One of the province’s largest health care unions is wondering why the three per cent budget cuts to the province’s hospitals are not reflected in today’s budget, while cuts to school boards are.
CUPE Atlantic Regional Director Jacquie Bramwell says, “This budget appears to follow through on the $13 million cut to regional school boards – the second year in a row that cuts have occurred - but does not reflect the three per cent cut the government told the eight district health authorities to plan for.
“The many thousands of frontline hospital workers that we represent in this province deserve to know what the absence of these cuts in the document means for the services they provide to Nova Scotians.
“Parents with children in the P-12 school system, meanwhile, are no doubt wondering how their schools are going to deal with budget cuts of up to 2.1 per cent plus being told they have to absorb inflation and any wage increases. Our school boards could be facing cuts of seven or eight percent which will have a direct impact on classrooms,” says Bramwell.
CUPE applauds the government for its planned reductions in the HST. Says Bramwell, “Our union has always believed that income tax is a more progressive form of taxation than consumption taxes which punish low income families disproportionately because they have much less disposable income.”