The Bruce Report

Beneath the empty promises and sanctimonious slogans, the bitter attacks and petty rivalries, lay the unalterable truth of every election: Someone must lose.

You could also argue the corollary, but that would deny the obvious conclusion that, in democratic societies, winning is only a theoretical construct. Just ask Premier Shawn Graham who having swept into office with a convincing mandate four years ago is now fighting for his political life in a province whose citizens have rejected his policies with depressing regularity.

Post-secondary education reform, French language instruction for English-speaking youngsters, health care delivery, the sale of NB Power to Hydro-Quebec, government salaries and pension allowances, Point Lepreau – you name the issue and, chances are, it reeks of widespread public opprobrium. Such are the perils of office, purchased by electoral success.

Still, if the past term has been tempestuous for the reigning Grits, the next promises to be a veritable hurricane for whichever party claims victory a month hence if only because the easy choices have vanished. Just the brutally hard ones remain.

New Brunswick is living on borrowed time and, more troubling, money.  

By now, everyone in this province with access to a newspaper or the Internet knows that an $8-billion public debt is thoroughly unsustainable. It undermines our ability to pay for an aging population’s health care, a sound and relevant educational system, poverty-busting programs, skills and language training, cultural and athletic events, municipal infrastructure, economic development, and commercial enterprise. And it is a material disincentive to foreign direct investment, immigration and international trade. Meanwhile, federal transfers – without which we cannot currently function – are set to tumble in the years ahead.

What do we do?

Governments, like everyone else, can perform only two rational functions to return black ink to their balance sheets: Cut spending and raise revenue. But, as not all spending in this province is easily trimmed – indeed, the single, largest line item is health care – New Brunswick is left with narrowed, painful options.

To date, however, the two major parties in this election have studiously avoided addressing the gorilla directly. Graham talks gamely about cutting taxes and trusting in the steady improvement of business conditions to replenish public coffers, which is a little like saying the solution to economic malaise is economic development. Sure it is, but how? What’s the plan, Mr. Premier?

Progressive Conservative Leader David Alward, bless his cotton socks, wants to roll up the province’s sleeves and really “get into” plotting the future of New Brunswick with a purportedly unprecedented degree of civic consultation. Somehow, it seems, this involves freezing power rates for three years and applying the utility’s profits (profits?) against its $4 billion debt load.

These are silly notions, more dangerous for the hard issues they skirt and the tough questions they avoid. Are taxes – all classes, including property and municipal levies – reasonable given the current fiscal crisis? Are we spending too much on health care, or too much on the wrong sort of things (like free Viagra prescriptions for septuagenarians)? Are we spending too little, or unintelligently, on post-secondary education, job training and real-world skills development, interprovincial trade reform, and municipal economic development and infrastructure?     

Though many non-essential public services must be trimmed or even slashed, particularly those that are redundant or duplicated elsewhere in the provincial bureaucracy, many erstwhile “crucial” ones must be scrutinized for the actual social and economic value they provide. How can they be made more productive and cost-effective without compromising their quality?

In other words, someone is going to lose something over the next four years. It’s lamentable, but it’s also inevitable in a province that has run out of easy choices to make about its future, or those it selects for the unenviable duties of government in the lean years ahead.

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