Mar 7, 2026.
Dear Premier Houston,
I learned today that this government’s planned budget cuts extend even to cutting the budget of Carlton Road Industries Association in Lawrencetown, a small village in Annapolis County, close to where I live. Carlton Road helps adults with disabilities of all sorts transition to the workforce and, when that is not possible, provides meaningful employment opportunities with the supervision of qualified staff. They run the gas station, recycling depot, post office and laundromat in Lawrencetown, a benefit to the whole village.
Do you think it’s OK to cut a program like that?
Please, don’t give me the austerity excuse. We are in a debt crisis of your government‘s making. Announcing a one point cut in the HST in 2024, three days before breaking your own fixed election law to schedule an election, reduced annual provincial income by $280 million. That was an expensive, unprincipled political ploy. Just as bad and even less intelligent was the decision, in that same pre-election time frame, to remove the bridge tolls in Halifax. This cut $30-40 million from the province’s income. Now, instead of the people who use the bridge paying for its maintenance, rural Nova Scotians like myself have to pay for it
The $300 million in cuts we are facing in this budget are only ‘necessary’ because of the loss of revenue resulting from these two decisions. The people of Lawrencetown, including adults with disabilities, are being asked to pay for the PC’s short-sighted and self-serving cuts to our provincial revenues. The cost is born by the most vulnerable.
Also affected by these cuts is the economic well-being of my part of the Annapolis Valley. Tourism is a big deal here. So are the arts and heritage. So are the natural beauty of this area and the health of our ecosystems. Protected areas are a boon to local economies, as the Canadian Parks And Wilderness Society’s recently released national study demonstrates. I have discussed the tourism potential of trails linking a string of protected areas across our county with my MLA, David Bowlby. The footwork has already been done to identify suitable areas to protect. But your government refuses to take the actions that would support tourism. Why?
This government seems to have an ideological fixation on resource extraction as the way forward for our province. In reality, it is the way backwards. Times have changed. To use one example alone, climate change, and the need to mitigate it, makes standing natural forests, especially old forests, ever more valuable. They store more carbon and support more biodiversity. As last summer made all too clear here in Annapolis County, we must also adapt to the changes in our climate that are already happening, notably rising temperatures, drought and increased fire risk. Managed forest — the softwood monocultures industrial forestry favours — has proven to be far more likely to burn, and to burn fast and hot, than our native mixed forest. The costs of the industrial model of forestry have risen astronomically. How much did it cost to fight the Long Lake fire? I bet it is north of $100 million, not counting the homes that were lost.
How does that relate to this budget? Bluntly, the government is betting on the wrong horse. Across the province, in 2023 tourism contributed $3.5 billion to our GDP, twice what forestry contributed — $1.8 billion including all the indirect impacts. Meanwhile, arts, culture and heritage contributed $2.6 billion — more than forestry and mining combined. Every $1 invested in the arts generates $29 in local spending. People going to see a play or a concert eat dinner out beforehand. Some spend the night. Notably, nobody has to pay for a toxic waste cleanup after a theatre performance.
If this government wants to encourage mining, the very least it could do is make sure all Nova Scotians benefit. If you had doubled the royalty rate on gold to 2% from the rock-bottom rate of 1%, back when you talked about doing so in 2023, we would not be in the financial hole. We can’t afford to have the lowest royalty rate in the world for gold mining companies, and why should we?
Your government dug the $1.2 billion hole we are in. It seems quite obvious, from the budget items that have not been cut — $1 million for a billionaire’s sailboat race stands out — that your priority is not ensuring the health and well-being of ordinary Nova Scotians and the natural world we all depend on. It is instead to curry favor with corporate buddies and grease the tracks to extract our wealth, wealth that quickly leaves the province for tax-haven bank accounts in places like Bermuda.
I’m usually even-tempered, as MLA Bowlby would know from our meetings, but I find myself enraged not only by the callousness, but also the stupidity of these budget cuts. Your government has mismanaged our finances since 2021 and is now using them as an excuse for an ideological rampage, cutting sectors it doesn’t care about – including the most vulnerable people in society — or actively treats as the enemy – the Mi’kmaq, environmentalists, artists, African-Nova Scotians. This is no way to govern a province.
Please withdraw this budget and try again, this time consulting with communities, non-profits, tourism-related businesses and the Mi’kmaq.
Sincerely,
Nina Newington, Mount Hanley