It is budget day in Nova Scotia. A year of limping through the broken remains of the Conservative’s election year budget has finally come to a close.
Now comes the fear and trepidation… What sacred cows will be cut? What blatantly political projects are going to be funded? Or…. not?
But more importantly, will the NDP be really actually different than any past government? If so, how?
Since July we have had a government that was so far into a fiscal year that it was too late to really put a stamp on how Nova Scotia is governed, and what will change.
This is not to say the NDP has been idle, many policy and regulation changes have come down the pike.
Today is where the rubber hits the paved rural road. How will the NDP change the nine billion dollar budget, to serve Nova Scotia, and serve their agenda of change?
I have been a supporter of getting the NDP elected in Nova Scotia, one of the mushy middle who is not a member of a party. I wanted a change, to break the cycle of entitlement of the two older parties. I want our politics to move out of the mid-20th century and start to reflect the 21st. I want, as one Liberal friend put it “to have the NDP finish the revolution John Savage’s government started.”
Today we find out if change has really truly happened, and I won’t lie, I am nervous.
I will be on CBC Mainstreet in Nova Scotia sometime between 4 and 5pm talking about the implications of the budget for arts and culture. Will there be an Arts Council? Will funding go up, down, sideways? Will film and music keep getting the bucks they have been getting? We will know at 2pm.
Talk to you sometime after that!