The Canadian Taxpayers Federation is calling on the Holt government to cut its advertising budget as it is on track to double its social media ad spending this year, according to government records obtained by the Canadian Taxpayers Federation through a right-to-information request.

“The Holt government is running the largest deficit in New Brunswick history, but it’s still wasting almost a million dollars from taxpayers to promote itself on TikTok and Facebook,” said Devin Drover, CTF Atlantic Director. “Every dollar the government blows on social media ads is borrowed money that taxpayers are on the hook to pay back with interest.”

The New Brunswick government spent $474,676 on social media advertising between Jan. 1 and June 25 of this year, according to the records. This includes ads ran on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, TikTok and Snapchat.

The Holt government ran ads promoting its recent budget, infrastructure projects and reforms to the municipal property tax system, according to records from the Meta Ad Library, which discloses ads run by pages on Facebook and Instagram.

The library also shows Meta pulled Holt government ads in December 2025 because the government ran political ads without the disclaimers the platform requires.

In total, the government’s social media ad spending works out to about $2,700 every day. At that pace, the government will spend more than $984,000 on social media ads by the end of the year. That would be a 68 per cent jump from last year and more than double what it spent in 2023.

The Holt government is to borrowing $1.4 billion this year, the largest one-year debt increase in the province’s history. Because of increased borrowing, interest charges on the provincial debt will cost taxpayers $851 million this year, or nearly $1,000 per New Brunswicker.

This is the second consecutive budget where Holt chose to borrow more money after campaigning on a promise that government debt and borrowing would not increase during her mandate.

Since Holt took office, she increased total debt by $3.6 billion, or about 30 per cent.

“New Brunswickers are working hard to pay their bills while the government borrows money to pat itself on the back with social media ads,” Drover said. “Holt needs to cut the government ad budget and show taxpayers she is serious about getting spending under control.”