A senior investment advisor says there is little new in the Greene Report released yesterday.

Larry Short says the report is largely a summary of previous reports dating back to at least 2015, if not before that.

Short says the province can no longer “kick the can down the road” and the province has pushed its ability to borrow to the limit, and it cannot be ignored.

According to the PERT report, the province has posted deficits in 61 of the 71 years since confederation and with the exception of one year, the years of surplus were recent and driven by royalties from offshore oil.

There was no plan in years of surplus says the report, and as revenue from offshore oil increased, the province spent more money—most of it going to the salaries of public servants through increased hiring and wage increases “well beyond inflation.”

Short says despite what many may think, the pandemic actually helped Newfoundland and Labrador as was outlined in a recent article by the Globe and Mail.

It forced Ottawa to offer assistance to all provinces, allowing Newfoundland and Labrador to “squeak by,” Short reads from the article. Moya Greene acknowledged the same, indicating that were it not for the onset of the pandemic, the province would have been “over the cliff.” She says Ottawa is unlikely to do it again as the province’s problem is with spending, not with revenue.