More Outrageous Spending

From an article by Kathryn May in the Ottawa Citizen:

"The size of the executive cadre in the government has grown steadily over the past decade and so have the number of assistant deputy ministers whose salaries have cracked $200,000. Treasury Board reported that among the government's 5,400 executives about 69 EX-5s made an average of $214,000 last year -- compared to 14 three years earlier. Salaries are in the $186,000 range, plus up to 25 per cent in bonuses."

Note that there were 69 executive employees making over $200,000 a year last year compared to 14 only 3 years earlier. This large an increase has happened since Harper came to power & he began increasing the size of Govt. assistant deputy ministers as well as others. This from the man who speaks of reducing the size of Govt. Of course when he says "decreasing" he means our social programs like healthcare - his favourite program he dreams of privatizing.

Read the entire article here. It's interesting. And outrageous.

RALPH GOODALE’S REPORT

This is an excellent commentary by MP Ralph Goodale:

STEPHEN HARPER’S LEGACY OF DEBT

The Harper government passed an embarrassing milestone last week.

After months of denial, the Conservatives finally had to release the audited financial statements of the Government of Canada for last fiscal year (2008/09). They revealed that for the first time in more than a decade, this country fell back into the red by about $6 billion.

Here’s a key point to note: This deficit began BEFORE, not because of, the recession!

These financial statements reflect primarily what was happening BEFORE the recession hit last fall.

They show how the Conservatives wildly increased spending by a whopping 18% between 2006 and 2008. That’s three-times the rate of inflation.

They show how the Conservatives eroded Canada’s tax base, and recklessly eliminated all the “reserves” which had been built into the federal books to protect against sudden nasty downturns

All that happened BEFORE there was any recession.

So when the housing market collapsed in the United States and American banks began to fail last fall – spreading economic contagion around the world – Canada had nothing left to protect itself.

We were forced back into deficit because our financial strength had been squandered through Conservative fiscal tomfoolery when times were still good.

Two key points are clear:

1. If the prudent fiscal policies of previous Liberal governments had stayed in effect in this country after the government changed in 2006, Canada’s deficit today (even with the recession) would be only a fraction of what it is; and

2. With Mr. Harper’s reckless fiscal policies, Canada would have a deficit today no matter what – even if there had been no recession at all.

For the future, his numbers will get worse. Mr. Harper is another $56 billion in the hole this year (2009/10), and his total legacy of debt will balloon to more than $170 billion.

Canada's debt to balloon by $81.5-billion!

TD predicts record deficit over two years, driving shortfall billions of dollars deeper than Ottawa's forecast.

In todays G&M, this article by Steven Chase.

"The Toronto-Dominion Bank's calculations - using their updated economic forecasts - would see Canada's federal debt swell by $81.5-billion over the next two years instead of by $63.5-billion as the Harper government forecasted seven weeks ago. This would drive up Ottawa's debt to $540.2-billion in the 2010-11 fiscal year instead of $522.2-billion as currently forecast."

It looks like our PBO officer, Kevin Page, is right. Let's hope that Harper doesn't do away with him. I know he'd love to, & is working towards that end, but we all need to be vigilant on this as does the MSM. And let's not forget that it was Harper that appointed Mr. Page even though he would prefer to say it was the Liberals. And the PM does like to do revisionist history.