Change coming so NBers won’t need to apply for future benefits: deputy

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The Higgs government will introduce legislation this spring so that New Brunswickers won’t have to apply for newly created provincial benefits.

Finance Deputy Minister Cheryl Hansen made the announcement on Wednesday in front of a committee of MLAs.

That’s as the Higgs government faces criticism over how its newly announced one time $300 “affordability” payment, that could be paid out to up to 250,000 New Brunswickers, is only available to those who apply.

Hansen’s comments came from a question from Liberal Finance critic René Legacy who asked what the department is doing in efforts to get dollars allocated for programming out the door quicker.

It led Hansen to highlight how federal programs use existing data to target those who qualify for something, referencing how her mother recently got a notice in the mail about the new federal dental insurance plan.

“We have a hard time getting money out the door quickly because we don’t have that information for all of our New Brunswickers,” Hansen said.

“That sits with the Canada Revenue Agency because they administer our taxes, they have all of that information.”

But Hansen said changes are coming.

“We have been working with the CRA, you will be seeing in the spring legislature sitting that we are bringing forth changes that will allow us to have the data from the CRA,” she said.

“That will provide some of that nimbleness.

“So when government makes a decision and says ‘we would like to do a program for this target (demographic) or that target, we can actually narrow down on that subset of the population, because right now we have no idea.”

She added: “The only people that we have information on are the people that are receiving regular benefits from us, or people who have applied for a different program in the past. We can push money out to that population, but when it becomes nuanced relative to income level, we are in the dark.

“We need to know who they are.”

At the State of the Province address in late January, Higgs revealed that the government would soon start issuing the one-time payment to all New Brunswick households with a net income of less than $70,000 per year. He estimated the program would cost the province about $75 million and could be paid out to up to 250,000 New Brunswickers.

But the Finance department has since clarified that it will only go to those who apply.

The application process is slated to begin later this month.

This isn’t the first time the provincial government has made New Brunswickers apply for one-time benefits. During the pandemic, the province launched a “staycation” rebate that allowed people to get a rebate on some of their travel costs within New Brunswick, provided they submitted receipts. In many cases, there was a months-long lag time between people submitting their applications and receiving the money.

But other programs, like the Emergency Food and Fuel Benefit, didn’t require applications from recipients.

The difference, spokesperson Bruce Macfarlane said in an email, is that the government already had the information of the people eligible for that program, which was aimed at low-income New Brunswickers and included two payments of $200.

Lyle Skinner, a constitutional lawyer specializing in parliamentary and emergency management law, has questioned why the province hasn’t entered into an agreement with the Canada Revenue Agency to obtain the necessary income tax information to facilitate the administration of a provincial program.

“The purpose of N.B., unlike Quebec, having its income collection administered by Revenue Canada is efficiency savings, but I find it very curious that provinces are incapable of receiving tax information about their own citizens to administer provincial programs,” Skinner said.

At committee, Legacy referenced that this would have solved the problem with the quick rollout of the affordability payment.

Legacy previously said that his party “knew that when the details came out, it was going to be problematic.”

“I feel like the premier was looking for a headline during his speech at the State of the Province,” he said. “He didn’t give a chance for anybody to prepare … we’re getting calls, as MLAs, in our offices.”

-With files from Andrew Waugh