The finance minister, who has just returned from a government mission in Europe, said leaders he met with encouraged him to move forward with fiscal reform. “The economy has performed well and revenues have increased.” “The famous ‘toxic austerity’ that was killing the economy - there is no toxic austerity,” he said. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. Higher-than-anticipated revenues in 2015-16 ($57.1 billion), paired with rigorous spending management, yielded positive results for the province, Leitão said. We believe that the surplus should be reinvested in education, daycare and health care “It was important for us to go back to a balanced budget and we now know for a fact that if we have any leverage, any additional money, it will be directed to health care,” he said. On Wednesday, Health Minister Gaétan Barrette defended his government’s management of the public purse: “We could not have sustained over time the rate of increases year after year we’ve had in the past 15 years, which again, has been 5.5 per cent (annually) … The economy isn’t growing at that level. “We believe that the surplus should be reinvested in education, daycare and health care,” Ethier said.

Sonia Ethier, of the Centrale des syndicats du Québec, said unions agree that tax cuts are not needed now. Article content Jacques Boissinot / The Canadian Press

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