Speculation and concern brewing around pending provincial budget

HALIFAX – Finance minister Diana Whalen will deliver the 2015 provincial budget Thursday, but exactly what is in the budget remains unclear.

“For years we’ve seen the budget increase it’s spending, and now at a time when the economy is struggling, it’s time to flip that around. We can only spend what we can afford,” says Kevin Lacey, Canadian Taxpayers Federation.

Lacey says he is looking to see how taxes in the province will be impacted. “They’ve floated carbon taxes, which would be more taxes on gas and fuel, they’ve floated health levees, they’ve floated other taxes and we wanna know what are they going to know, given Nova Scotia is one of the highest taxed jurisdictions in Canada,” he tells Global News.

The Canadian Federation of Students is concerned about what the budget will bring. They want to see an investment in students and initiatives to keep young people in the province, but ultimately, students say they’re preparing for the worst.

“We think that we’re going to see tuition fees increase, we think we’re going to see university funding go down and we think we’re going to continue to see our youth stay in these record high levels of student debt,” says Michaela Sam, Canadian Federation of Students.

Rob Batherson is with the Halifax Chamber of Commerce, he says government has run a deficit the last 20 of 30-years, putting Nova Scotia with one of the highest debt levels in Canada. Batherson wants to see the Finance Minister hold the line on government spending.

“If we don’t deal with our spending situation, that debt will continue to grow, our taxes will continue to be high and we’ll struggle to provide the services that our citizens and businesses expect from their government, so we need to get on with the job now,” he says.

Government has said the upcoming budget will involve some tough choices, but won’t elaborate.

“Talking about the cupboard being bare, that there’ll be pain, that’s a political tactic as well as what may actually happen in the budget, preparing people for the worst and maybe it won’t be as bad,” says Dr. Jeffrey MacLeod, a Professor with Mount Saint Vincent University.

MacLeod says Nova Scotia is a $10 billion dollar organization, and that the province is doing alright when it comes to dealing with it’s debt load.

“This is not a crisis, I stick firmly to that opinion, this is not a debt crisis, it’s being imaged as a debt crisis for some reason,” says MacLeod.