The NDP government of Nova Scotia inherited a structural deficit when they came to power in 2009. The only way out of that was substantial social spending cuts, or raising taxes. To their credit, at the time, the Dexter government chose to do both rather than the unvarnished neoliberal route of pure slashing.
Serious spending cuts did not begin until two years into the government's mandate - just over a year ago now. Most departments were spared the really deep cuts. Not so with education, the second of the big two in provincial government spending. But most Nova Scotians, even parents with school age children, did not substantially feel the first year of steep education cuts.
Education cuts
- The relative mildness of those education cuts in the first year owed to a bunch of one-time savings, like axing some support programs and deferring long-term maintenance. This year, those "easy" steps are gone. So now it's more cuts to support programs, and school libraries, as well as major classroom teacher reductions.
The NDP government's spinmeisters unanimously gush that this is the unfortunate consequence of cuts having to match declines in school age population. But classroom teacher cuts are three to four times population decline, and the cuts to virtually everything else are at an even steeper rate.
It would be one thing if all of this was necessary to wrestle down the deficit. But that is not the case. (The Nova Scotia chapter of the CCPA has presented an alternative budget, which can be read here.)
The deficit is being wrestled down with just two years of drastic education cuts. Stretching the cuts across three years instead of two would have spared schools this depth of cutting. This alternative elimination of deficit spending in three years would still have had the government bringing in a balanced budget before they have to go to the voters.
Government has the 'tax cut religion'
But suddenly, 'merely' slaying the deficit isn't good enough. Dexter's crew has got the tax cut religion and more than doubled how long we get these drastic social spending cuts. As far as we have descended in these two years of steep cutting, suddenly we have at least two more years of the same brutality. Only now it is to pay for tax cuts.
In March of this year, the NDP mailed a survey to members asking if we thought it was necessary to bring the HST back down those two percentage points it was increased in 2009; and asking if the government should consult widely on this.
Who knows why they asked us, since they already had their answer - Dexter and Finance Minister Steele started floating that 'since things are going so well, maybe it is time for a tax cut.'
Sure the media and the right is going to like the pronouncement that the budget slashing 'is going well.' But at what cost to Nova Scotians? And what about the NDP's base that got this government where it is?
And of course, that 'maybe it's time for a tax cut' was within days followed by a promised HST cut. The special spin for the NDP's base that emanated from Dexter and company is that we 'had to do the tax cut.'
Really?
There was a broad social consensus cutting across ideological lines on the necessity of the 2009 HST takeback of the Harper GST cut. No one except the hapless opposition parties throws the broken election campaign promise at the government, and the media fall all over themselves praising the government for its fiscal management.
Fellow Nova Scotia New Democrats: there is blood on those tax cuts.
Ken Summers was a long-time activist in the Nova Scotia NDP.
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Hmmm ... why did they not shift the tax burden back to income, rather than just reducing the HST? Only thing to do, seems to me.
The main tax revenue effects of the shipbuilding contracts is the wages of workers- and expecially the fact these are largely workers that will mostly not be drawn from something else in Nova Scotia... which has the most dramatic effects.
At its peak that is supposed to be 4,000 jobs. We know well how this promotional inflation goes, but thats still some thousands of jobs, long term. Which translates as people that will come here and Nova Scotians that will not leave. And the consequent tax revenue increases.
Then there is the other side of the coin. 700 teacher jobs gone so far, and the govt has told the school boards more of the same next year. So thats a few hundred more teachers. Plus several hundred more positions in education gone. And the government softening up the health boards and the unions for position cuts there starting next year.
We're talking about by next years budget, more than 2,000 jobs gone, just as permanently as those shipbuilding jobs coming in, which aren't even here yet. So thats over 2,000, with AT LEAST another year of steep cutting left after that... and all of that before the shipbuilding jobs START arriving.
You dont need a calculator.
Those teacher positions gone translate mostly as new teachers who will leave Nova Scotia because the situation here is hopeless for years. Same age group as the future shipbuilder workers your government crows about providing jobs for.
Got anything else down in that barrel of justifications to scrape around for?
There are virtually no teacher layoffs- which your government uses to pretend there are no cuts. Neat and tidy- just no jobs for young teachers.
It is not so bloodless for other educational workers. And as a direct consequence, my family will be joining the trek out. There just is not going to be anything for the forseeable future.
My daughter is starting university. So she doesnt need a job, and she has never lived anywhere else. But with the rest of her family gone, do you think after university she'll be coming back here to join the glorious Dexter fathered future?
I recall that Nova Scotia already had the smallest budget of any Canadian province. The cheapest government. Furthermore, the economy's not growing. So cutting should have been off the table from the get-go.
When Ken Summers writes about a "structural deficit," is he taking into account the recession? How long had it been since the budget was last balanced? How structural is this deficit?
What does it mean to be the NDP anyway?
The deficit was structural in the sense that it was not just a product of recession or other cycles.
Even before the recession, government revenues from offshore gas and equalization payments had been declining. While they had been rising, there was a decade government spending creeping up. Since noo one expected either of those revenues to come back to earlier levels, it was not something we could just wait for the end of the recession to fix.
That said, it was a pretty mild structural deficit. Bringing in the 2% HST increase was not billed as temporary, and corrected the declining revenues. What remained to 'fix' was to stop letting spending increase. That was essentially done with just two years of steep education cuts. Hardly a trifle as we see; but all of it on the back of education and in only 2 years, shows that it was no huge beast.
IF the only goal had been as stated- bring spending into balance- that could have been done in more years and across more departments. Without drastic cuts the deficit would still have been eliminated before going for re-election.
But the Dexter crowd had much more cutting in mind from the word go: cutting much deeper than what was required to balance the books, so that the tax cut could also be brought in before the election. Let alone no discussion even now of whether that was a political necessity, that was always part of the multi-year budget plan.
But the whole lot of them- and the chorus of defenders here when they show themselves- pretend the cuts are only about 'balancing the books'.
The service delivery cuts are about 50/50 for balancing the books and funding the tax cuts. And as in all budget cutting, the second 50% is FAR more painful. The intensity ratchets up vastly.
There has been an ongoing discussion of this on Babble:
DEXTER GOVT: Managing Communications with the Base on a Diet of Austerity Budgets and Tax Cuts
Specificaly about the education cuts:
Obfuscating the NDP's Cuts to Schools: what is going on in Nova Scotia
If you did not already know, there is a forum that lists ongoing discussions of news and events in the Atlantic Region:
http://rabble.ca/babble/far-and-wide/nfld-labrador-pei-ns-nb