Plenty of speculation and no small amount of anxiety in New Brunswick Monday as the Gallant government prepares to bring down its first budget.
Officials have made it clear everything’s on the table as the province tries to reign in its massive — and growing — debt.
Still, they offered no hints of what might be in the spending plan.
“Tomorrow we’ll see that it’s not going to be easy,” Finance Minister Roger Melanson said on Monday.
Faced with what it calls a structural deficit of $400 million annually, the government has said it’s looking for $600-million worth of savings or new revenues.
When asked if that meant tax hikes, Melanson left the door open.
“We did focus on fairness and balance between getting our expenditures under control and looking at new sources of revenue, and tomorrow, we'll see what they are,” Melanson said.
In preparation for the budget, the government conducted what it described as an extensive program review.
The government says New Brunswickers told them to raise the HST and consider highway tolls, along with increased corporate tax rates.
While Gallant’s Liberal’s indicated job and service cuts wouldn’t be automatic, they didn’t rule them out.
In anticipation of Tuesday’s budget, government employee representatives are uneasy.
“We’re quite concerned,” said Danny Légère of CUPE.
“There's certainly a lot of anxiety among our membership when government consistently says everything's being looked at, everything is on the table,” he said.
Some rural schools are already on the chopping block and more could become targets, along with smaller government offices and operations.
Stephen McCready of Youngs Cove, N.B. hopes the school in his community will be spared.
“The (District Education Council), unfortunately, thinks that they're going to be able to save the government by saving a few dollars at this school, which they wouldn't even put on paper and tell us how many dollars they're going to be able to save,” he said.
With files from CTV Atlantic’s Andy Campbell
