Premier sells differences

Christy Clark was in full campaign mode Friday.

The B.C. premier was in friendly territory as she spoke to a sold-out Kelowna Chamber of Commerce crowd.

There wasn't much selling that needed to be done for a pre-election budget that included more than $2 billion in additional spending and give-backs, specifically, a 50 per cent reduction in MSP premiums for families making less than $120,000 a year.

Those were already well documented.

What she did do within the sales pitch was sell the room on other aspects of the province's performance.

Clark touted the government's job creation plan, implemented in 2011.

"Jobs really matter. When we started working on our jobs plan in the fall of 2011, we were ninth in Canada in jobs growth," said Clark. "Our goal was to do better than that. Since 2011, we have stuck with our plan, and have gone from ninth in job growth in the country to being number one in Canada."

She said 202,000 jobs have been created.

The premier also touted B.C.'s AAA credit rating, the only province in the country to make that claim.

She said if the province had the same credit rating as Ontario, the government would be paying an additional $2.23 billion in interest payments.

"I know the more money we leave in your pockets, the more money you have as business people to invest in hiring people and building your business," she said.

"I think our opponents view about this comes from a basic misunderstanding of how economies grow.

"Economies grow because you have competitive taxes, and that's more important now than it ever has been. Economies grow because we support job creators, which is what supports job creation. And economies grow because we control government spending, and we make sure government remain smaller and grows slower than the private sector does."