Federal budget gets thumbs-down from Halifax groups
Posted Mar 23, 2011 05:31:26 AM.
This article is more than 5 years old.
It didn’t take long for some union and community members in Halifax to start blasting the federal budget.
Shouts of ‘shame’ and sarcastic laughs filled the Paramount Clubroom at the Lord Nelson Hotel where the Canadian Labour Congress had organized a viewing.
For everyone in the room, the Conservative budget was simply too vague and didn’t have enough spending in it.
Some examples include Adrienne Silnicki, a national health care campaigner for the Council of Canadians. She hoped we would hear something about water.
“We were hoping to see things like five billion dollars in the 2011-2012 fiscal year to be invested in a national public water fund,” she said. “That’s something we’ve been hoping for for a long time.”
CUPE representative John McCracken says the people that led to the economic problems we’re facing will end up being the benefactors.
“Their initiative to allow these pooled pension plans is going to benefit the banks and the insurance companies and the financial sector,” he said.
And Gabe Hoogers, National Executive Board Representative for Nova Scotia to the Canadian Federation of Students says it will lead to a bleak future for students.
“A growing generation of young people is graduating with unprecedented levels of student debt,” said Hoogers.
Kyle Buott, President of the Halifax-Dartmouth and District Labour Council spoke before the budget’s release.
He had some words of advice for one federal leader.
“My message today is actually to NDP leader Jack Layton,” he said. “I want to be really, really clear. This budget is not enough and this government needs to come down.”
Nearly a dozen different groups spoke at the budget viewing.
