Government has to stop studying problems and start solving them

The Wakeham government says it wants to revitalize rural communities. That’s an important goal.

To get there, Jobs, Growth and Rural Development Minister Lin Paddock’s department launched consultations for a new rural revitalization strategy. The government says it wants a region-by-region approach and is asking Newfoundlanders and Labradorians about the challenges facing rural communities, economic development and what government should prioritize.

It’s not the only strategy in the works. The same department launched consultations for a new population growth strategy the same day.

There is nothing wrong with listening to people who live and work in Newfoundland and Labrador. But taxpayers should be asking whether any of this will go anywhere. Newfoundland and Labrador has a long history of governments commissioning reports, launching consultations and announcing strategies to fix the economy.

There was the Economic Recovery Commission. The Task Force on Community Development. The Strategic Social Plan. The Renewal Strategy for Jobs and Growth. The Royal Commission on Renewing and Strengthening Our Place in Canada. The Comprehensive Regional Diversification Strategy. The Rural Secretariat. Population growth consultations. The Way Forward.

And then there was the Big Reset.

That report should serve as a warning to the Wakeham government about what happens when politicians spend time and money studying problems but lack the will to follow through.

Former premier Andrew Furey created the Premier’s Economic Recovery Team in October 2020 and tasked it with examining government finances, spending, service delivery and opportunities for economic growth. The resulting Big Reset report, released in 2021, wasn’t short on ideas. It contained 79 recommendations covering debt reduction, government operations, accountability and economic growth. It called for real spending cuts, including reducing operating grants to universities, colleges and government agencies and finding savings in education administration.

The plan was to balance the budget within six years.

Instead, the report mostly sat on a shelf.

The Furey government even paid consultants at Rothschild & Co., $5 million to study selling government assets as recommended by the report, then refused to release the results. Taxpayers paid for answers they were never allowed to see.

Since then, the government’s net debt grew from $17.2 billion in 2021 to a projected $20.8 billion this year. That’s an increase of more than 20 per cent and the latest budget projects borrowing more than $1 billion in the years ahead.

Newfoundlanders and Labradorians now carry the heaviest per-person government debt load in Canada. It’s about $39,000 for every single person in the province.

And that debt isn’t free. Taxpayers will spend about $1.2 billion on debt interest costs this year. That’s more than $3 million every day that doesn’t pay for a single nurse, teacher or kilometre of pavement. It goes to the bondholders.

Think about what that means for rural communities. Every dollar sent to bondholders is a dollar that can’t fix a road in the Codroy Valley or keep a clinic open in St. Anthony. The bill for government inaction lands hardest on the towns this new strategy is supposed to save.

Paddock’s consultations will wrap up. Officials will write another strategy. There will be a news conference and a glossy document with a nice cover. The question is what happens next?

If Premier Tony Wakeham wants to prove this time is different, he should put a deadline on every commitment in the strategy and report publicly on what gets done. He should also dust off the Big Reset and act on the savings it identified, because no rural revitalization plan can succeed while the government pours $1.2 billion a year into debt interest instead of services.

Rural Newfoundland and Labrador doesn’t need another report on a shelf. It needs a government with the courage to act.

Devin Drover is the Atlantic Director and General Counsel of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.