The People’s Alliance Party in New Brunswick say they weren’t consulted about recent changes that eliminate the Primary Informal Caregivers Program.

The program provides a $106.25, non-taxable, payment to informal caregivers of those with mental, physical or cognitive conditions. 

The cut to the program comes after the province announced about 16-million dollars to go towards hiking home support workers’ hourly wage from between 50 cents to $2 an hour. In order to roll out the wage increase, the province say’s they need to cut elsewhere.

“It’s like running a household.  If you’re going to pay for one thing, you have to take from another,” said Miramichi MLA Michelle Conroy. “But I feel there could be other ways to take from. Our parties talked a lot about corporate welfare and things like that.”

“Our workers in the community, we have about 600 agencies in homes in New Brunswick. We employ about 12,000 workers and the highest wage we have right now is $15.05 an hour,” said Jan Seely, New Brunswick Special Care Home Association president.

None of the three MLA’s from the People’s Alliance party was consulted about the changes and say it came as a surprise when they found out.

“Nobody from government consulted with us on this,” said Conroy. “We hadn’t heard this was coming. I only found out about it when I saw it in the news.”

The People’s Alliance holds three seats in government, with the PC’s winning 22 seats in the last election.

“The nature of this legislation right now is odd and the Progressive Conservative government needs to rely on the People’s Alliance support, so any political maneuvering, they need to tread a bit more lightly,” said Political scientist J.P. Lewis.

Caregiver workers receiving the wage increase, say every little bit helps.

“Being a single mom, it doesn’t help out a whole lot, but it does help out a little,” said special care home worker Kristen Campbell.

“In Nova Scotia, they make about $18 an hour, so we’ve got a long way to go but we’ve seen a positive trend with government investment and I think they realize the value in the community services,” said Seely. “We are the foundation of our healthcare system.”

The wage increase officially kicks in on May 1.

With files from CTV Atlantic’s Laura Lyall