Fiscal Conservatism

Via the Toronto Star:

OTTAWA—As Conservatives prepare to recall Parliament, Finance Minister Jim Flaherty is setting the stage for a clampdown on federal government spending under the newly elected government, that would include cutting the public service by 80,000 — or one-third.

The Conservatives now have the power to cut spending to bring down the deficit, says Flaherty, a message that could foreshadow a round of deep cuts to services and programs in coming years.

I've made my own opinions clear on the causes of Canada's current fiscal deficit; a combination of tax cuts and the recession has pushed Canada into a sea of red ink.  Not surprising the Tories' solution to fixing this rather fixable problem is to choose austerity by axing a third of the entire civil service.  The Tories are arguing that they want to concentrate on the economy by focusing specifically on the deficit; yet spending reductions, especially the kind of hardcore austerity that results from hacking apart a third of the civil service, are only going to add further downward pressure on the Canadian economy.  Precisely as the British Conservatives have done and experienced across the pond.  This increases the likelihood of a double dip recession and will only serve to depress revenues and increase outlays through social spending programs such as EI, widening the deficit in the process.

The Conservatives aren't stupid, they know that this is the case.  Which leads us to another matter, which is the intentional underfunding of the public sector with the purpose of undermining the welfare state.  If you can't simply destroy the Canadian Pension Plan, Medicare or Employment Insurance through direct legislation (this would be political suicide), then why not underfund and under-staff them so they are indirectly denied the ability to preform the services to which they are intended?

Quoting Mrs. Ducharme, national executive vice-president of the Public Service Alliance of Canada:

“If we went back to the 1990s, the federal government cut around 45,000 jobs, and they realized pretty quickly that they didn’t have the people to actually do the work that Canadians expect.”

She said the people who suffer in this scenario are those most dependent on government services such as immigrants, the unemployed, pensioners and military veterans.

“I think this government really needs to stop and think through some of their ideas before they, quite honestly, destroy the public service and services that are expected, needed and delivered as part of everyone’s day-to-day lives,” Ducharme said.

 They did think it through, which is why they're doing what they're doing.