CITY
Halifax council Tuesday began dealing with the projected city budget shortfall next year of $30 million. The shortfall comes mainly through three big ticket items: $10.2 million in scheduled increases in transit service, $14.2 million in wage and benefit increases (including $4.2 million for more bus drivers) and $12.5 million for a new cell in the landfill. (There are other smaller increases, and staff has already cut $8 million from the budget.)
It’s worth noting that otherwise city finances are in better shape than they’ve been since the creation of HRM—debt is down considerably, capital maintenance budgets are well-funded and overall financial management is in excellent shape.
Cathy O’Toole, the city’s director of finance, presented a plan to deal with the shortfall by increasing local transit taxes by $10 million, increasing the general tax rate by 2.5 percent (raising $10 million) and cutting budgets by $10 million. After a sometimes cantankerous debate, council asked for a list of $14 million in proposed cuts, and will deal more explicitly with the tax issues in late May.
PROVINCE
Finance minister Graham Steele has been touring the province with a fiscal dog-and-pony show, apparently attempting to soften the blow for an expected increase in sales taxes and cuts in services as the solution to dealing with a projected $525 million budget deficit, and NDP officials are additionally toying with spending as much as $300 million on a new convention centre in Halifax.
But both ideas are shortsighted, says the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, which issued an “alternative budget” proposal Tuesday.
“We agree that deficits must be reduced, but by increasing personal income tax rates and reducing corporate tax write- offs, not by increasing the provincial sales tax,” reads the document.
The CCPA plan calls for increasing expenditures on what it calls the “social budget”—drinking water facilities, health centres, schools, transit and so forth. Those costs would be paid for by eliminating corporate subsidies like the $1.8 million in payroll rebates given to arms manufacturer Lockheed-Martin, and by increasing a number of targeted fees and taxes—most notably, for gas guzzling vehicles, bottles of “pop” and disposable drink containers.
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The convention centre rescue plan
This article appears in Mar 25-31, 2010.
Thoughts:
– Lockheed needs to stop getting money from EVERYONE, especially taxpayers.
– Why are we even thinking about subsidizing a convention centre, if the developers are so sure that it will succeed economically, let them foot the bill
– Nova Scotia’s economy has grown more than 60% in the last 20 years, yet the average income of Nova Scotians has remained stagnant –> WAKE UP AND TAX THE RICH!
– Stop letting multinationals swoop in and set up shop in NS… Daewoo re-opening Trenton Works for wind turbine parts manufacturing seems like a great idea, but why don’t we let local companies in on it?
oh-what-force – who are the rich in Nova scotia ?
What is wrong with Daewoo coming in ? They provide intellectual capital and we provide financial capital.
Lockheed is prime contractor for refitting 25 year old frigates; would you be happy if they set up in New Brunswick of Newfoundland ?
Why would any corporation set up a business in Nova Scotia ?
What is so special about us ?
Face facts, we are a nice place with less than 1,000,000 people.
Insignificant.
Be happy that anyone invests here.
The ‘rich’ in Nova Scotia are taxed more than anywhere else in Canada. Why there are a few that stay and support everyone else is a mystery to me, be glad they do.
The Maritimes should not have to balance budgets. We’re a have not region, through no fault other than we’re not Toronto, Vancouver or oil rich. Unfortunately Quebec sucks 7 out of every 8 equalization dollars so we’re left with little to work with. I say screw balancing budgets. Everyone comes here for University (provincially subsidized) then leaves for employment in central Canada or the West, paying taxes there. Then they come back to retire, consuming provincial health care. How are we supposed to break even like that? It makes no sense to have 3 provinces with so few people except somehow we’d get even more screwed by amalgamating.
Sorry I take that back, Quebec taxes the wealthy even more 53% (fed+prov) over 129K…wow. Montreal collects money for street parking permits. I’m sure Haligonians would be happy to be able to park on at least one side of the street over night in the winter and pay for a sticker rather than a ticket.
oh_what_force…are you retarded? Where are the rich people in NS? Take a look at the cars on the road. 1/3 is a Sunfire. And what local companies do you suggest take over Trenton Works? It has be sitting vacant for years and nobody has expressed an interest in it. Give your head a shake moron.
doubtful, Joeblow: you guys are just like many other commentators when you say that Nova Scotia, or the Atlantic provinces as a group, have “so few” people and that this supposedly is a root cause of economic woes. Various groups over the years have always blatted on about this, moaning that we need more immigration, we need more young people staying here etc etc.
The problem with economic thinking that demands large and growing populations is that it’s 19th and 20th century Ponzi scheme and traditional manufacturing economic thinking. It’s obsolete, it offers no real answers, and it defers all the structural problems. Any time I hear someone say that we don’t have enough people it makes me wonder where does that line of thinking stop? Two million people in NS? Five million? Fifty million?
There are entire *countries* out there that do pretty well with roughly a million people or less. Damned odd that they can do it but we can’t.
Part of the answer is a smart, well-educated workforce that isn’t stuck into old ways. The other part is ratcheting up the productivity on everything we do, as opposed to the low productivity and labour-intensiveness that still pretty much characterizes our neck of the woods. Once you get to that point you don’t have to rely on exploding and large and youngish populations to support your obsolescent economy; instead, each generation can support itself and the population as a whole is much more self-sufficient.
Realist in Dartmouth, I think your points are good ones and would love to see NS improve in the ways you’ve highlighted. I didn’t say anything about NS needing more people -so I’m not sure where that’s coming from. It just seems that the current federal/provincial distribution of taxes is unfair given our demographics. ie: My complaint is not that we need more people, it’s that we have too many students and elderly benefiting from the provincial coffers compared to the number in the middle filling them. Since we offer a service to the rest of the country by exporting our taxpayers and accepting their retired or youth I feel we should get more money than we currently receive from the feds.
Realist – I don’t advocate a larger population in my comment. Where do you get that from ?
I merely ask you and others to consider the fact that we are not special. Investors can go anywhere on this continent. Why would they locate in NS and not NB or Quebec or Alberta or Illinois or Michigan or Virginia ?
This province runs on government and we have a lot of it. Three levels plus school boards and Health Districts. We don’t make much, the paper mills are on the verge of death, and most other businesses sell to government or the employees. Or they rely on government handouts. The NGOs rely on government money. Where will the increase in productivity come from ?