Doug Ashbury
Northern News Services

Toronto (Nov 22/99) - With billions in federal surplus money up for grabs, territories and provinces are after "balance," NWT and Nunavut finance ministers said.

Northwest Territories Finance Minister Charles Dent and Nunavut Finance Minister Kelvin Ng were part of a provincial-territorial finance ministers meeting held last week in Toronto.

The group's goal was to come up with some broad fiscal recommendations for Federal Finance Minister Paul Martin.

Dent, Ng, and their contemporaries agreed Ottawa's fiscal management should include program spending.

"Tax cuts help (but) we need to see spending," Dent said.

Lowering federal income tax also means a drop in territorial income tax because territorial income tax is a percentage of federal tax. That means when Ottawa cuts its rates, territorial rates drop as well.

One of the group's main demands is for Ottawa to restore Canada's health and social transfer funding to 1994-95 levels of $18.7 billion, Dent adds. He estimated such funding, if not restored, will likely be at about $15 billion in fiscal 2001-02.

Support for the health funding recommendation was unanimous.

"We also discussed an infrastructure program," he said.

But Northern finance ministers noted that any infrastructure initiative must not be population based.

"If there is a new infrastructure program, it should not be per capita-based," Ng said.

"It was agreed equity is the term used, rather than per capita," Dent said.

"Our point was well-taken. The main theme of the meeting was to reach consensus."

Finance ministers also looked at the provincial cap on equalization payments. And although the NWT and Nunavut do not get equalization payments, Dent and Ng said they supported the recommendation to remove the cap because there are Northern implications. If provincial caps on equalization funding are removed, then caps on formula financing can also be removed, they suggested.

Provincial and territorial finance ministers will discuss their recommendations with Martin in Ottawa Dec. 8.

Predictions peg the federal surplus to be as much as $95 billion over the next five years.