Reducing burden on citizens is not part of budget at all

Already burdened by a stagnant economy, runaway inflation and a housing crisis, Canadians got no help from Ottawa in this week’s budget. Most of us can expect to pay more and receive less. It’s a different story for those on the federal payroll, however. On top of accommodations and continued payouts, government workers received almost half a billion dollars in bonuses over the pandemic, some $198 million last year alone. The average bonus to government executives was almost $18,000 in 2022.

Almost 90 per cent of federal executives received yearly bonuses during the pandemic, alongside thousands of lowerlevel government employees.

Some of those lower-level workers are among the 155,000 Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC) currently threatening to go on strike. Votes are now being cast, with a final tally set for April 11. Employees are looking for more money, better work-life balance and work-from-home options, among other requests.

Those are things many Canadian workers would like, though few will see such conditions even as their spending power declines.

The federal government has been on a hiring spree – a 28 per cent increase in the past five years alone – with commensurately large increases in salaries, wages, benefits and pensions, the cost of which is borne by those struggling just now.

We’ve seen the same from other levels of government, which appear unwilling to rein in spending. That’s been particularly visible with local municipal councils, where staffing costs are rampant and no effort was made to rollback spending in the face of inflationary pressures. Tax hikes far outstrip workers wage increases.

While there was some of the usual fiddling at the margins in this year’s budget deliberations, there was still no review of overall spending. There’s no talk of prioritizing where the money goes. Tax relief is beyond the pale.

With the now well-documented decrease in our incomes and standards of living, governments too have to make do with less, scaling back to focus on the essentials.

Hard choices will have to be made. Well, should be made, but they aren’t, as is abundantly clear.

In the end, staffing is going to be a key issue. Labour costs make up more than 50 per cent of local budgets, for instance – significant savings will come only with cuts here. There’s no need to be draconian, but wage and hiring freezes as well as attrition are likely to be required to get spending back in line.

Governments of all stripes have been guilty of unnecessary bloating, taking on more and more functions without thought for the long-term implications. There is also a tendency to forego reviews of programs and spending to see if each item is still needed – once instituted, they become entrenched and part of each year’s baseline.

The argument is made that the public has come to expect the level of service now offered, plus, of course, whatever new addition is contemplated, which will become next year’s status quo. Certainly, the public can sometimes be unrealistic – we can’t have both more program spending and lower taxes – but officials often listen to the wrong “public.”

More and more, however, we’re seeing higher costs – i.e. taxes – without any commensurate increases in the level or quality of service. At best, we’re paying more for more of the same.

Politicians will have to be on the lookout for bureaucrat tactics to derail the public good. When wage freezes and rollbacks are discussed, staff’s default assumption is that services will be cut, rather than doing away with unneeded managerial positions. Front line services are what residents are overtaxed to pay. Bureaucratic bloat is what management encourages to make its life easier and to pad the payroll. When it comes to choosing between the two, elected officials have an easy decision, even if they never make the right one.

As with governments of all stripes, program bloat and internal entitlements become entrenched. In budget deliberations, there is a rationale for every spending request. Taken in isolation, each may make sense, but it’s the role of elected officials to see the big picture, and to nip in the bud empire-building and incremental growth.