In his budget speech, the Gallant Government’s finance minister Roger Melanson said that they inherited a bad situation in terms of finances and jobs, which Quispamsis MLA and former Conservative finance minister Blaine Higgs takes exception to.
Higgs tells us the Liberals inherited a deficit that was decreasing and expenses had dropped. Higgs says when the Gallant Government came in everything was trending down and all they had to do was stop spending. He says because of what they had committed to spend they had to find a way to pay for it all so all the two-percent HST increase is doing is covering up new spending.
He calls the latest budget math that’s designed to confuse the public which he says he finds disturbing. He says the deficit is only below $400M because they reduced their contigency fund by $50M, calling it such a play on numbers it’s embarassing.