SAINT JOHN, N.B. - New Brunswick Premier Shawn Graham is promising to create 20,000 jobs over the next four years by cutting taxes and forging ahead with proposed energy projects, if he's re-elected.
In a speech to a business audience Wednesday in Saint John, Graham said the growing number of people reaching retirement age is leaving fewer people working to pay for rising health care costs and other social services.
"The great retirement surge is upon us," Graham said. "If we don't act now it will overwhelm us."
Graham said cutting services and raising taxes are not an option, so the government must help businesses create more jobs by doing such things as lowering taxes.
He said proposals to build a transmission link with Nova Scotia and a second nuclear reactor in his province -- both in just their formative stages -- would also help him reach his goal of job creation.
"If we're re-elected this fall, job creation won't just be one of our priorities. It will be the reason behind everything that we do," he said.
Graham said he wants to concentrate on helping high-growth sectors such as energy projects and information technology because that would bring in more revenue than jobs in lower-paying industries.
Graham said his government wants a quarter of the new jobs to be in those higher-paying sectors.
"New Brunswickers expect and deserve a good quality health care system," he said. "Our challenge is to create enough new and better jobs to generate the revenue to pay for it."
In 2006, the year Graham was first elected, the province's unemployment rate was 8.8 per cent, according to Statistics Canada. As of last month, it was 9.3 per cent.
The provincial election is Sept. 27.
