OTTAWA—Finance Minister Jim Flaherty says Ottawa will have to axe federal programs and services to reach the goal announced in Monday’s budget update of eliminating the $32-billion deficit by 2014.“There will be some programs that will not continue. There’s no question about that,” Flaherty told the media as he prepared to table a slightly modified version of the economic blueprint he released on March 22 before the election.
“Already we’ve seen some instances of programs that have outlived their usefulness, quite frankly,” he said of previous efforts to reduce spending.
“Governments are very good at creating programs. They’re not so good at ending them. Not every program is designed to go on forever.”
The Conservatives have run record budget deficits that reached as high as $40 billion in 2010. But Flaherty said in the earlier version of the 2011 budget that he could balance the books by 2015. Then, during the election campaign, Prime Minister Stephen Harper promised to eliminate the deficit a year earlier, by 2014.
Flaherty said finding the cuts will be a challenge but added that Harper is determined to make the cuts needed to rein in federal spending, which has grown by leaps and bounds since the prime minister took power.
Flaherty said the problem isn’t convincing Canadians that Ottawa’s spending should be reduced—it’s dealing with the people who are attached to the specific programs and services that come under the knife, he explained.
The Conservatives, re-elected with a majority on May 2, will be conducting a cross-government review in hopes of finding savings through efficiencies and by not replacing some of the thousands of baby-boomer-aged federal public servants who are expected to retire in the next few years. The aim is to find cuts of $4 billion a year out of about $80 billion in operational spending.
Already in recent weeks, some government departments, agencies and museums have been trimming staff, cuts that are blamed on Ottawa’s cost-saving moves from previous budgets.
The cost-cutting vowed in Monday’s budget promise to be deeper and have a greater impact on government operations. Flaherty said there hasn’t been a serious belt-tightening in Ottawa in 15 years.
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Source: Toronto Star
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