Nova Scotia Facing $853 Million Deficit
HALIFAX- The projected 2020/2021 provincial budget deficit is now $853 million.
The province had been projecting a $55 million surplus before the COVID-19 pandemic.
Finance Minister Karen Casey says the virus caused a massive drop in revenues.
“The deficit has nothing to do with poor fiscal management, it has to do with an event that hit our province, the same as it has hit other provinces and countries around the world,” she says. “You couldn’t predict it, you couldn’t plan for it, but you could manage it and respond to it, and that’s what we’ve done.”
Casey says she can’t say now how many years it will take to get back to a budget surplus.
She says there will need to be considerable long-term austere spending.
“We’ll be looking at meeting the needs of Nova Scotians, but trying to get back to living within our means,” she says. “Our means have changed.”
Casey says there is still considerable uncertainty and, with a potential second wave coming, it’s unclear how the budget forecast will unfold in the real world.
She says, regardless, their primary goal is to return to fiscal stability.
Jack Morse is a reporter with CIGO in Port Hawkesbury, N.S., a Huddle content partner.