It is just a few days to 2024.
Quinte News continues to look back at the year that was in the riding of Hastings-Lennox and Addington with Member of Provincial Parliament Ric Bresee.
He says the cost of living will stand out as the most challenging issue, not just in the riding, or the province, but across Canada.
“Between interest rates and the general cost of goods, but also the carbon tax piled on top of that has caused tremendous challenges.”
Bresee says the province actively looked at ways they could help people save money, including LIFT, or the Low Income Family Tracker.
“It means that there’s nobody paying provincial income tax, if they’re making less than $50,000 a year now.”
As a Progressive Conservative government, Bresee says people expect them to watch the dollars and cents. He says that is a challenge at times when there are inflationary problems like Canada is facing.
They were looking at a balanced budget, but that was not achievable.
” … for the 2024 fiscal year, we’ve pushed that now to the 2025. One of those pieces that it is important to be fiscally prudent, not keep on pushing these costs onto future and future, but it’s also important to be able to live today.”
In the H-L and A riding, Bresee says municipalities are going full steam ahead, trying to get infrastructure projects completed.
“Number of water and wastewater projects, a number of roads and bridges projects, around the riding. We have 14 different lower-tier municipalities in this riding, they’ve all got projects. Almost all of them certainly have some provincial funding and support to do that.”
He finished the interview by thanking his staff for the work with residents in the riding.
