Red ink spells trouble for public sector
GOVERNMENT Wrestling the deficit down a high priority for Liberals
The health crisis is far from over. The economic crisis will wax and wane in lockstep with the virus. And Nova Scotia’s Premier Stephen Mcneil is musing about public sector workers taking another one for the team, this time to help fill the massive hole that crises one and two blew in the books.
This week Nova Scotians learned that the $55-million surplus predicted in February’s provincial budget mutated into a $853-million shortfall by July. The province spent $470 million in preparation for and response to COVID-19 and the restrictions it imposed. The government lost even more – $532 million – when tax revenue dried up during the lockdown that froze the economy.
If you don’t remember the Liberals’ first term – 2013-2017 – the province’s public sector unions surely do. Its defining characteristic was an on-going war between those unions and Mcneil’s government.
The premier now looks back on those simpler times through rose-tinted glasses that cast his government as demonstrably fair when it comes to the collective bargaining process.
The unions, unequipped with spectacles capable of altering history, see it differently and that’s why several of them are suing the government over the contracts it imposed on their workers.
This week, the premier said his deficit-slaying government will lose no time getting to work erasing the Covid-created red ink, and he drew a bead on pampered public employees who, he said, went home to full salaries, while many private sector workers lost their jobs and incomes.
And here we thought government
employees were working from home.
Civil servants, of course, are just a slice of the province’s public sector workforce. Teachers, nurses, and nursing homes workers, who shouldered a sizable burden to carry our kids, older and infirm Nova Scotians, and others through the first wave of COVID-19, are also in that category.
A second wave of the virus, we are reliably warned, can be expected at almost any time, and when it hits we’re going to need those same public sector employees to carry us through again. And they will, without regard for any designs the government has on their future earnings.
The premier is quite correct that balanced books are preferable to deficit-spending.
And he’ll tell you, as costcutting government’s invariably do, that whatever pain austerity inflicts is in the noble cause of saving our children and their children from the burdens of our excess.
Interestingly, we don’t hear that concern about other financial burdens we’re planning to download on the kids and the kids’ kids.
Take, for instance, the $2 billion the Mcneil government has earmarked for the QEII redevelopment. Our children and theirs will be paying that money back along with a tidy profit for the private corporations and investors that design, build, finance and maintain the new Halifax hospitals.
But that fits loosely into the category of “good debt” because it leaves behind stuff you can see, touch, or drive on.
Debt acquired in the normal operation of government is “bad debt,” even when it’s used to teach your children well, or maybe lift a few kids out of poverty.
The premier let Nova Scotians know this week that his government will wrestle the deficit down the same way it did the first time. And why not? Politically, it worked for them.
That matters because before the deficit disappears, Nova Scotians will almost certainly to go to the polls. Next June, the Liberals will enter the fifth year of their second mandate and Nova Scotian governments that face the electorate in year five tend to lose.
The Liberals will be running on a record they tell you includes solid financial management and, prior to the health crisis, a growing economy. Barring a disastrous second wave, the Liberals will also tout strong leadership through the COVID19 crisis.
The opposition parties, of course, see the government’s record quite differently.
The Progressive Conservatives have signalled that they’ll run against the government’s economic record, making the case that Nova Scotia can do much better.
The NDP also sees the economy as a government weakness because the limited growth has left far too many people behind.
The timing of the election is, at least in part, dependent on what the pandemic has in store for us in the months ahead. But the ballot question will likely be which party can best lead the province’s post-pandemic recovery.