Editorial: Right budget for tumultuous time

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Premier Blaine Higgs and his finance lieutenant Ernie Steeves aren’t getting much love for last week’s budget. All sides are taking the chance to pile on – indulging the disappointment that this budget didn’t give them what they thought they’d patiently waited for.

What the budget did instead was largely stay the course on the Higgs government’s approach to managing public finances. Namely, it keeps spending in line with expected revenues – with a $40 million cushion against the need to run deficits and borrow money to fund government operations over the next year. If things go better than expected, there will be a chance to pay down more debt or disperse more one-time payments to New Brunswickers out of money that’s actually been saved.

In the main, we support this budget. This is a period of low growth and high uncertainty, meaning a safe plan is more sensible than an ambitious plan. And in light of the fiscal challenges coming down the pike, it’s better to keep chipping away at incremental improvements than to go big.

As a National Post editorial pointed out last week, this is a principled, centre-right approach to governance that really ought to be taken up by more provinces – to say nothing of the federal government that has knocked aside every imaginable fiscal guardrail that would impede more spending.

Yes, New Brunswick is spending more – about $800 million. But it’s doing so within a transparent fiscal guardrail: a balanced budget – which this government has attained every year in office. That’s a big difference.

We like the idea of an income tax reduction … in time. But we also can see NB Power’s financial crisis as an anvil round the province’s neck. Until we know how the utility will get back to a healthy capital structure – as well as decide on the future of its major generating assets – it would be unwise to make big moves on other fronts.

This plan is not perfect. We were disappointed, for instance, to see a lack of movement on local government – especially when it comes to property tax revenue sharing that would finish the job of municipal reform. But on the whole, this budget provides the stability we need right now. It merits wide support, and more plaudits, than we’ve heard so far.