Job cuts will be modest: Baird

Cuts to the public service will occur “overwhelmingly” by attrition — and not by deep cuts, Foreign Affairs Minister and Ottawa West-Nepean MP John Baird told the Sun on Tuesday.

Trying to send a calming message to skittish civil servants, Baird said federal budget cuts will be “like nothing” that took place in the 1990s.

“There’s no doubt that there’s some unease in the public service, so we hope to allay that concern,” he said.

“Overwhelmingly it will be dealt with by both attrition and workforce adjustment.”

The National Capital Region is uniquely dependant on public servants, who account for about a fifth of the workforce.

Finance Minister Jim Flaherty has yet to announce when the $280-billion budget will be tabled.

The federal government faces a projected deficit of $31 billion, though some economists suggest it could actually be lower.

Baird said the cuts would not be as severe as those imposed by Jean Chretien’s Liberal government as Canada emerged from another recession two decades ago.

“We’re talking one-half, 2% cut, 3% cut, potentially. So it’s fairly modest. You know, it’s like nothing. Certainly nothing like what we went through in the mid-’90s,” he said.

Baird decried what he said were inflated estimates of cuts that have ranged as high as 25,000 regional jobs.

“That’s a gross, gross, gross exaggeration,” Baird said, noting 13,000 public servants leave the public service every year.

Few details about the budget have been released, leading opposition MPs to accuse the government of secrecy.

Liberal treasury board critic John McCallum took another shot at Treasury Board President Tony Clement on Tuesday for continuing to provide “zero details” about the planned cuts.

Baird said final decisions about the budget simply haven’t been made.

While Bank of Montreal economist Doug Porter has said that the federal deficit could be nearly $5 billion less than predicted and noted the markets “are not exactly braying for deeper restraint,” Baird said the country faces a stark choice between cutting “a few billion this year, a few billion next year” and full-on Greek-style economic calamity.

“If you’re the one who loses your job, that’s obviously an effect,” he said.

“We can choose to ignore the deficit, be in the mess that Ontario is in, the mess that Greece is in ... and I think that’s the real danger to public services.”

“Public servants are taxpayers too and the greatest threat to public services (is) runaway spending.”

Original Article
Source: toronto sun
Author: Tony Spears