suggest to you that when 75 cents of every dollar of increased carbon tax is going to anything but helping bring down (greenhouse gas) emissions, there’s a big problem.”

Milobar says the $274 million dollar surplus in the budget won’t leave a lot of wriggle room for potential blows like another large ICBC deficit, which the province is anticipating will have only a $50-million-dollar deficit in the coming fiscal year.

“You have them saying they’re magically going to drop ICBC from $1.2 billion to nothing, essentially, and let’s remember last year at this time they budgeted $890 million in losses. And Minister Eby’s managed to pump that up to $1.1, $1.2 billion, and now they’re saying that they’re going to get to zero in a year. So that alone would throw them into a deficit.”