7 potential minefields in Liberals' tax-and-cut report

Minefields? We've got minefields.

The Liberal government of Premier Brian Gallant has laid out the options it's considering to balance the provincial budget, and it's hard to know where to even begin.

The 14-page document, "Choices to Move New Brunswick Forward," might just as easily have been entitled "How to Antagonize Voters."

It's chock-full of options that keep politicians awake at night.

Of course, it remains to be seen whether the government will have the political will to implement enough of the proposals to achieve its $500-600 million target.

That's the combination of spending cuts and tax hikes the Liberals say they need to not just eliminate the deficit in the short term, but also to defeat the "structural deficit," entrenched spending patterns destined to send New Brunswick back in the red every time there's an economic hiccup.

If they do plow ahead, it'll be at a considerable political cost. Here are some of the potentially political pitfalls.

Hospital closures

The Liberals have been dropping hints about this for months, and Horizon Health network has a proposal to "repurpose" some smaller hospitals as facilities that could care for people waiting for nursing home spaces.

Friday's document talks about a proposal to close "many rural hospitals" or convert them to community health centres. If history, including a history of protests, is any guide, communities guard their hospitals jealously.

Highway tolls

Tolls were seen as politically toxic in the province after Bernard Lord won the 1999 election on a promise to eliminate tolls on the Moncton-Fredericton section of the Trans-Canada Highway.

More recently, many New Brunswickers have conceded that tolls may be among the least-bad options.

"A lot of people suggest we should have tolls, but no one wants to pay for them," says Victor Boudreau, the minister responsible for the strategic program review.

Putting toll booths at the entrances to the province, or applying them to non-New Brunswick vehicles, have been popular ideas, Boudreau says, but that wouldn't generate enough revenue to make it worth it.

The Saint John-Rothesay corridor on Route One is the busiest highway in the province, the report says, but it also acknowledges that "a regular commuter could incur significant annual costs."

Threading that needle won't be easy.

Centralization of specialized medical services

The report proposes "decreasing the number of access points" to create "single centres of excellence" for specialized care. It cites the heart centre at the Saint John Regional Hospital as an example. 

While it's located in Saint John, it serves patients from both regional health authorities, in both languages, from across the province.

But one only has to recall the fight over two potential locations for DNA sequencing equipment, and the tensions that provoked between Saint John and Moncton earlier this year, to realize that such decisions can prompt heated debates.

Letting municipalities get into the job-incentive business

Louis Robichaud's famous Equal Opportunity program banned municipalities from offering incentives to industry.

Indeed, the potential loss of concessions from Saint John City Hall was one of the reasons K.C. Irving fought the reforms so aggressively. But Robichaud felt allowing it to continue would give wealthier communities an unfair advantage.

Friday's report says the government will look at whether to "give municipalities powers to promote development and become hubs of job creation."

Boudreau says the idea has to be fleshed out, but the government would be "very mindful" of the principles of Equal Opportunity.

Selling a stake in NB Liquor

The report floats the notion of "the partial sale of the business" or "the sale of a minority stake in the business."

Some have urged outright privatization, which could allow the province to collect most of the same revenue through taxes, but at a considerably lower cost.

That doesn't appear to be an option, but allowing another shareholder to invest might also mean having to give up some of the corporation's profits, which would have a long-term effect on government revenue.

Privatizing data registries

The report points out that many provinces have hired private companies to run registries that contain, for example, motor vehicle or property tax data. But the report acknowledges there will be privacy concerns.

"It would be critical to ensure the continued protection of New Brunswickers' personal information," the report says.

Delay

This isn't a proposal in the report, but it is a potential pitfall for the Liberals.

Boudreau says all spending-cut and revenue options add up to almost $1 billion, so the government doesn't have to implement all of them.

But it's obvious that the ones they do implement have to be done quickly: the political will for tough decisions will begin to dissolve when the government hits the halfway point of its mandate in October 2016 and begins looking ahead to the next election.

Michael Horgan, the former federal civil servant hired to oversee the program review, offered the government some advice at Friday's news conference:

"If you're going to do it, do it. Get the job done. You don't want to be doing this exercise again five years from now."

Boudreau says it may take years to put the decisions in effect, but all of them will be announced in the provincial budget early next year.