Richard Saillant calls budget a 'missed opportunity'

Economist Richard Saillantbegan his critique of the new budget bycomplimenting the Gallantgovernment on raising the HST by two per cent, but that's where the positive comments ended.

"It's an act of courage to raise the HST, no one likes to raise taxes soIcongratulate them on that," he said.

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But the director of the Donald J.SavoieInstitute atUniversity ofMonctonsays if you compare the projected deficit in New Brunswick for this year with the projected deficit from last year, not much has changed.

"Last year they were forecasting a deficitof... $498-million and this year apples to applesit would be around $400-million.... sothey'll be generating around $200 million more,yet the deficit is declining by only half of that, so what's happening here?"

With the tax increase,the provincial government says it is expecting a $347-million deficit in 2016-17 and a balanced budget is not being forecast until 2020-21.

Saillant says theGallant government has made a big mistake by "protecting" health and education.

They don't have any ears to listen...to the public sector workers union, but they certainly have a lot of time to listen to the business people in the private sector.- CUPEpresident OdetteRobichaud

"That's what happens when you refuse to touch health and education and you say that you should be keeping schools with two dozen students, when you say that you're not going to be looking at re-purposing hospitals, recalibrating the health system in order to make sure that we're reflecting our new demographic reality," Saillant said.

"This was the budget of missed opportunity."

He predicts thefailure to make significant changes to health and educationwill mean deeper cuts and more school and hospital closures five years from now.

Saillant says this was supposed to bethe budget where "we would be swallowing the hard pill," and since that hasn't happened, he isn't hopeful it ever will.

"If they refuse to take anyaction right now,do you think they're going to be taking action closer to the election?I don't believe so."

Saillantcalls strategic review 'awaste of time'

Saillantlabelsthe strategic program review the Gallant government didmore of an "operational efficiencies" review.

He says it did nothing but "scare the hell" out of citizens and was "a waste of time."

The deep cuts announced forthe civil service shows a lack of courage, Saillant said.

"Do you truly believe that 30 per cent of middle managers or about 1200 people in a bureaucracy of about 9000 people are essentially sitting around and not doing anything, fooling around at the office? I don't believe that. So if you want to cut in that bureaucracy you're going to have to cut programs."

Odette Robichaud, acting president of CUPE in New Brunswick, says the cuts to the public service by the Gallant governmentdidn't come as a surprise.

"They don't have any ears to listen...to the public sector workers union, but they certainly have a lot of time to listen to the business people in the private sector," Robichaud said.

Saillantcalls many of the efficiencies the government claims to have found in the budget "nebulous."

"When someone tells you that they're going to be generating efficiencies, run for the door," he said.

"This is not a transformative budget.... I never believed the story that after Budget 2016, the population would stop aging and it would be a world of rainbows and unicorns, but still, I expected Budget 2016 to start transforming the way we do business in this province, to bring us to sustainability."