New Brunswickers are bracing for deep cuts as Brian Gallant’s Liberal government prepares to deliver its provincial budget.
Cabinet minister Victor Boudreau provided an update on the province’s strategic program review in Fredericton on Monday. He said both health and education will be protected from major cuts in light of public input gathered during the review process, but everything else is on the table.
“It became pretty clear that New Brunswickers did not want to see significant cuts to health and education,” he said, adding that there is still room for savings in schools and hospitals across the province.
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The province is also considering eliminating 1,000 civil servant jobs, but Boudreau said employees that work for either health authority or the school boards won’t be affected.
The review also found that the most popular methods for generating new revenues were to increase the harmonized sales tax and implementing road tolls.
Fredericton financial advisor Marty Forsythe said residents should be fully prepared for drastic cost-cutting measures.
“If you want to do something to your house, you have to stop doing something in order to put a new roof on your house,” he said. “You have to look at your budget and go from there and…that’s what the government has to do.”
He agreed that highway tolls and higher sales tax could be effective ways to bring in money.
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“We have to get some revenue, we can’t just keep spending and spending. If the HST is going to help that, I am a little bit for it. Tolls, I believe in,” he said, citing the $2.40 toll on the recently built Highway 30 Montreal bypass in Quebec as an example of money the government “can spend anywhere”.
Fredericton resident May Atkinson said she doesn’t mind paying tolls, as long as everyone shares the burden.
“If you are going to put tolls on then the tolls should cover the whole province,” she said.. “Put them on in Edmundston and take them off at the Nova Scotia border.”
Atkinson disagrees that health care and education should be immune from cuts. She said she believes making radical changes to those systems is the only way to get this province out of the red.
She said removing duplication and having one completely bilingual system for health care and one for education would save a significant amount of money.
The government will deliver the budget on Feb. 2.
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