Postmedia News reports, “The Harper government is conducting an ongoing operating review that is searching for $1 billion in cuts for next year, $2 billion for 2013-14, and $4 billion by 2014-15. Nearly 70 government departments and agencies are required to submit scenarios for a five and 10 per cent cut to their budgets.”
The Harper government is also looking “to streamline a federal auditor-general’s office that’s facing an eight per cent cut to its budget and 10 per cent chop to its staff. The auditor-general will also stop performing some basic financial audits of close to 20 federal boards, agencies and commissions.” And yet, “the federal government will spend at least $360 million this year on Atomic Energy of Canada Limited’s nuclear reactor division that it just sold for only $15 million plus royalties.”
Now, NDP MP Mathieu Ravignat has highlighted that, “The Conservative government is paying Deloitte Consulting nearly $20 million – almost $90,000 a day – to advise the cabinet and senior officials until next spring on how to find savings to balance the books in the coming years.”
Harper’s austerity agenda:
- The parliamentary budget officer has projected that Environment Canada would need to eliminate 1,211 jobs over the next three years in order to meet the targeted spending cuts identified by the Harper government.
- In early-July, the Council of Canadians led a campaign in which 50 civil society organizations sent a letter to the Prime Minister decrying his government’s cuts to Environment Canada and outlining serious concerns about the impacts those cuts will have on water.
- In mid-July Postmedia News reported, “The federal government will slash funding to the environmental agency that evaluates potentially harmful policies and projects before they get the green light. …The Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency is looking at a 43.1 per cent cut in spending, dropping from $30 million in 2011-12 to $17.1 million in 2012-13, according to the agency’s planning documents. This cut follows a 6.9 per cent, or $2.2-million, drop in the funds government allocated to the agency in 2010-11. Along with the budget cuts, the 17-year-old agency is facing a one-third reduction in the number of full-time staff…”
- In mid-September, CBC reported, “International scientists (including the Swiss chair of the World Meteorological Organization’s ozone science advisory group) are expressing concern that cuts at Environment Canada could hobble a program monitoring ozone, a component of the atmosphere that protects living things from the sun’s ultraviolet rays.”
- The Harper government says that 80,000 public service jobs can be eliminated over the next three years through retirements and attrition. The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives estimates that no more than 40,000 jobs can be eliminated through attrition, meaning 40,000 employees would have to be laid off. Overall, the loss of 80,000 jobs would mean a 45 percent cut to the 178,000 member public service.
- In late-October, the Globe and Mail reported on the Harper government’s intention to bring British-style Big Society austerity measures to Canada. The basic goal is to have charitable organizations take on more public services and to create a “shift in public expectations as to the role of government in assisting social causes.”
Council of Canadians chairperson Maude Barlow has stated that the three-quarters majority must resist the Harper agenda, http://canadians.org/blog/?p=11686. Despite the Harper government’s budget slashing agenda, we will be calling for billions of dollars to be spent on water-related needs and rights-based obligations in the 2012 Alternative Federal Budget. Our 2011 budget demands in this respect can be read in summary form in a campaign blog at http://canadians.org/blog/?p=5986.
