"Gordon Campbell misrepresented the province’s finances by portraying the massive surplus he had inherited from the defeated NDP as an enormous deficit."

Why?  The Liberal election campaign was based on the wrong premise of NDP fiscal mismanagement.  So when the Liberals won they covered up the actual 1.5 billion dollar surplus inherited from the NDP.

The BC Liberals have mastered the art of equating the NDP to past economic disaster, and it is simply not true. 

But the deceit works - that is why the BC Liberals do it. 

As stated in this article, the msm media ran with the story "Banner headlines in the following day’s daily newspapers fairly screamed that the defeated New Democrats had left behind a fiscal mess for the new government. "B.C. Finances Worse Than Thought, Campbell Says," blared The Vancouver Sun.

And the BC Liberals have never let up on this tactic.  Even today you will see posters parotting the falsehood of economic doom brought on by the last NDP government.