What's another word for budget 'cut?' How about a 'shift?'
As PC opposition attacks Liberal spending reductions, ministers avoid the word.
After six years of criticizing Progressive Conservative spending cuts, you can understand why some Liberal cabinet ministers are having trouble using the word when talking about their own budgets.
"I'm not sure it's a cut but it's a shift here and there," Tourism Minister Isabelle Thériault said this week of a $900,000 reduction in her budget.
Faced with questions about an eight per cent cut to his road-maintenance budget, Transportation and Infrastructure Minister Chuck Chiasson declared that the cut may not end up being a cut.
"If we need to spend more money to repair the roads, we will spend the money as needed to make sure that the roads are safe," he said during question period.
It's another example of an odd dynamic as each of the two main political parties try to shape a narrative about themselves.
To listen to PC Leader Glen Savoie tell it at times, Premier Susan Holt's first provincial budget is about breakneck spending.
"Given that we know she isn't going to cut spending, the only alternative is for her to raise taxes," he said in question period Wednesday.
Just a few minutes later, however, three of Savoie's own PC colleagues attacked not Liberal spending but Liberal cutting.
Kings Centre MLA Bill Oliver denounced "reckless" cuts.
Sussex-Three Rivers member Tammy Scott-Wallace declared herself "shocked" that $900,000 was cut from the tourism budget at the very moment the province might lure travellers who have cancelled trips to the United States.
And Arcadia-Butternut Valley-Maple Hills MLA Don Monahan, the party's finance critic, asked why the province was slashing, "of all things," the road maintenance budget.
Liberal ministers were clearly reluctant to acknowledge spending restraint, instead arguing that the previous PC government had been far worse.
"Their neglect has left me with a mess to clean up, and I can tell you that I am doing my best with the funds we have to clean up the mess that they left," Chiasson said.
In a scrum with reporters on Wednesday, Thériault gamely skated around the word "cuts" for several minutes, calling the $900,000 reduction "the number that we're going to shift around" in the coming year.
Asked whether the March 18 budget estimates recorded the figure as more money or less money, she called it "a different approach."
In fact, those documents confirm it's less money — from about $20.6 million in fiscal 2024-25 to about $19.7 million in fiscal 2025-26.
The road maintenance budget is being slashed from $114.8 million to $106.6 million.
"Hopefully it's going to be enough," Chiasson said Friday of the money for road repairs.
"If it's not, then we look at the overall operation budget and see if there's something we can do somewhere else to maintain the same level of roads that we've had."
Their boss, Premier Susan Holt, is, however, more willing to make a virtue of cutting — as long as it's smart cutting in keeping with her vow of "transformational change" to government services.
"We're doing this really carefully," Holt said in a speech Friday to close the debate on her budget before a final vote of approval. "I like to say we're going to measure twice and cut once, to know that we've done things right.
"It's important to us that we choose to spend money on what is most important to New Brunswickers, and we seek savings in the places where we can get creative and innovative."
Savoie, when asked to reconcile his accusations of Liberal spending with his team's criticism of Liberal cuts, said New Brunswickers should get the services they need but "in a fiscally responsible manner."
As for Holt's comment about measuring twice and cutting once — smart cuts, in other words — the PC leader said the comments by Thériault and Chiasson show the Liberals will inevitably abandon whatever fiscal discipline they've adopted.
"I think we've unfortunately already seen the lie put to that because we've seen two of their own members say they're going to blow past their departmental budgets already," he said.
The legislature adjourned Friday for five weeks, during which a committee of MLAs will pore over individual departmental budgets — a chance to debate the issue even more.
If Holt is sincere about pushing what she calls "transformational change" to government services, including new ways to deliver health care and education, that debate is likely to go on for the rest of the Liberal mandate — whatever word they choose to use for cuts.
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