Interest payments on the province’s debt will cost taxpayers $1.2-billion this year, and a financial advisor says while residents won’t necessarily see direct impacts from that, there will be indirect consequences.

Larry Short of Short Financial, a branch of IA Private Wealth, has been covering the provincial budget since 2016, and year-over-year he has seen government deficits creep higher and higher.

He says yearly expenses have gone from $7-billion in 2008 to about $10-billion today.

“Every year the expenses go up, we’ve never seen expenses go down, and a big part of that is the debt servicing portion of it.”

Short calls that “concerning,” but it is not so concerning that it is causing downgrades from debt servicing agencies.