VICTORIA - Next week’s provincial budget will increase resources for the Coroners Service of B.C. to deal with a backlog of child death reviews discovered by the government late last year, Premier Gordon Campbell says.

“You’ll hear more in the budget speech,” Campbell said after Tuesday’s throne speech.

The move comes as a coroner’s inquest continued into the death of 19-month-old Sherry Charlie in Port Alberni in 2002, and continued opposition pressure over disbanding the office of the Children’s Commissioner and transferring authority to the Coroners Service.

NDP leader Carole James said coroners’ offices are no substitute for an independent children’s commissioner.

“It’s the only way we see this government react, when they see questions from the opposition or when they see headlines after the crisis has occurred,” James said.

The throne speech indicated government will press ahead with regionalization of aboriginal child and family service delivery, but in other areas of spending and taxes there have been few hints of what the Feb. 21 budget will contain.

Small Business and Revenue Minister Rick Thorpe is continuing his tour to review the provincial sales tax, but downplayed the possibility B.C. would follow Ottawa’s lead and reduce it under seven per cent.

“People always want to pay lower taxes,” Thorpe said.

He repeated Finance Minister Carole Taylor’s comment that reducing the PST by one point, as recommended by the legislature’s finance committee last fall, would cost the B.C. treasury $500 million a year. His review looks for “revenue neutral” ways to simplify the PST for business.

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