BUDGET SANITY: IF NOT NOW, WHEN?

During the Budget Update in October 2016, the CBC quoted the Minister of Finance saying that "the seriousness of the fiscal situation remains and needs to be addressed". Bennett added that the government is still projecting a surplus for 2022-23.

The target assumes the eradication of a $1.58 billion deficit —  just on the current account.

The province is forecast to borrow $2.9 billion in the 2016-17 fiscal year alone. 

The figure may go higher when the $800 million settlement with Astaldi is accounted for.

Debt charges and other financial expenses are just under $1.0 billion this year and climbing fast — a matter to which I will return. Nalcor’s champagne taste is not a separate issue, as many pretend. Nor is the Capital Account.

Debt servicing and related expenditures — including deferred pension contributions — constitute the second largest expenditure of the government, following health care.  That is serious biz.

Last fall the Minister substituted the government’s promise of a “mini-budget” with blather. She should have invoked the challenge for which the Jewish religious leader Hillel is credited: “If not us, who? If not now, when?”