New Brunswick

We present data beginning with fiscal year 1965/66.

The data we present is from what the provincial government defines to be its Consolidated Statement of Operations. This budget includes revenues and expenditures of government business enterprises.

From 1995-96, spending has been reported by function making our reporting of spending on Health, Social Services, and Education straightforward. Prior to that year, spending was reported by Ministry requiring judgement on our part of how to summarize spending by Ministry to fairly represent spending by function. Public Accounts in the mid-1990s provide guidance by reporting spending by function and Ministry for the same year. This allows us to sum spending by Ministry to as close as possible produce estimates of spending by function for earlier years.

For years prior to 1995-96, we replicate the functional definition of Education by summing expenditures by the Department of Education, the Department of Continuing Education (this ends with 1976), plus the Maritime Provinces Higher Education Commission (which starts in 1968-69 and continues thereafter).

We replicate the functional definition of Social Services by reporting expenditures by the Department of Youth and Welfare (1965-66 to 1967-68), the sub-category “Welfare” in the Department of Health and Welfare for years 1968-69 to 1970-71 with the rest used to define the function area of Health. From that point on and until the function area of “Income Assistance” is reported (which we use as our Social Services expenditures), we represent Social Service spending by the expenditures of any department referencing “welfare” or “income assistance.”

It is noteworthy that our data shows an unusually large increase in Social Services expenditure, and a similar decrease in Health expenditures, in 1999-2000. Our examination of the public accounts for that and the previous year suggest these changes are due to a reallocation of responsibility for spending on long-term care from health to social services.¹ This change occurred at the same time as a change to the description of the functional area used in the public accounts to represent social services; from Income Assistance to Family and Community Services.

New Brunswick’s revenues are straightforward to report as they are defined consistently over time. For years before 1997-98, we use the “Social Services and Education Tax” to represent our Retail Sales Tax category. The Social Services and Education Tax was a tax levied on items sold for consumption at the time of the sale. After that time, what we report as Retail Sales tax revenue is HST revenue.