New Brunswick’s auditor general is out with his latest report. It’s almost 200 pages worth of mostly data on the provincial books. I am still going through it but page 48 is interesting. That is where you will find a comparison of spending activity by major cost area for the last five and up to nine years (comparative).
For example, health care spending was up $172 million in from 2007 to 2008 up from $153 million increase in the previous year and $120 million increase in the year before that. In fact, health care cost increases are accelerating under the Libs. Overall government spending is well above the rate of inflation and GDP growth for as far back as the report goes.
It is good to see that economic development spending is up in recent years but it is more important to see that translating in to good jobs and leveraging private sector investment.
If you have a few hours to kill, you should have a look.
Imagine the hidden tax dollars across Canada for a dual Canada? If you provide WHAT financial agreements?
At a time when the Liberal government is facing a deficit of hundreds of millions of dollars, the province has been ignoring more than $80 million in easy money from Ottawa, says New Brunswick auditor general Michael Ferguson.
New Brunswick auditor general Michael Ferguson flips through his report Tuesday afternoon at his office in Fredericton. He said the province’s net debt will likely grow to almost $9 billion by 2011. If the province had to borrow that money for its ongoing operations, the equivalent interest would have been $5.6 million or $11,000 a day, he said.
“Some of this money goes back to 2004-05,” said Ferguson, when he appeared before the legislature’s public accounts committee with his annual report Tuesday.
He said it was the equivalent of a worker being told that his paycheque was in the office but not bothering to pick it up.
The money is available from the federal government’s Official Languages in Education program. Ferguson first noted it in his report last year.
It was initially thought to be worth $6.6 million in 2000 and $39.6 million in 2007, he said.
“Because the government did not actively pursue the collection of this funding in the fiscal year ending March 31, 2008, we decided to look at the issue further,” said Ferguson.
“The first thing we found was that the outstanding amount at March 31, 2007, was actually $50.8 million.”
As of March 2008, that had ballooned to $72.2 million for several government departments, said Ferguson. When the money for universities is included, the total is $83.1 million, he said.
“Because the province has not claimed the money from the federal government, funds owing to two of the province’s universities have not been paid,” said Ferguson.
Committee member Carmel Robichaud, Liberal MLA for Miramichi Bay-Neguac, asked why the government didn’t collect the money.
“That puzzled us as well,” said Ferguson. “The accounting was all done.
“Not one had gone to collect the money.”
He said it seems that because several departments were involved, it dropped off the priority list.
To get the money, the province has to provide financial statements and reports as required under the Official Languages agreement with Ottawa, he said.
Look. You need to move your constant attack on bilingualism to another blog. I had a policy of not deleting any comments that weren’t profane or a personal attack on an individual. But I will have to tweak my policy as you have posted at least 30-40 with the central theme of criticizing bilingualism. You have every right to your beliefs and with the Internet you have a venue to share your beliefs but just not here. If you want to comment on economic development, feel free.
Well sorry but keeping the information that there will be no Economic development in this province because of this policy is difficult. The rest of Canada and the world is shelving such failures, but I will obey your edict, although feel a bit sad for your honest attempt to revive a dead horse. Obvously the education that you and your regular posters have could be put to better use without the noose.
See youse at the bilingual soup kitchen,lol
I believe that the auditor-general also expressed concerns re the long-term debt forecasts; i.e. the fact that GNB isn’t releasing that information. The GNB finance minister was reported as saying, in effect, that such long-term debt forecasts are ‘confusing’ to the citizens. In other words, its an alarming picture. When this latest recession ends, and economic growth in North America rebounds, NB will be left with poor growth prospects and a heavier debt load. This is mis-management on a massive scale.
Glad you can be amicable about it.
I’m now not sure you got the facts of what I meant above. You see, in order to get this 60 million, the taxpayer of NB had to spend 350 million on French schools and show documentation? Why is this not included in the report repeated in the TJ again today? What is self sufficient about spending 350 million to get 60 million, forgetting for the moment the fact that anyone spending millions on language instead of education, is a long way from self sufficient thinking or common sense thinking! How did my Daughter get to be French speaking teacher on her own!! Without the ridiculous immersion ?
“Consider the $60-odd million in federal funds for language training which the province is owed but has not yet collected. That’s a small sum next to the $588 million in bad loans. These could be collected at modest cost, if the province used the Canada Revenue Agency as its collection branch. Altogether, government is owed more than half a billion dollars that could be used to reduce provincial debt.”