Canada: Just days after Harper’s budget, the axe begins to fall
The Harper government’s austerity budget will start cutting a swath through the federal government this week as bureaucrats begin receiving letters informing them their position is being eliminated.
2 April, 2012
One public-sector union says it has received word that employees in the Department of National Defence and three government agencies will be sent formal notices on Wednesday telling them their posts will disappear.
In the March 29 budget, the Conservatives announced that the government will chop 19,200 public-service jobs as part of a bid to balance the budget in several years. About 7,000 are expected to be eliminated through attrition – as people retire – leaving about 12,000 jobs facing the axe.
The letters that unlucky bureaucrats are beginning to receive are not layoff notices and not everyone who receives one will be out of a job. Those affected may be able to find work elsewhere in their department as people retire, for instance, and it will take until at least this summer before Ottawa begins handing out pink slips.
Gary Corbett, president of the Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada, said the notices will nevertheless turn “people’s lives topsy-turvy” when they learn they could lose their jobs.
Departments and agencies have been bracing for cuts for months. As part of pre-budget preparations, each had submitted recommendations, as requested, to the Harper government on how Ottawa could cut 5 per cent, or 10 per cent, from their respective operations.
Statistics Canada, the national statistics agency, informed its staff late last week that it has been ordered to chop $33.9-million from its planned spending by April 1, 2014.
That’s a cut of roughly 7.5 per cent when compared to Statscan’s estimated budgetary spending for 2012-13, which was previously pegged at $454.7-million
“This reduction will be implemented progressively, beginning with $8.3-million on April 1, 2012, rising to $18.3-million on April 1, 2013, in order to achieve the full reduction by April 1, 2014,” chief statistician Wayne Smith wrote employees last week in a memo.
Mr. Smith acknowledged this will mean job cuts at Statscan – an abandonment of the agency’s no-layoff policy.
“The actions to be taken involve a mixture of new efficiency measures and program reductions. Achieving the required savings will necessarily mean a reduction in Statistics Canada’s work force.”
Mr. Corbett, whose union represents more than 57,000 professionals and scientists in the public service, is warning Ottawa against cutting staff in the safety and security fields, such as food inspectors, scientists and financial auditors.
His union will be documenting what services Canadians will lose through the cuts at the website safetyeh.ca.
One cabinet minister suggested last Friday that the cuts will be more spread out across Canada than previously thought. Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird told a business audience that of the 12,200 job reductions, only 4,800 will occur in the Ottawa area. The Ottawa-area minister said these would be spread out over three years.
New Zealand has been introducing sweeping cuts to its representation abroad as well.
Foreign Affairs cuts could erode Canada’s international status
It’s a small cut for Ottawa’s bottom line. Now the question is what impact it will have on Canada’s role in the world.
30 March, 2012.
The $170-million to be sliced from the budget of the Department of Foreign Affairs could come from shuttering embassies, pulling out of international organizations or cutting diplomats’ pay.
The department’s budget of about $2.5-billion includes about $900-million in grants, which pay for things such as United Nations dues. Its operating budget, money used for running embassies and conducting diplomacy around the globe, is only about $1.4-billion, so if the cuts fall mostly there, it could slice about 10 per cent from the diplomats’ budget.
The Department of Foreign Affairs has always been unloved in Ottawa, by the Conservative government and the bean-counters at the Finance Department, who often see the diplomats as privileged figures swanning about foreign capitals. There is, among the signals from Thursday’s budget, an indication that ambassadors’ residences will be sold, diplomats’ pay and rent allowances will be cut.
But the department has been squeezed for several years, essentially lopping about $180-million, noted Canada’s former ambassador to the UN, Paul Heinbecker. “When you reduce the funds, you get less,” he said. “So we’re going to have a foreign service that does less.”
Among the biggest decisions are the closing of consulates and embassies – moves that can annoy foreign countries or reduce the presence of trade counsellors.
There, like many other Western countries, Ottawa is expected to cut in the developed world – likely among its 20 missions in the United States and possibly in smaller European centres, too. The closures are expected to be coupled with the opening of a smaller number of new missions, however, focused on trade in emerging markets.
The government has also signalled it might pull out of some international organizations – the dues and grants it pays directly to organizations make up about a third of the Foreign Affairs budget. In many cases, they can’t be trimmed – dues for things like the UN and OECD are assessed, like a tax, so if you are a member, you pay. Ottawa won’t pull out of such high-profile organizations, but it could withdraw from smaller ones; the problem is the savings won’t be as big.
For diplomats, there is a signal that things will get tougher, at least in some cases. Ottawa plans to extend the standard posting abroad from three years to four. Some diplomats, posted in beautiful capitals, won’t mind. The worry, said Tim Edwards, president of the Professional Association of Foreign Service Officers, is that Ottawa will also extend hardship postings, in desolate or war-torn capitals – where postings are usually shorter, perhaps one or two years.
And diplomats’ pay, and money for the places they live, are also being cut – just how far is still unknown. Mr. Edwards said the current directives for the foreign service premium – the extra pay and rent allowances diplomats get while abroad – are too complicated, and could use some reform. But the level of the cuts is worrisome: “We’re pretty sure the government hasn’t put this in the budget to give us more,” he said.
If the reductions are significant, it will have an impact on foreign service officers, especially those who live in expensive or dangerous cities. The foreign service premium is a feature of their pay that makes up for differences in standards of living and the impact on two-income couples who move back and forth from Canada to foreign postings, where one spouse often cannot work.
Those complaints aren’t likely to win a lot of sympathy with the public, but could have an impact on the foreign service over time, as the career becomes less attractive. But many other cuts offer far more stark, immediate choices: What will Canada stop doing abroad, and where?
Canada: Water Infrastructure Crumbling?
27 March, 2012
Water infrastructure costs will double from roughly $13 billion a year today to almost $30 billion (in 2010 dollars) annually by the 2040s, according to the American Water and Wastewater Association. This means the investment needed for buried drinking water infrastructure in the United States totals more than $1 trillion between now and 2035. They predict that the cost will be met primarily through markedly higher water bills and local fees.
"Buried No Longer: Confronting America's Water Infrastructure Challenge" is a call to action for utilities, consumers and policy makers and recognizes that the need to replace pipe in the ground "puts a growing stress on communities that will continue to increase for decades to come."
Although the report is American, many Canadian water utilities are likely in a similar condition.
The content of this article is intended to provide a general guide to the subject matter. Specialist advice should be sought about your specific circumstances.
This is an old story but, nevertheless relevant especially as Britain prepares to monitor everyone's internet access.
Harper government monitoring online chats about politics
Correcting what it calls 'misinformation'
23 May, 2010
OTTAWA (NEWS1130) - The Harper government has been monitoring political messages online, and even correcting what it considers misinformation. One local expert says the government is taking things too far.
Under the pilot program the Harper government paid a media company $75,000 to monitor and respond to online postings about the east coast seal hunt.
UBC Computer Science professor and President of the BC Freedom of Information and Privacy Association, Richard Rosenberg, says it seems unnecessary for the government to be going this far. "The government has a lot of power, that it feels the need to monitor public bulletin boards, or places where people express views and then to respond to that, seems to me going beyond a reasonable action the government should be taking."
Rosenberg says knowing that the government is monitoring certain topics online could result in people being more careful with their identities when they're posting about political issues on the internet.
He says it's the first time he's heard of this happening in Canada.
Harper government monitoring facebook, YouTube and social media
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: only a member of this blog may post a comment.