Stay On Top Of Stephen's Attempt To Lower Our Debt

The Debt Clock

 

Peter Shawn Taylor: Waterloo's train to nowhere

Posted: January 29, 2010, 8:00 AM by NP Editor

Today is the day the taps are supposed to be shut off. Prime Minister Stephen Harper has promised that his government’s massive $40-billion stimulus plan — with its $12-billion in infrastructure spending and $8-billion for housing — will come to an end now. Whatever hasn’t been allocated yet gets taken off the table. With the spending orgy done, Ottawa claims it will now turn its focus to getting the federal budget back in the black. Some observers see Harper’s appointment of fiscal conservative Stockwell Day to the Treasury Board as a sign the party is well and truly over. We’ll see. Since the Tories have spent the past year as the most spendthrift government this country has ever seen, it seems a big ask for Ottawa to revert to tightwad status overnight. Of course the biggest problem with going from spending to cutting is that it’s far more enjoyable for politicians to make voters happy than it is to disappoint them. And even before the economic crisis the Tories were rather liberal when it came to spending on favoured demographics.

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The Chopping Block: Time to pop the SODA

Posted: January 28, 2010, 7:45 PM by NP Editor Filed under: budget,The Chopping Block,Southern Ontario Development Agency

On The Chopping Block: The Southern Ontario Development Agency Budget saving to 2014: $900-million The goal of The Chopping Block is to find at least $20-billion in annual spending cuts from the federal budget and identify any other expenditure items that would save taxpayers money and reduce future increases in Canada’s national debt. Stockwell Day, as new head of the Treasury Board, is reportedly charged by Prime Minister Stephen Harper to lead the belt tightening and ultimately eliminate the deficit. It’s a big job. This is not the time for another ritual “expenditure review” process in which bureaucrats go through the motions of reviewing multi-billion cash transfer machines and hold up teensy items from obsolete and redundant programs for elimination. We will not get anywhere looking for hundreds of $4-million savings on copying costs and ancient subsidies for chicken coop bailing wire. This calls for real cuts in real programs with real money flowing through them. And so we begin The Chopping Block series with a straightforward proposal to instantly take $1-billion out of Ottawa’s spending. The looming fiscal mess is the perfect time to pop the SODA— the Southern Ontario Development Agency.

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