“It’s a pattern across subject areas,” said Green Party Leader Elizabeth May (Saanich-Gulf Islands, B.C.), who questioned the government’s funding and cutting choices in the last budget.
“There have been a couple of new offices created by Stephen Harper’s Conservatives, for instance the Office for Financial Literacy. Now, every time you create an office like this, it’s millions of dollars. There have been a lot of places where I question the cuts and the decision about what has priority and what doesn’t,” she told The Hill Times.
“I still am baffled that last year it was $5-million to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Calgary Stampede, not because the Calgary Stampede is unimportant, but because it’s successful, even year after year and did it need $5-million from the federal government. Did the celebration of the 100th anniversary of the Grey Cup need $5-million? Did the celebration of the bicentennial War of 1812 need $28-million? There’s always questions that can be asked.”
For example, she said, the newly created Office of Religious Freedoms received a $5-million budget last year, following on a May 2011 election campaign promise, almost double that of the Parliamentary Budget Office. The government recently appointed Andrew Bennett as the first ambassador of Religious Freedom, whose mandate is to “protect, and advocate on behalf of, religious minorities under threat,” “oppose religious hatred and intolerance,” and “promote Canadian values of pluralism and tolerance abroad.”
NDP MP Pat Martin (Winnipeg Centre, Man.) said the office was a “fatuous extravagance” if the Conservative government is serious about fiscal restraint. “We’re broke. Suddenly we’re borrowing $5-million to pander to the religious right base? We can’t afford the sophistry of an Office of Religious Freedoms, and we can’t afford not to have an independent, effective Parliamentary Budget Officer. There’s just a glaring contradiction in their priorities here,” Mr. Martin told The Hill Times.
“I can save them $5-million right away, tell their new best friends Communist China to back off Falun Gong. That just saved them $5-million. We don’t have a problem of religious freedom in this country. So why are we spending half as much as we’ve spent on the PBO on this fatuous extravagance? It’s aggravatingly incomprehensible. It’s insane, given fiscal restraint to be creating new agencies with no mandate that do nothing and that panders for their own partisan purposes. I’m against it,” Mr. Martin said.
The Parliamentary Budget Office’s budget is $2.8-million which has a mandate to “provide independent analysis” to Parliament about “the state of the nation’s finances, the estimates of the government and trends in the national economy” in addition to conducting research for Parliamentarians and House and Senate Committees when requested to do so on those issues.
In 2009, that budget was $1.8-million as the office was still getting set up. According to original funding forecasts, that budget would be increased to $2.8-million the next year for its first year of full operation. The PBO’s budget to carry out its mandate became a public fight that year as the Library of Parliament, which the PBO operates under, was only receiving a 1.5 per cent increase which would then be passed on to the PBO, meaning the office would only receive a $27,000 increase.
Parliamentary Budget Officer Kevin Page, whose five-year term ends next week, fought the Parliamentary librarian and both the House and Senate Speakers to maintain the $1-million increase, which he won. The PBO’s budget has remained frozen at $2.8-million since 2010 for the foreseeable future.
Compared to the U.S. Congressional Budget Office, Canada’s PBO’s budget is “peanuts,” Mr. Martin said, but it’s one example of how the government chooses its priorities based on politics rather than need.
“That borders on irresponsible to create this Office [of Religious Freedoms] for half of the budget of the Parliamentary Budget Officer. He employs 14 people and performs miracles with peanuts and the Office of Religious Freedom, God knows what they’re supposed to do,” he said.
When announcing the office’s opening, Prime Minister Stephen Harper (Calgary Southwest, Alta.), said, “Around the world, violations of religious freedom are widespread and they are increasing. Dr. Bennett is a man of principle and deep convictions and he will encourage the protection of religious minorities around the world so all can practice their faith without fear of violence and repression.”
The office is expected to “advance fundamental Canadian values including freedom, democracy, human rights and the rule of law worldwide.”
Ms. May said that there are more examples politically-related budget cuts, of such as the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy or the First Nations Statistical Institute, which both cost $5-million each to run annually and were eliminated in the 2012 budget.
At the time, Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird (Ottawa West-Nepean, Ont.) told the House of Commons: “Why should taxpayers have to pay for more than 10 reports promoting a carbon tax, something that the people of Canada have repeatedly rejected? That is a message the Liberal Party just will not accept. It should agree with Canadians. It should agree with the government. No discussion of a carbon tax that would kill and hurt Canadian families.”
The government also previously closed down the Polar Environmental Arctic Research lab, which cost $1.5-million a year to run in Eureka, Nunavut, which was studying climate change and environmental issues; and is in the middle of shutting down the Experimental Lakes area in Manitoba, which costs $1.8-million a year to operate, even though world-class research was being conducted there as one of the largest freshwater testing areas. Instead, the government has poured $300-million to build a new Canadian High Arctic Research Station at Cambridge Bay, Nunavut, the focus of which will be natural resource extraction.
“They’re talking out of both sides of their mouth. What gets cut is what they don’t like ideologically, science, transparency in government, good information and what has money thrown at it willy, nilly are things that are both a cover, in other words a smokescreen fog that will allow them in an election to say ‘What do you mean we’re cutting Arctic science? We just spent $300-million for the Cambridge Bay station,’ Ms. May said. “Well yeah, they’re throwing money around like drunken sailors as a camouflage for specific ideologically driven cuts and under-resourcing things like the Parliamentary Budget Office and it needs the PBO to expose all of this, so that Parliamentarians can actually see where the money is going.”
Meanwhile, Mr. Flaherty (Whitby-Oshawa, Ont.) will table the 2013 budget on Thursday, March 21, around 4 p.m. in the House of Commons, the same day that Mr. Page is in Federal Court to get a ruling on his mandate in order to compel the government to hand over information on its spending reduction plans.
“In the face of a fragile global economy, the Harper government is preparing for the upcoming budget with a focus on supporting economic growth and job creation and returning to balanced budgets by 2015,” Mr. Flaherty said in a press release. “During the pre-budget consultations, we heard from Canadians across the country on how best to achieve these objectives.”
Original Article
Source: hilltimes.com
Author Bea Vongdouangchanh
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