Provincial Budget 2020-2021

CLAUDIA CHENDER « » : Mr. Speaker, I am honoured to rise in my place and respond to the Budget 2020-21 on behalf of the New Democratic Party. Three headings come to mind around this budget: optimism, cynicism, and a burning desire to do things differently.

Mr. Speaker, as Nova Scotians, we are optimistic. We are resilient and we do the work we need to do. The job of government is to ensure that Nova Scotians have what they need to survive and to do everything we can to help them thrive.

The people of Dartmouth South, my own constituency, are optimistic. When I talk to my friends and neighbours, my constituents, what they tell me is that they love this place. Life is not always easy and they are sometimes concerned about the work we need to do as Nova Scotians, work around ensuring that they can stay in their apartments, that they can find doctors, that they can access health care and afford groceries. They are concerned about the difficult work of dismantling the systemic racism we see in so many of our institutions and the important work of reconciliation. Mr. Speaker, they are ready to roll up their sleeves, but the question is, are we?

Some of the headlines in this budget breed optimism - attention finally to poverty reduction, to the need for adequate housing. These are things our caucus has been advocating for tirelessly since this government took office. We are very happy to see the increase in the Nova Scotia Child Benefit and happier still that our pleas have not fallen on entirely deaf ears.

Although, as you will hear, we have significant issues with this budget, we take our seats today with some pride as we are reminded that the work we do in this Chamber, on behalf of our constituents and all Nova Scotians, matters.

Unfortunately, that optimism is tempered when we see the government giving with one hand the very gifts, in so many cases, that they have already taken away with the other. In many ways this government is telling Nova Scotians they are doing the work that needs to be done when, in fact, they are maintaining the status quo.

Mr. Speaker, when will we escape this hamster wheel of a political cycle? We have been conditioned for this, the constant cycle of spend and disappoint and spend again. There's plenty to like about this budget but, election or no, it comes on the heels of seven years of austerity, and that breeds cynicism.

We are seeing the most significant investment to date in housing from this government, after sounding the alarm for years. After bringing story after heartbreaking story to the minister and to the floor of this House, we will see 39 units this year, Mr. Speaker, 39; 131 over the next three years. This is not even a significant fraction of the wait-lists that the housing organizations have before them now, not to mention counting all the other people out there looking on their own. Rent supplements don't work in a market of under one per cent vacancy. They are complicated and costly for landlords, and not their first choice when they can afford to pick from dozens of applicants for every apartment.

We've been advocating for rent control legislation, and ironically the government has taken our advice when it comes to some of their own programs - some home-warming programs and rent supplements, where landlords who participate are limited to rental increases tied to Consumer Price Index. That breeds cynicism, Mr. Speaker. The Premier says rent control doesn't work, but his own government uses it regularly.

There is $17.3 million in this budget for Department of Community Services transformation - for most people, a 2 per cent increase in the standard household rate. What the government fails to mention is that this comes on the heels of the longest rate freeze in history. The 2 per cent increase most people received gives them less purchasing power than they had seven years ago. If rates were indexed to CPI, we would need to see 2.6 per cent just to maintain the status quo. So, forgive us for not applauding this investment. This is not to mention that unlike the $70 million corporate tax cut that fell out of the sky and into this budget, which I will talk more about later, this increase took six years, and we know that most recipients, our most vulnerable Nova Scotians, are still choosing between housing and groceries.

The government is investing in arts and culture. There was a great announcement today about the Bus Stop Theatre and a new art gallery is budgeted for. These are welcome and needed investments in our cultural sector but needed even more because of the actions of this government. I shouldn't have to remind anyone in this Chamber of the government's single biggest insult to the cultural sector: the axing of the Film Tax Credit, a tax credit this Premier promised to protect. That was three years ago. It feels like ancient history, doesn't it, but it's not. It's certainly not to people in the cultural sector, who are still reeling from that boondoggle of a decision.

In education we're hearing about the investments from the inclusion report, but we don't get any details. That $15 million comes with a road map, but the government is not following it or at least they are not telling us about it. Meanwhile they are refusing the direction of the courts to reverse their illegal decision to remove specialists from the Nova Scotia Teachers Union, specialists that help the very children at the centre of this $15 million investment.

We're hearing about investments in pre-Primary, but in my district pre-Primary will mean kids in portables in a school that isn't even three years old, while nearby regulated child care centres struggle. The ECEs they can retain have to be content with fewer benefits and less income than their counterparts in pre-Primary.

It was this government that triggered Nova Scotia's first and only teachers' strike, that has consistently worked to weaken the union and all unions, and that sent our teachers to the picket line for the first time in history, while locking our students out of their schools. Again, it feels like ancient history, but not to me. I had two children in Primary. They missed their Christmas concert and for them it was a real bummer, Mr. Speaker, but for the thousands of teachers (Interruption)

Bummer unparliamentary? No? Okay (Laughter). But on a serious note, it was a massive disruption to our educational system and one that didn't need to happen, and it's one that this government is banking on, quite literally: people forgetting when they go back to the polls.

In health care it's hard to know where to begin. After a disastrous amalgamation of the district health authorities that in many ways led directly to myriad issues we are seeing today, this government is now shuffling the chairs in the boardroom again, but still without transparency about how, and without clear and articulated discussion of why. For the last several budgets this government has inexplicably left money on the table for health. Now we are getting hospitals - we are also losing hospitals - with no information about how the money is being spent. What will this massive redevelopment project look like? Who knows? Only the successful $2-billion bidder.

As hospitals are closing and consolidating, and we're seeing massive changes to our health care systems and infrastructure, Nova Scotians deserve to be let in on the secret. The last big project in health care, the amalgamation of the NSHA, was a failure, in part because it was secret, and it still largely is. Fool us once, shame on us, but fool us twice? How are we leveraging the $2-billion hospital redevelopment to meet the requirements of the lifespan of this project - the next 50 years? We have no idea.

Mr. Speaker, we know one thing, which is that the next 50 years will look very different from the past 50. If we're serious about the future, if those in the Chamber who have children are serious about their future, about the next generation of Nova Scotia, a project like this must engage the most creative and different thinking about everything - heating, transportation, parking, and energy consumption.

What evidence do we have that the Province is leveraging the biggest capital project in recent memory to serve the real needs of Nova Scotians for the next 50 years, beyond just the acute care needs required by a hospital? We have no evidence. We can only hope.

The Premier says I should be thanking the province for the work done to the Dartmouth General Hospital. I have, and I will continue to. That open, conventional, publicly-managed design and build process has been a success. It is a wonder that the government wouldn't take a page from this as it has from so many of the Dartmouth General's other successes as it embarks on this massive redevelopment project. As a point of clarification, I wasn't invited to the opening, but I went anyway.

On the topic of health, we also need to work harder and better to ensure that our upstream efforts in public health and the social determinants of health are also addressed, especially in the face of unknown implications of COVID-19. Our spending on public health is below the percentage of budget stipulated by the World Health Organization, and I would submit that it's long since the time that we corrected that, Mr. Speaker.

The government acknowledges that we are facing a climate crisis, yet the investment in meeting this existential threat of our time doesn't come close to meeting the herculean challenge before us. As we heard last sitting at the Law Amendments Committee, targets are not strong enough. We ought to be measuring ourselves against scientific consensus, not other provinces. We could be leaders here, but nothing points to our desire to do this. As one example, we see the budget line for EMO adjusted downward in this budget, this after spikes in forecast numbers over the past two years - first for the Sydney floods, then for hurricane Dorian. When it comes to the environment, we can no longer rely on patterns of the past to predict the future. Are we ready for the next Dorian? Given our aging infrastructure, our climate action, and scientific predictions, it seems not.

Are we truly investing in appropriate ways to green our power sources and electrify our grid while sharpening our legislative tools to ensure that we can expect the heat to stay on when the next emergency hits? The $10 million of mostly federal money that we see in the Energy and Mines budget is a good start, but it's too late for starting.

We have recently seen money for the remediation of two former gold mines, but we know, and the Auditor General has told us, that there are so many more out there. Why aren't we budgeting for that? Or maybe we are. There are many budget items we don't know the contents of, predominantly the $140-million restructuring fund, the line for unbudgeted projects. The mystery line of $140 million - what is it for? Only time will tell.

We have, as I mentioned before, $15 million in education with no details. Off the books, we have a $2-billion P3 hospital already mired in controversy before the agreements are even signed and the ground is broken. Mr. Speaker, this budget predicts a borderline stagnant economy with virtually no growth outside of some of these large capital projects, but there is a 5-per cent growth rate forecast.

Unlike my Progressive Conservative colleagues, I don't take issue with federal funds to help fuel work on climate change mitigation, health, and general revenue, but I do worry about what the true state of the Province's finances is. Against this uncertain backdrop, these magnificent money managers before us have decided upon a $70-million handout in the form of a corporate tax break to some of the richest corporations in the world. Yet this government is not able to provide a shred of evidence that this handout will create even a single job.

Corporations are responsible to their shareholders. Although the economy benefits from them, not all Nova Scotians are shareholders of large corporate players. We are, however, all shareholders of an even bigger entity: the Nova Scotia government. We look to that government to pay dividends to the folks working hard to pay their taxes and afford the basics in the form of social programs, health care, and education, not to give away their contribution to the highest bidder.

Earlier this year, the government signed a blank cheque to a developer and declared a provincial state of emergency for a preventable accident that occurred on private land concerning a crane that was insured under a private policy. Again, what did that tell us about who this government is working for? We've worked for months to get relief for the small businesses impacted by the action of this government. We've had conversations, but no movement on an ask in the hundreds of thousands of dollars that would make a tangible difference to the small businesses that form the backbone of the entertainment district of this province's largest city. No movement - only a triggering of the federal disaster response program, which does not help them in the slightest.

We need this Province to care about ordinary Nova Scotians and small businesses. When it comes to large corporations, we know one thing they are looking for is regulatory certainty. We saw that with Teck's withdrawal from the Frontier project this week. Corporations often lead the way when it comes to scenario planning and futureproofing. So often they know what's needed. Will they take a corporate tax cut that they can give to their shareholders? Of course they will. It's baked into the corporate structure.

What's not baked into the corporate structure, what is antithetical, is the idea that the primary use of a reduction in taxes would be for reinvestment. There is a name for that idea. It's called trickle-down economics, and we found out a long time ago that it doesn't work.

Mr. Speaker, 72 per cent of children in Eskasoni and 44 per cent of children in Whitney Pier live below the poverty line. According to Statistics Canada, an average of 25 per cent of the children in all of our constituencies also live below the poverty line. They are food insecure. The increase of the Nova Scotia Child Benefit will help, but so much more is needed.

This is another reason that a $70-million corporate tax cut is such a cynical move. By endorsing the largely debunked theory of trickle-down economics - as the Premier and the Minister of Finance and Treasury Board have done so many times now, telling us that businesses will reinvest - they are telling Nova Scotians that this $70-million corporate tax cut will help them. It will not. It will help the friends of this government to enrich themselves and their shareholders, at the expense of much-needed revenue to fuel the programs that actually help the Nova Scotians who are most in need.

We are not philosophically opposed to economic growth, as the Premier has suggested. We believe in growth. We want the kind of growth that benefits us all. We want our prosperity to be shared. We saw an investment in social enterprise announced as part of this budget, and that's great. But social enterprise has a more expanded definition than the one the government is using. Here in Nova Scotia we have several small businesses who are what are called B Corps, some of whom the government has recognized in this very Chamber. These are businesses with a triple bottom line: economic, environmental, and social.

Where do we see the support for these businesses? As predominately small businesses, they are receiving a 5 per cent tax cut - a fraction of the $80-million total tax cut for businesses. Why is this government once again ignoring those who are leading the way towards the kind of future that Nova Scotians want? The question that needs to be asked of this government is whether they are building a compassionate, sustainable, and thriving province, or a successful campaign?

Nova Scotians have been through this ringer for generations and we can do better. How? Well, for one thing, we could have fixed election dates. If the government truly wants to quell speculation on election spending or no, then make it clear. We could have a parliamentary calendar, and one that required elected members of this Chamber to spend more than the average of 60 days or so a year debating the important budgets and legislation which impact our constituents so directly.

These changes, and others, would allow MLAs - especially those of us in Opposition - to do the work that we are elected to do. Instead, we'll be here for a few weeks, 10, 12, 14 hours a day, tasked with responding to the budget, digesting and commenting on a raft of legislation, asking important questions to the ministers on behalf of our constituents, and then we'll be done.

I take my job seriously. Believe it or not, I would like to spend more time in this Chamber representing my constituents, debating legislation, and doing the work of a legislator. It's what I was elected to do.

This budget reads like a deathbed confession. Because of the government's failed policies over the past seven years, we now have a health care crisis, a housing crisis, and a poverty crisis. We have the lowest median income in Canada. We have the highest poverty rates. We have families that can't find a place to live and are being thrown out of their last-resort hotel rooms secured for them by a government with no better option.

Emergency room closures have tripled under this government, and thousands are still without a family doctor. The hospitals serving Cape Bretoners have the highest mortality rate in Canada. Kids who need mental health care in industrial Cape Breton still have to wait for over a year to be seen. The mental health spending in this budget is nominal.

It's easy to get lost in the numbers, but for so many Nova Scotians who have been waiting seven years to see a substantial change to their circumstances, numbers are not front of mind. Nor do they take kindly, I don't think, to the Finance and Treasury Board Minister's good debt and bad debt conversation.

Of course, deficit spending is never the desired way forward. That being said, when the debt to GDP ratio is trending downwards, when there's economic crisis and stagnation as we had in 2008-09, and as we certainly might see again, a government's job is to ensure the shared prosperity of their citizens.

Many Nova Scotians would take issue with the Finance and Treasury Board Minister's characterization of borrowing to buy groceries as bad debt because many Nova Scotians don't have the choice. They buy groceries with debt or they don't buy groceries at all. They don't see keeping the lights on as bad debt; they see it as what they need to do to keep the lights on.

Nova Scotia is an incredible place. It's trite now to talk about our people, our natural beauty, our hospitality, our food. I'm sick of the term "world class" but, truth be told, where Nova Scotia excels is in its kindness, in its human scale. That kindness can be uneven, and because of our inability so far to address structural racism and discrimination, it can be elusive for some. But I still submit that the shared prosperity of Nova Scotians and the strength of our communities across this province are the measures by which we will know that we are on the right track.

We are in a time of turmoil, environmental turmoil and a time of reckoning for all of us, a time for caretaking and resilience as we face a future that is largely unknown. Half measures won't work. Business as usual won't work. We are asking the government to act. We want them to have the authenticity, the bravery, as my family would say, the chutzpah, to do things differently and to acknowledge, in Einstein's words, that we cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.