New Brunswick — When the Conservative government recently revealed a projected surplus of $862 million by year’s end, Premier Blaine Higgs at first showed some interest in using that toward something constructive for the province.
“My popularity is…well, it’s not what it was back when the pandemic started and I took credit for keeping our COVID numbers low,” Higgs explained at a press conference. “So I figure we should use some of the money for something the public will enjoy, such as…I don’t know…what do commoners like? Ice cream socials?”
Finance Minister Ernie Steeves was prepared to guide the distribution of the surprising surplus, and of course New Brunswickers were starting to see a silver lining to previous penny-pinching by the Conservatives.
Now, though, Higgs and his party are backtracking, claiming there’s nothing that really needs work in New Brunswick.
“Our housing situation is pretty good, especially if you’re a landlord,” Higgs said. “Our health care is decent — I mean, just last week a friend of mine told me that he saw a physician in the E.R. after just 11 hours. And with my new plan to have doctors work more, we don’t need to hire any new ones.
“Our roads are in pretty good shape,” he went on, “education couldn’t be much better than it is now — so I just don’t even know what we can do with extra money. When it comes to areas needing improvement in our province or that could benefit from financial assistance, I’m simply drawing a blank.”
Irving executives witnessed the announcement, and applauded the premier’s realization.
“It’s what I’ve been saying all along,” said spokesperson Manny O’Donnell. “New Brunswick is as close to a utopia as you can get. Just look at how many trees the Irvings plant! The billboards along the highways don’t lie.”
At press time, O’Donnell had convinced Higgs that any extra money should be redirected to cover Irving property taxes.