New Brunswick premier, ministers warn of difficult decisions, budget ahead

New Brunswickers react to the premier’s state of the province address.

FREDERICTON — Reaction has been swift after New Brunswick Premier Susan Holt warned an audience of about 1,000 business leaders and politicians that the province is facing some difficult choices.

“Most people in this room know that that’s what we’re experiencing. We do not have unlimited amounts of money. We do not have a GDP that is moving at the rate that it had been in the past,” said Holt.

The comments were made during the annual State of the Province event, where Holt spent over an hour speaking about the challenges New Brunswick is facing in health care and the economy.

She announced that the province will be launching an economic development plan, and that next week, New Brunswickers will be presented with different ideas that will attempt to lessen the ballooning deficit.

During the last fiscal update in November, the deficit was sitting at $834.7 million.

But opposition leader Glen Savoie says he believes it’s already a lot more.

“When I hear the premier talk about tough decisions are going to have to be made, first of all, they haven’t made any tough decisions to this point. They’ve spent the cupboard dry,” he said. “They set the bar that they were going to balance the books and they haven’t done it. And they haven’t done it to a record effect. A billion-plus-dollar deficit will be a record.”

The province is expected to release a quarter three fiscal update in the coming week or so.

It’s a difficult position for Holt to be in relatively early in her mandate, says political scientist Jamie Gillies.

“Clearly, that billion-dollar deficit is a problem. And, and acknowledging it is a good first step. But the second part is, what are you going to do about it? And I think that’s, you know, complicating the challenge of a government with that more ambitious agenda,” he said. “Some things are going to have to be scaled back. Some things are going to have to be rethought.”

Holt told reporters that not everything is on the table. She’s not considering increasing the HST.

But she has tasked the civil service to come up with options – and those options will be unveiled next week, she said.

“Tough times don’t last forever. But tough people do,” she told the crowd.

Government ministers who were updating reporters on their yearly targets Friday confirmed they have been asked to look within their department for efficiencies.

“We are up against what is going to be a very difficult budget. We know that,” said New Brunswick Housing Minister David Hickey. “And we know the financial situation that the province is in, housing is not going to be immune to that. For us it means making sure that we can be focused and, you know, maybe taking a second look at some of the programs that we’re offering and making sure that it’s central to our core mandate.”

It can be a tough exercise.

Former Liberal premier Brian Gallant’s government underwent a similar process in 2015-16, called strategic program review.

At the end of the review, his government decided to raise the HST.

“Usually 97 per cent of what government spends, there’s hardly any room for a government to move on. So, it’s that 3 per cent where you might have an opportunity to rethink something,” Gillies said.