No surprises in final N.B. budget before election, minister says
Ernie Steeves says tax cuts 'would certainly be in our future'
New Brunswick's finance minister says people shouldn't expect any major surprises in his final provincial budget before a scheduled election this fall.
Ernie Steeves told reporters that he won't be dangling any gimmicks designed to win votes.
"We don't generally do that in our budgets. It's a budget that is planning, showing the plan, for the future of New Brunswick," he said.
Steeves showed off printed English and French versions of his budget speech bearing the slogan "Stronger Than Ever"— the same phrase the Progressive Conservative Party put on a campaign bus it rented last fall in case of an early election call.
"The slogan works," Steeves said. "I don't know. Maybe they had it all written out ahead of time. No, they didn't. But stronger is the theme."
Tuesday's budget will lay out spending and revenue plans for the 2024-25 fiscal year, which begins April 1.
It follows four straight years of budgets that ended up wildly off-target, with much larger surpluses than forecast each year.
The most recent fiscal update projects a $247.4-million surplus by the end of the current fiscal year of 2023-24, well beyond the $40.3 million Steeves predicted last March.
That followed surpluses of $400 million in 2021, $769 million in 2022 and $1.01 billion last year.
Opposition parties have accused the Tories of lowballing their estimates to avoid pressure to spend more money.
But Steeves has blamed the federal government for inaccurate projections of sales and income revenue, which it collects on behalf of the province.
The minister said Monday there were "slight changes" coming in how the province handles Ottawa's figures, but "it'll still depend on what happens with the feds. They control that, not us."
Steeves said tax cuts "would certainly be in our future" and said there will be "significant" increases to health-care spending, though he wouldn't say if he's adding the $600 million that provincial doctors and nurses recently called for.
He will introduce the budget shortly after the legislature reconvenes at 1 p.m. Tuesday.
The election is scheduled for Oct. 21.
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The top three for NB should be
1. Healthcare; a significant increase in spending along with a realistic, ambitious and well-communicated action plan to go with it.
2. Cost of living; reduce the provincial portion of the HST by 2%. In other words, wipe out the 2% increase in 2016, courtesy of the free spending Gallant government. This will benefit all NB'ers, and not just a select group.
3. Housing; yet another crisis thanks to the federal government, but it's time for this government to step in and take it seriously. The few crumbs thrown out to currently held Liberal ridings amount to a drop in the bucket.
Healthcare, on the other hand, affects everyone.
Reply to G. Timothy Walton
Reply to G. Timothy Walton
They seem to have difficulty in getting accurate projections on revenues such as sales tax from the federal government, but that should come as no surprise. Nothing from the feds ever adds up, and they could care less.
Reply to Steve Alexander
Yea Right