Premier Susan Holt told New Brunswickers her government was getting serious about restraint in December 2025.

Every department, she said, had been asked to find 10 to 15 per cent in savings as part of Budget 2026.

Then Budget 2026 came out. And it turns out that Holt’s own office didn’t get the savings memo.

Salaries in the premier’s office are up more than $91,000 over last year, according to records obtained by the Canadian Taxpayers Federation through a freedom-of-information request.

While Holt was lecturing other departments about belt-tightening, she was quietly growing her own office.

That’s not restraint. That’s hypocrisy.

And it’s part of a bigger pattern. Holt campaigned on balancing the books and paying down debt. She told voters that “a Holt government will deliver balanced budgets every year of its mandate and continue to pay down the provincial debt.”

She broke that promise twice in a row.

Budget 2025 saddled taxpayers with more than half a billion dollars in new borrowing.

Budget 2026 doubles down with $1.4 billion in new debt.

Since Holt took office, the provincial government ballooned the total debt by $3.6 billion. That’s a 30 per cent increase in less than two years.

Every time Holt promises to find savings, she swipes the taxpayer credit card instead.

And the cost of all this borrowing is staggering. New Brunswickers will pay $851 million in interest charges on the provincial debt this year. That’s roughly $1,000 for every man, woman and child in the province. That’s money that doesn’t pave a single road, treat a single patient or hire a single teacher. It just goes to bondholders.

And the bill is only going to get bigger. Every dollar Holt borrows today is a dollar, plus interest, that taxpayers have to pay back tomorrow through higher taxes down the road.

What makes this even more galling is what taxpayers are getting in return: nothing.

Budget 2026 contains no meaningful tax relief. While neighbouring Nova Scotia cut income taxes and the HST, New Brunswickers are still being hit with some of the highest tax rates in the country.

Families struggling with grocery bills and high gas prices are being told the government has no money for them.

That’s even as the government finds plenty of money to waste handing out more than $100 million in corporate welfare annually.

The math here isn’t complicated. Holt is borrowing more, paying more in interest and giving taxpayers less. Every part of that equation is moving in the wrong direction.

And every part of it goes against what she promised on the campaign trail.

This isn’t how taxpayers expected the government to behave.

When Holt told voters she would balance the books and pay down debt, they took her at her word. They voted for a government that would respect the people who pay the bills. Instead, they got a government that talks restraint in public and hands out raises in private.

There’s still time for Holt to course-correct. She can cut the political salaries in her own office. She can table a real plan to balance the budget and start paying down the debt. She can give New Brunswickers meaningful tax relief instead of asking them to keep waiting.

But none of that will happen unless taxpayers demand it.

Holt was elected on a promise of fiscal discipline. Two budgets in, she’s delivered the opposite. She’s abandoned the taxpayers who put her in office and she’s piling debt onto their kids and grandkids to do it.

It’s time for the premier to remember who’s actually paying her salary and the salaries of everyone else in her office.