President’s Letter

This article appears in the Winter/Spring edition of the Union Stand.

Dear Members,

How is it only March?

2026 is only three months old and, with the help of Tim Houston, the year has already brought cuts to jobs, cuts to program funding, cuts to remote work, cuts to museums, cuts to tourism centers, and cuts community groups and not-for-profits.
Even with all the cutting, the Houston government has tabled a budget with the largest deficit in Nova Scotia’s history – a whopping $1.2 billion budget deficit.

While working people lost their jobs and not-for-profits lost their funding, the Houston government still found a $1 million for high performance yacht racing in the Halifax Harbour. Which people can enjoy for free as they drive back and forth over the toll-less MacDonald bridge.
The Premier tried to sell this as a ‘spending budget’ but with each passing day the true impact of the cuts became clearer, and people were not happy.

What happened next was a series of rallies against the cuts at Province House. Each day the Premier and his band of MLAs had to walk through a sea of people all asking for some rationale for the cuts. Most didn’t seem to know where the cuts came from or how they would impact their departments.

Cabinet Ministers quickly came under fire and very few were able to answer questions about their own departmental budgets. Perhaps the most embarrassing was Minister of Communities, Culture, Tourism and Heritage who was unable to provide any answers to the media’s most basic questions.

The NSGEU was visible at every rally, with members standing in solidarity with people from all impacted sectors.

The pressure did have some effect. After the first week some Ministers began to voice concerns over the impact of some of the cuts. The Premier was booed off the stage at the African Heritage Month Gala, and families began to tell their stories of how the cuts would hurt their loved ones.
Nearly $60 million in cuts were reversed by the Premier, with a focus on reversing cuts to African Nova Scotian Affairs, senior’s care and supports for people with disabilities.

A win for those groups but there is still about $70 million in cuts that will remain.

This has become a familiar habit in Nova Scotia politics. The government of the day spends at an unsustainable rate and when it comes time to rein in spending it’s the working people and the groups that need it the most that wind up paying the price. However, there has never been an example of a government, in any province, at any level, who has been able to cut their way to prosperity.

The last round of bargaining for the civil service, in retrospect, may have been one of the most important in recent memory. The union was able to protect key job security language that will make sure members have options beyond just being laid off. Those protections were under attack but the union and bargaining committee stood strong and members will benefit from that show of strength.

Working people also earned a win, nearly a decade in the making with the courts finding that Stephen McNeil’s Bill 148 was unconstitutional. This was the legislation that forced a wage pattern onto union members and removed the long service award.

The court has given the province and unions a year to try and negotiate a financial resolution. If no resolution can be reached the court has maintained authority to order one. The Houston government, who once committed to repealing Bill 148 only to flip flop, once elected, has yet to announce if they will appeal the courts decision or enter negotiations with the unions.

If this is what unions and working people have to look forward to in 2026, its going to be a heck of a year.

In Solidarity,

Sandra Mullen
President, NSGEU