A pledge not to tolerate deficit spending an early test for incoming Holt government

Liberal Leader Susan Holt will be sworn in as New Brunswick's 35th premier on Saturday, and one of the first things she has promised to do is pay New Brunswick nurses $10,000 retention bonuses, at a cost of an estimated $74.3 million.  

The money, which Holt says will be delivered before January, will be an early test of her new government's duelling commitments to spend more freely on services, but not spill any red ink while doing it.

"We committed to getting that first retention payment out this calendar year, to recognize the work that nurses have done, and to ask them to stick with us as we put in place the changes to their working conditions they have been asking for," said Holt, on election night, about her intention to keep the promise to nurses.

But Holt has also pledged her government will not run budget deficits during her entire term — a potential conflict given the party's many spending promises.

On the morning after the election, Acadia University political scientist Erin Crandall told CBC's Information Morning Fredericton that financing Holt's planned agenda, while keeping budgets balanced, will be a dilemma the new premier is likely to face early and often.

"There were some questions in the campaign around how much some of these promises are actually going to cost and whether or not it will lead to deficits," Crandall said. 

"So I think it's going to be that combination of need to deliver on big items but also you have to keep a balanced budget, and that's going to be really challenging."

Those challenges are already beginning.

According to New Brunswick's Finance Department, the province already slipped into a deficit position for the current year earlier this spring, and on paper it is not clear where the $74.3 million needed for the nurses' bonuses will come from. 

Prof. Gabriel Arsenault said he is not aware of any government anywhere that has been found to keep all of its election commitments, and he doubts the Holt government will be able to be any different.

"I've never seen it. I've never seen that," said Arsenault, a political science professor at the Université de Moncton.

"Theoretically, she could fulfil all of her pledges but realistically, I don't think that will happen. It just never does."

Arsenault set up a New Brunswick polimeter during the Blaine Higgs government.  

Polimeters have become common in North America among political scientists to track how many promises political parties make at election time and how many of those are eventually kept.