Job and Service Sacrifices

We're in for some serious belt-tightening. We've got an unwieldy deficit to take care of, never mind an unwholesome debt that is weighing us down. So the government is doing what governments do in these circumstances. And better now than later, when the deficit can only increase if nothing substantial is done to bring it back into a comfort zone.

The current Conservative government was no slouch in increasing the numbers of civil servants, in enlarging government departments, in spending far more than is fiscally prudent on services of questionable value to the public. It's debatable whether all that enlargement and spending has really benefited the country. And it's odd that it occurred since there were also cut-backs going on at the same time.

Now, the cut-backs will be sizeable and painful. Everything from letting scientists go at the National Research Council, to closing down marine search and rescue units where we really think they should remain. Cuts to curatorial staff at the National Gallery. And the public service has been put on notice that the spectacular growth of the past five years is unsustainable. Public service unions are crying foul.

And it's all because Canada has a Conservative government. No Liberal government would ever have launched a cut-back of the public service. Well, wrong there. Paul Martin, when he was finance minister for the Chretien government slashed 40,000 civil service jobs to tackle the deficit. There was no master plan, no careful reckoning where the jobs should be cut, just cut.

And of course during the course of cutting the deficit, Paul Martin convinced his government that they could get by with sending less in the way of tax transfers to the provinces. The provincial governments didn't much appreciate that. So they passed along some of their traditional expenses through to the municipalities.

Welfare services got hit hard. Further, municipalities are still struggling with the increased costs they now bear with respect to education and health care. That's life; municipalities are still trying to convince the provinces that they need to take back some of the responsibilities they dumped on them. And good luck with that.

The federal government was introduced to the cost-cutting concept of term workers. And temporary workers and the hiring of professional consultants to take the place of those workers whom they made away with, away back in the 90s. More cost-effective, went the refrain, because the government was off the hook with pensions and health care.

But the die was cast, and the work that temps did became indispensable (and cheaper) to the government. And professional consultants had their important place in the outcome of government services as well. That said, that segment of those employed with the federal government constitute a relatively small proportion of the total employment cost outlay.

So it's strategic program cuts that have to be addressed, and even eliminating some programs that are no longer useful. And those positions which haven't been filled, those positions held by public servants who are 'demoralized', and cannot adequately do their jobs, perhaps them as well. Attrition, in any event.

And just think of the whack of savings that could be realized if the official bilingualism program were scrapped. Never mind, it's political suicide, and we just can't go there, more's the pity....