CHARLOTTETOWN, P.E.I. — The official Green Opposition and the Liberal Third Party are disputing suggestions by the province’s finance minister that the recently tabled budget involved adequate collaboration.
The budget, tabled on Tuesday, was preceded by a rare flurry of meetings between the government house leader, Sidney MacEwen, and the house leaders for the Green and Liberal parties, Hannah Bell and Sonny Gallant.
The heightened importance placed on a negotiated process over the budget represents, perhaps, the most tangible initiative of the King minority government in the area of cross-party collaboration.
Collaboration was the dominant theme of King’s election campaign.
But, according to Bell, the meetings between house leaders did not amount to meaningful collaboration. She suggested the appropriate word is “consultation”.
"We have been consulted on our priorities. We are happy to see that our priorities are reflected, but we were not engaged in a discussion on the financial allocation for our priorities," Bell said.
Bell said the Green caucus did not see the full details of the budget until Tuesday.
"The financial disclosure was as much a surprise to us as it was to everybody else," Bell said.
"Our caucus felt that some of our priorities were not listened to. We got some half measures on a few others." - Evangeline-Miscouche MLA Sonny Gallant.
But MacEwen said both Opposition parties were provided, for the first time, with detailed financial breakdowns of commitments contained in the budget, including specific data on funding allocations and contracts to private sector or NGOs.
He said the process of negotiation began with the identification of the overlapping issues contained in the election platforms of all parties.
These included the expansion of the scope of practice for nurse practitioners, the expansion of the school food program and establishing an independent office of the child advocate.
"Once that trust was there, the official Opposition said, 'we see you guys are being fair and doing these things,’ so they gave a throne speech submission document and a budget submission document," MacEwen said.
The Green budget submission contained estimates of costing for priority items. The Liberal document was also a list of priority items but was not costed.
The Green list contained some priorities that were incorporated into the budget, such as providing long-term funding for a women’s shelter, support for midwifery programs and funding a study of a Basic Income Guarantee, although details of this program remain unclear.
Bell said one key priority, an increase in social assistance rates, was not included in the eventual budget. She also said she was disappointed to see there were not more commitments put toward housing.
MacEwen acknowledged that the Greens had pushed for significant increases to food and shelter social assistance rates. He said the King government had decided to follow through with increases in food and shelter social assistance rates announced last November by the previous Liberal government. But he said the government was not prepared to increase rates further.
"That was weeks ago. I told them right upfront that that simply won't be in the budget," MacEwen said, adding the Green caucus had identified housing as a priority during house leader discussions.
But he said the budget submission from the opposition had not contained a costed request for more social housing.
Bell said the decision to not include a costed funding request for additional affordable housing was because her caucus had been told that big ticket items were unlikely to be incorporated.
She said the party focused its requests on attempting to incorporate wording concerning the housing shortage into the throne speech.
"We had been told quite clearly that given the challenges the government was facing with their budget deliberations that there was not going to be a lot of space for fiscal asks," Bell said.
Liberal house leader Sonny Gallant said he felt his discussions with MacEwen were positive. But he also had his own criticisms.
"Our caucus felt that some of our priorities were not listened to. We got some half measures on a few others. There was a feeling that this wasn't as good of a consultation as they would have liked," Gallant said.
The list of Liberal budgetary priorities included increasing childcare spaces, renovating the Evangeline School and a 10 per cent reduction in property taxes for homes valued at less than $200,000.
MacEwen said the requests for increased childcare spaces and renovations for Evangeline School were incorporated, but said the property tax cuts were not.
Prior to its release, Premier Dennis King said 85 per cent of the budget was based on a budget prepared by Finance Department staff working under the MacLauchlan government.
