Prince Edward Island’s government is acting like a shopaholic at a midnight madness sale and several lobby groups and taxpayers are demanding it change its poor spending habits.

Although every other province in the country manages to balance its books — and some even have balanced-budget legislation — the Island is the only province to continue to overspend.

The 2008-09 provincial budget is expected to be tabled sometime in April and provincial treasurer Wes Sheridan is probably feeling the pressure many groups and individuals are putting on him and his department to table a balanced budget.

P.E.I.’s government overspent by $40 million in the 2007-2008 budget. And with long-term deficit spending and growing debt, the province is forced to spend 10% of its budget just to pay the interest on its loans. This is the province’s third-largest expenditure — after health care, at 20% of the budget, and education, at 15%.

In the last budget, Premier Robert Ghiz’s Liberal government increased its spending by 13%. the previous government fared no better. In the past decade, government has increased spending by 64%; inflation accounted for only 27% of this amount.

The Canadian Federation of Independent Business is appealing to its 1,100 members in P.E.I. and to all islanders to demand that the government get its spending under control, commit to balancing its budget and reduce the debt.

“P.E.I. currently spends more money each year on the interest charged on its debt than it does on social services,” says Erin McGrath-Gaudet, CFIB’s P.E.I. policy analyst. “Each year that the government runs a deficit, our debt and interest charges grow, leaving less money to spend on important government programs and on tax relief. This is now 2008; every other province can balance its books. We’re saying this is a spending problem and the role of government is to make tough choices.”

The province can make those spending cuts, she says, by reducing the size of its civil service, cutting program spending and reducing capital spending.

Another financial mistake the province continues to make is providing high-risk companies with loans and grants, McGrath-Gaudet says, citing the example of Charlottetown-based Polar Foods International Inc., which received millions from the province a couple of years ago and failed.

“Our members are looking for the government of the day to learn from past mistakes,” she says, “and not to make them again.

“This is an issue for every islander. There is absolutely nothing fair about the government asking tomorrow’s taxpayers to foot the bill for today’s spending decisions,” McGrath-Gaudet adds. “With an aging population, health-care costs are going to continue to go up and we’re not going to be in a better position to pay this debt in the future.”

The Canadian Taxpayers Federation echoes the CFIB’s concerns for P.E.I.’s fiscal future. The organization’s national researcher, Adam Taylor, says the Ghiz government needs to stop wasting millions of taxpayers’ dollars on what he calls “corporate welfare” in the form of forgivable loans and grants to businesses. Deficit budgets are a sign of poor planning and bad policy, he adds.

The P.E.I. Federation of Agriculture is hopeful the province will take farmers into account when deciding where some of that money will go. The federation’s executive director, Ian McIsaac, says there are many provincial budget concerns in the province’s farming community.

“We need better safety-net programs when producers are put at a disadvantage,” he says. “We feel the government should share the costs of business-risk programs if there’s a disaster or a flood of cheap imports.”

Unlike other lobby groups that say the government should avoid providing assistance to new business ventures, the federation thinks there is merit in providing loans and grants to those new business ventures with merit.

“The government has been giving assistance to new industries such as biofuels,” McIsaac says. “We think that’s worth the risk.” IE