Budget Misses on Labour and Affordable Housing, Business Groups Say
SAINT JOHN — Business organizations and labour groups say the province has a blind spot on some key issues that aren’t properly addressed in its latest budget.
Attracting and retaining labour in New Brunswick, as well as providing appropriate and affordable housing for workers and all New Brunswickers, are ongoing issues that haven’t been addressed, the groups say.
“We need everything from the entry-level, skilled positions all the way up to specialists,” says Brandon Ellis, the senior policy manager at the Atlantic Chamber of Commerce. “That would be the reason why we’re seeing problems in our labour market. We just need a wide variety of skills.”
Ellis says that although the government made a small investment in enticing immigrants to stay in the province, retention continues to be a big problem. He says the province needs to do more to address it. Other areas of investment the chamber wants to see are more efforts to train high school students in STEM, as well as skills development for people already in the workforce.
“I think that we need to be doing everything that we can to prepare for our workforce of tomorrow. We need to identify the issues that we’re seeing today within the labour market and resolve them.”
Ellis adds that Atlantic Chamber of Commerce members also expressed that they would have liked to have seen more reduction of red tape and regulatory burdens on businesses in the budget.
“We need to be expediting the amount of affordable and available housing being built within the province,” Ellis says. “It is a large issue that we’re hearing at this moment.”
That sentiment is echoed by John Wishart, the CEO of the Chamber of Commerce for Greater Moncton.
“Our Chamber gives credit to the government for continuing to post a surplus and pay down our net debt. We were disappointed, however, in the lack of broad strokes and vision on the spending side,” he says.
“Our business members have told us consistently that their three main challenges are lack of labour, scarce housing, and homelessness. There were few major spending initiatives in the 2023-2024 budget for these key areas.”
With an already tight labour market, providing a place for new workers to live needs to be a priority, Wishart says.
“The budget includes an increase of $1.3 million in immigration spending, but that’s a relatively small amount for the single largest contributor to our workforce. Similarly, there was talk of the revamped New Brunswick Housing Corporation but few new spending programs. We will have to wait for a housing summit later this spring and a new provincial housing strategy which likely means additional spending is a year out.”
Moncton has been experiencing an ongoing issue with increasing homelessness in the downtown. These societal issues are front and centre in New Brunswick cities, which tend to have small cores where problems have nowhere to hide.
“On the homelessness file, the only new spending we saw was $3.2 million for additional emergency shelter beds next winter. Those will no doubt be needed but they don’t do much to solve homelessness. There was a vague reference to the government exploring the creation of 50 inpatient beds for individuals suffering from mental health and addiction issues – which is a great idea – but at this point, the only commitment is to study the issue; there’s no funding allocated in this budget,” Wishart says.
In a press release, the Canadian Union of Public Employees was critical of how the government underestimated the surplus yet again, using fiscal uncertainty to justify not funding programs or the public service.
“We have so many people in this province that are hurting and a government that’s just failing to protect its people,” says Stephen Drost president of CUPE NB.
“So this government has a tendency to come in saying that things are really terrible….then they can come to the electorate and say: ‘Look, what a great job we’ve done. We’ve saved billions and reduced our debt’,” Drost says.
“Reducing the debt is important, of course, but [so is] people being able to eat, have a place to stay, have a doctor they can see or have a nurse at a hospital or a social worker to do child protection.”
He says the shell game the province is playing of pretending to be tightening its belt, while simply failing to make big business pay its fair share, is coming at the expense of all New Brunswickers.
Drost cites the $4.5 million sylviculture allotment is described as a subsidy for lumber companies, in addition to the lowered lumber royalty rates as some of the perks big business has received at the expense of the taxpayers. As well as the recent controversy over the lowering of assessments on lumber mills, and mysterious decades long tax exemptions for other ventures, while big businesses were earning hundreds of millions in profit.
“This government will give money to the corporations through subsidies and tax breaks, and yet they are failing to look after the most innocent and vulnerable people in our society. It’s really unacceptable.”
Alex Graham is a Huddle reporter in Saint John. Send her your feedback and story ideas: [email protected].