The leader of the People’s Alliance Party wants the Auditor General to review deals he describes as ‘corporate handouts.’
Kris Austin wants to be able to quantify how many jobs were created and sustained with government funding.
“Three, four, five years down the road how many jobs actually came to fruition, and did that company stay in New Brunswick, and how many people are currently employed,” says Austin. “You know, so we can see that we’ve gotten the biggest bang for our buck.”
He says in an ideal world, there would be no government money going to directly create jobs.
“See right now, the thinking of government is to create jobs, what I want to do is I want to get government to a place where it creates a business environment so that the private sector creates the jobs, not necessarily the government directly,” explains Austin.
He would like to see that money scaled back, or even eliminated altogether.
“That’s a couple hundred million dollars you could use to lower taxes for everybody,” says Austin. “And then start cutting through the regulations to see what is necessary regulation, and what is either redundant or unnecessary regulation.”
Austin said he and his caucus will be supporting Premier Blaine Higgs’ Throne Speech when it is voted upon this week.
