MEDIA RELEASE: Frontline to Pay for Premier’s Fiscal Mismanagement

(Dartmouth) – Core public services that people rely on are being threatened as part of Premier Tim Houston’s short-sighted, slash and burn budget that was released on Monday, February 23.

“For someone who sold himself as a ‘solutionist,’ the Premier’s budget shows his so-called solutions have failed, producing little results, racking up enormous debt, putting people’s jobs on the line with no plan for the future,” said NSGEU President Sandra Mullen. “Premier Houston’s accounting skills have generated job cuts, over a billion-dollar deficit, and at this pace, in four years, debt servicing costs will be the second biggest provincial cost, coming in just behind the entire health budget. The Premier has no one to blame but himself, yet its working families that are left to pay the price.”

While government is claiming that the size of bureaucracy has grown, it’s clear from this budget that any bloat is at the top.

“We know that the unionized civil service has grown by approximately 4 per cent since 2018, while our population has grown by 14 per cent over that same eight-year period: an effective cut,” Mullen points out. “If he cuts another five per cent per year for four years, the public services we all rely on will be devastated.”

Government’s planned reduction in grant spending of $130 million is also extremely concerning: many NSGEU members work in grant-funded positions either within the civil service or community-based organizations that support the most vulnerable Nova Scotians (such as Laing House, Veith House, and Pheonix House).

“These organizations already operate on shoestring budgets, and when that shoestring gets severed, people fall through the cracks,” said Mullen. “The Houston government is framing these as cuts to ‘discretionary’ funding, which shows how out of touch they really are given how badly people are struggling right now.”

At the same time, they are budgeting plenty of money to support private industry to exploit the province’s natural resources, while cutting climate change resources, sustainability and applied sciences, and introducing a new tax for hybrid and electric vehicle users.

The union is still waiting to learn which members will be directly impacted by these cuts, but so far, it appears the following departments that will be hardest hit in terms of loss in Full-Time Equivalent (FTE) positions are:

·    Opportunities & Social Development: -112.0 FTE

·    Justice: -109.1 FTE

·    Service NS: -68.0 FTE

·    Environment/Climate Change: -56.5 FTE

·    Natural Resources: -52.0 FTE

NSGEU will hold a rally outside the Nova Scotia legislature on Wednesday, February 25th from 12:00 P.M. to 1:00 P.M. Union President Sandra Mullen will be in attendance.

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The Nova Scotia Government and General Employees Union represents nearly 38,000 workers who provide quality public services Nova Scotians count on every day.

For more information, or to arrange an interview with NSGEU President Sandra Mullen, please contact:

Holly Fraughton, NSGEU Communications Officer,

902-471-1781 (cell)   

hfraughton@nsgeu.ca 

Lucas Wide, NSGEU Communications Officer,

902-483-0662 (cell)   

lwide@nsgeu.ca