Tax Breaks In Province Criticised For Making Deficit Higher

An economics professor at U-N-B Saint John says the provincial government's deficit is far worse because of tax cuts implemented by the Liberals under then Premier Shawn Graham back in 2008 which weren't opposed by the Conservatives who were then out of power.

Rod Hill claims two thirds of the two-thirds of the deficit can be attributed to the tax reductions and the people who didn't need a tax break benefited the most with the bottom half of taxpayers getting only 10 per cent of these reductions.   

He argues the tax breaks have cost the government over 730 million dollars in revenue over 4 years and the province finds itself borrowing over 100 million dollars annually to give tax reductions to those people earning more than 80 thousand dollars a year.