Tuesday, May 16, 1967 Honourable Alexander B. Campbell : (Inaudible.) L. George Dewar : Don't get in a hurry, don't get ahead of me, I want to pre¬ sent thia picture in all its vivid detail aa we go along. Now, last year the Provincial Treasurer estimated that we would have a surplus of $481,000.00 on overall account, that was his estimate, but when the present Provincial Treasurer got control of the books instead of a $481,000.00 surplus which we were assured would happen, we find that there is a deficit of almost $12,000,000.00 or an increase in the net debt Some Member : How much? L. George Dewar : $12,000,000.00. Some Member : That went into the paving up in Souris . L. George Dewar : Oh, No. No. We must strike that assertion right away. I will show where it went, I will show where it went, but just incidentally there was only a million dollars went into paving, only a million a small amount, 9%. Honourable Alexander B. Campbell : That was a cheap by-election. L. George Dewar : I am going to say a word about the cost of electing the present Government to office. A million dollars of pavement is a minor matter com¬ pared with the tremendous cost of putting the present Government into office. It ran into many millions, and I will point that out before I am through. Well, that was the state of affairs when the Provincial Treasurer brought down the Budget this year, $12,000,000.00. Nothing like it was ever heard of before. Why m 1969 we assumed office in September and the former Government had been pre¬ paring for an election, not just for two or three months, but for most of the summer. The great splurge on roads and everything had taken place and there was a great overexpenditure by the former Matheaon Government before we assumed office in 1969, but in spite of everything that they could spend, the overall deficit for that year was only around six or seven million. Why the former Matheaon administration and the Government that assumed office fat 1969 were pikers compared with what was performed by this present administration after they assumed office on the 28th of July. Some Member : (Inaudible). L. George Dewar : Well, they were materially responsible for what happened. We were just over a session and Just getting our programme underway when an election took place, so there wasn't time to orer-expend at any great rate. Let us look at the deficit for 1967, and what do we find. We find that Mr. Farmer estimated that there would be $68,574.00 ordinary surplus, $418,804.00 capi¬ tal surplus, or a total of $481,000.00 of a surplus. Now, of course, the present Pro¬ vincial Treasurer turned that into a deficit of $4,986,470.00, but that isn't all the picture, that isn't all the picture, it is even worse than that. The handling of the affairs, the financial affairs of the Province is even worse than that $4,986,470.00 would tend to show. The past Provincial Treasurer, he was a very modest man, underestimated the revenues, a very uncommon thing for a Provincial Treasurer to do and one which the present Provincial Treasurer wouldn't be guilty of, or couldnt be commended for, perhaps I should say. The past Provincial Treasurer under¬ estimated the revenues of ordinary account by $800,000.00 so that goes against the present Provincial Treasurer, $800,000.00 of increased revenue that he had to deal with. Then he also spent a half million dollars less on capital account than budgeted for, so he had that extra revenue to deal with, and so we might say that the performance of the present Provincial Treasurer is worse by $6,718,000.00 than was budgeted for last year by the former Provincial Treasurer. (Applause) The financial condition of the Province was worsened in that budget by that amount. Where was the over¬ spending? Where was the big splurge made by the present Provincial Treasurer? Well, it is pointed out that some of it went on highways. Well, of course, in an election year there is always a little extra spent on highways, there is no doubt about that. We expect that there might be a alight over-expenditure and we found that there was, about a million dollars over-expenditure, but this went into Provincial pav¬ ing which I think is a good thing. I think that this Government and the past Gov-