Steele delivers provincial budget
Posted Apr 5, 2011 01:43:24 PM.
This article is more than 5 years old.
The Nova Scotia government took aim at rising student and emergency health care in rural areas as it brought in its
2011-12 budget Tuesday.
The $9.3 billion spending program, which includes a $170-million reduction in departmental spending, includes a deficit of $389.6 million, slightly more than Finance Minister Graham Steele had forecast. Steele says the government is also asking departments to work within the current budget allocations in dealing with wage and cost increases.
The government says the deficit, which comes on the heels of a $447-million surplus for 2010-11, is mainly caused by the province’s decision to return to annual funding for universities, which have been allocated $327 million in the budget.
The government will spend $30 million on student bursaries and implement a maximum debt cap of $28,560. Basically, what that means is a student who takes on the maximum federal and provincial loan amount over the course of a four year degree will have the provincial portion of those loans forgiven upon graduation.
The government says it will open at least four new collaborative emergency centres in rural areas this year in a bid to reduce overcrowding in hospital emergency rooms.
Otherwise, the province is holding steady in major areas of expenditure including health care and education, with $3.7 billion spent on health and spending slightly reduced for education at $1.1 billion.
