With New Brunswick in the early stages of a provincial election campaign, words uttered a couple of months ago by Nova Scotia Finance Minister Graham Steele could be prophetic in nature.
In the weeks leading up to delivering his second budget and during his cross-province Back to Balance tour, Steele predicted that his government's plan to increase the HST by two per cent would be mimicked later by New Brunswick because the financial course that province is on is simply not sustainable.
At the time, politicians in New Brunswick were quick to brush off Steele's comments and those same politicians would likely make the same comments today because it would be political suicide to tell New Brunswickers that the provincial government in Fredericton has lost control of the financial ship.
New Brunswick's deficit was most recently pegged at $749 million and its debt has risen from $6.7 billion to $8.3 billion in just four short years. The auditor general is already predicting that debt will increase by another 33 per cent over the next four years.
There can be little doubt that no matter who is elected to govern on Sept. 27 they are going to face some tough facts. Just as Nova Scotia's NDP government found the treasury in shambles when it took over last June, New Brunswickers are going to have to face the fact that times are about to get a lot tougher.
New Brunswick is going to have to take some drastic measures to get its financial house in order because its days of putting everything on the credit card is about to end. While you would never expect one province to be breathing a sigh of relief at another's misfortune, you can rest assured there are countless retailers across northern Nova Scotia watching what happens in New Brunswick very closely and hoping that their neighbours level the playing field when it comes to taxes and the price we pay at the pump.
It's just too bad that we will have to wait for someone else to fix our problem.
