It was a full room at NBCC St. Andrews on Friday night with nearly a hundred people coming to the Strategic Program Review with Health Minister Victor Boudreau.
Liberal MLA’s in Charlotte County, John Ames and Rick Doucet were both in attendance.
Many ideas were brought up by residents to help the province raise money, save money, and ultimately get rid of the $12 billion dollar deficit.
Of course, for a few residents, natural resources was top of mind. One man stated, “I think the government needs to stop giving away our natural resources. For many years, they’ve under-valued our natural resources, and as a result, the province is losing.”
A St. Stephen resident mentioned the provincially-owned fishing resort in Miramichi, “Our government needs to be a little more responsible. This Larry’s Gulch thing for our provincial leaders? I don’t think so. We don’t get chefs to come to our home. That’s a thousand dollars a day that could go back into our economy.”
One man mentioned an interesting concept, “We felt that it’s time to look at a long-term plan on merging the Atlantic Canadian provinces so that we can cut costs there. And I think that our politicians should look at that very, very seriously.”
Other ideas to generate money: expanding the IT sector, merging services and expanding work at the Charlotte County Hospital, and profit from marijuana legalization.
