
This article was last updated on April 16, 2022
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Seven months have passed since the Conservative government declared that its budget savings of estimated $5.2 billion will be from “back-office” trimming, and now a recent report from the parliamentary budget officer, PBO, states that 85 per cent of these expenditure cuts are coming directly from program spending.
The government has directly refused the findings of PBO, and maintained its stance that a majority of 70 per cent of cuts will come from back-office administration, instead of cuts in front-line services. The report submitted by the PBO asserted that Harper government has released incomplete information regarding the planned budget cuts, for making it impossible to scrutinize the budget cuts and report sufficiently to Parliament with independent analysis on the state of the nation’s finances. While the budget officers receive information from almost all of the 82 departments and organizations facing cuts, most of it is high-level program activities with few details provided on specific savings measures.
The Parliamentary Budget Officer, Kevin Page, was giving an interview on Tuesday when he stated that “we’ve got no spending plans from departments that are consistent with budget 2012”. He added that “we don’t see any resemblance of a plan.” Page further shared that the limited detail which was shared by the federal government is vague enough to make it very difficult to scrutinize its targets and has reduced its projected savings by at least $80 million by 2014-15. The Conservative government made the announce in the March budget that it is cutting a total of $5.2 billion from operating spending within the next three years and eliminate 19,200 federal jobs as part of its plan to balance the books.
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