The National Post is reporting this morning that the Federal government is enriching the Equalization program by $900 million in its next budget. It is also proposing to transfer another $2 billion a year to all the provinces on a per capita basis. Quebec is said to be the big winner (no surprise here) with $1.1 billion in new funding (between the Equalization and other transfer increases).
Now, it doesn’t state the NB numbers but because NB is over twice as dependent on Equalization as Quebec (per capita), I figure that NB should get at least $150M more from this plan. $50M as our share of the $2B (2.5%) and about $100M out of the Equalization enrichment.
Anyway, wouldn’t it be neat if Graham Jr. allocated this entire amount to economic development? Given the campaign promises, this is unlikely but a guy can always wish.
By the way, what’s a Tory again?
It will be interesting to see how they accomplish this. Letting the provinces keep directly more money, one would think, (such as cutting taxes at the Feds and allowing the provinces to make up the difference) would be more ‘conservative’ that doling out more funds in a way that can be cut back on the whim of the Feds.
But that ties your hands more in the ‘lean’ years which one would expect are coming at some point.