The bedrock of my government has been solid fiscal management. We have delivered six consecutive balanced budgets and we will introduce another one in a matter of weeks.

This year, we became the first government in many years to actually reduce the debt through the budget process. We are putting more than $136 million on the debt.

Additionally, we are committed to putting at least 70 per cent of any Crown Share money directly on the debt. Although we don’t know how much this will be, but we expect it to be a significant amount.

This year, like every year, there has been year end spending in the form of supplemental appropriations. Year end spending is not new. It’s done by all governments, every year. You may be interested to know that since 1999, the Government of Nova Scotia’s supplemental appropriations have averaged about $230 million each year. This year falls into that range. When putting together the budget, we use conservative estimates. That often means we have extra money at the end of the year. It would be a much bigger problem to end the year with an unexpected deficit.

There is absolutely no doubt that our government puts a lot of importance on reducing the provincial debt. However, debt reduction is not the only priority for the people of Nova Scotia, or for my government. It is necessary to make investments in the future of Nova Scotia and that’s what we are doing.

University tuition will be frozen for an additional three years because of our $165 million investment. We are also extending a bursary program that will see each Nova Scotia student attending a Nova Scotia university receive 761 dollars to be used towards reducing their tuition. That number will rise to over 1200 dollars by the end of the agreement.

Last fall in the legislature the NDP education critic asked government when it was going to invest in Nova Scotia students. Now we have made a firm commitment to those students, and the NDP leader is accusing us of squandering money. Mr. Dexter can’t have it both ways.

Another $26 million dollars is going to new and improved infrastructure. This is an investment that will begin to address our province’s $8 billion infrastructure deficit.

Last fall in the legislature, MLAs from both opposition parties called for infrastructure improvements in various parts of the province. Now that we are making those improvements, the leaders of both parties call us irresponsible. Again, they can’t have it both ways.

Leadership is about making tough choices.

When our revenues went up in the last quarter of the year, and the numbers came in over the past couple of weeks, we had a choice to make. Confident in the fact that we are meeting our aggressive debt reduction strategy, we decided to invest in other important areas. I’m confident we made the right choice. It was the right choice for government, but more importantly, it was the right choice for the people of Nova Scotia.