Stockwell Day’s “road map to a balanced budget” is in the National Post today, and in it he lauds the 2010 spend-the-course budget and the “3-point plan” to return to a balanced budget.
The first point of the plan is to wind down the stimulus spending of the famous Economic Action Plan that built skating rinks in community centres and bathrooms in National Parks. So that means that this year’s $53.8-billion fiscal deficit is all part of slowing down the second half of the two-year $47-billion stimulus package.
The second point is to ensure government lives within its means. To honour this plan, the government announced a wage freeze for the civil service saving as much as $6.8 billion. If you scan through the forest that died to produce the 424-page monstrosity of a budget, however, you’ll soon realize that this is a spending freeze at 2010-11 levels. As Andrew Coyne noted:
That sounds tough, until you realize they’re freezing spending at 2010-11 levels: that is, at the very height of the stimulus-enhanced, shovels-in-the-ground, money-out-the-door frenzy. In 2011, according to the budget’s breakdown of federal expenses (p. 180), “operating expenses subject to freeze” totalled $54.9-billion, fully $10-billion more than they were just two years before. That’s where they’re freezing it. The peak has become the base.
And third, Stockwell Day and the Conservatives will conduct that neverending “comprehensive review of government administrative and overhead costs” they’ve been working on for over four years now. Without much apparent success, since government spending under the Conservative Party has increased 32.7% in the five budgets delivered since May of 2006.
In the first Conservative budget, the government estimated program spending at $179.2 billion in 2005-06. This year’s 2009-10 budget estimated the figure at $237.8 billion a mere four years later. In their 2006 budget, the Conservatives began with the following promise:
The Government will restrain the rate of spending growth.
The Government will introduce a new approach to managing overall spending to ensure that government programs focus on results and value for money, and are consistent with government priorities and responsibilities.
Stockwell Day had better hurry up and finish that spending review. Meanwhile, Canadians appear to be giving tacit approval to go ahead and make public-sector cuts as a deficit-fighting tool, just as the Liberals did in the late nineties.
A new Nanos-Policy Options poll shows that 36% of respondents feel that freezing government wages is the best approach to fighting the deficit. 20.5% say government and program spending should be cut. We’d better start soon. The current Conservative road map leads us to record levels of spending and debt.
Well, despite what the CBC’s “Made for TV” conservative has to say about things.
The fact is that these things are not cast in stone, kind of like the future. These forecasts are stale almost as soon as they’re published.
Of course, they could get worse, but it’s also possible that things could get better. Both of those scenarios are going to be affected more by what happens outside of our borders, than inside of them.
Okay, maybe I’m wrong there. I’m sure if the Crowned Count seizes the Parliamentary Throne through some nefarious means, all hell will break loose, thus leading to a massive spending spree to shore up the support of his confederates. Then we’ll see some Obama style deficits that will be truly whine worthy.
Now, as far as those “polls” that are attempting to tell us “this” and “that”. All I can say is that they are not trust worthy and they certainly aren’t worth betting the farm on. Getting into a battle with the bureaucrats and the government unions is not a good strategy when in a minority position.
Plus we have the Baby Boomer Government employee Pension Bomb for Federal, Provincial and Municipal unionized workers. Pension Funds that dabble in the market (like Ontario Teachers) but any losses are backstopped by taxpayers and don’t affect pension payouts thus taxpayers may have to pay TWICE.
Government employee rolls have to be reduced, at least the full-time gold-plated pension members. Government workers’ unions will claim that we need skilled people in government, and can’t reduce the numbers of government employees. My glib response would be, ‘we’ll risk it’. Of course you need good capable people in government, but the taxpayers of Canada shouldn’t be afraid of a hiring model that means much more of a flow through of governmental workers with typical career trajectories not wholly in governmental work but returning to the private sector. We have to change the model of people joining the government to do good and staying to do well.
my kingdom for a true conservative
You know there are two concepts of getting a boulder to roll. You can back up and take a full speed charge against the boulder or you can gently put you shoulder to the boulder and increase the pressure until the boulder starts to move.
Taking the running charge seldom works. It results in injury to the charger not the charged.
Gently applying pressure always works. Not only do you get the boulder to roll you are able to keep pushing until you get the boulder to where you want it to be.
To all those ‘fiscal conservatives’ let me assure you that slashing spending is the only sure way we have of getting a Liberal/NDP coalition government in power. The slow and steady route will likely get the expenditures down in the near future and will ensure that the Conservatives will be in power to maintain the reduced spending.
While I agree with the assertion that record spending is not the way to balance the budget, I am not confident that Canadians would support real cuts to the public service as suggested by the poll.
Do you think if the Conservatives really went forward a strong fiscally conservative budget that they would retain power?
Joe said, “You know there are two concepts of getting a boulder to roll. You can back up and take a full speed charge against the boulder or you can gently put you shoulder to the boulder and increase the pressure until the boulder starts to move.”
There’s also two ways to get a rocket into space. Will it up by the grace of god and faith in dear leader to become conservative or use high explosives.
C’mon Joe, say what you want to say, don’t use stupid metaphors. Gov’t is not a boulder (or a rocket), it isn’t sitting in one place. If it were we probably wouldn’t be talking here as it has accelerated 46% since the “Conservatives” took power and it’s rolling the wrong direction.