What does it say about a federal budget that is 498 pages long and involves billions of dollars and one of the most talked about items in it is the penny?
While Stephen Harper’s Conservatives were busy promoting Finance Minister Jim Flaherty’s budget and opposition parties were looking for ways to ridicule it, Canadians were abuzz on Twitter and other social media sites debating the demise of the penny.
The decision to stop producing the penny this fall after 154 years – for financial reasons since it is projected to save $11 million a year – sent Tweeters into a frenzy. The mass of tweets were split, some going so far as to create a Save The Penny site while others were calling for the government to dump the nickel as well.
And when Flaherty and Harper and the Conservatives saw that reaction they had to be smiling because it had to be just the budget response they’d been hoping for. Throw up a smokescreen and hope the majority of Canadians don’t look too closely at the rest of the budget.
Those who did look saw a typical non-election budget with no obvious vote-inducing items that cater to special interest groups. It certainly is pro-business with its “one project, one review” approval process with a 24-month deadline that will help major projects that get stalled by environmental protests, like the Northern Gateway Pipeline.
And there’s a number of positive items for small businesses that should enable them to maintain staffing levels and even continue hiring.
But it is also a budget with mixed messages and conflicting signals, as if the government wanted to make a show of cutting spending while still appeasing those being cut.
Environmental groups will be unhappy with the cut in Environment Canada’s budget by $53.8 million a year, but the government will spend $50 million over two years to protect species at risk.
The government is calling it a budget for jobs, but 19,200 jobs are expected to be lost over the next three years by cuts in public service spending. Of those, only 600 will be executives, which tells us this government is still more interested in its friends than in common Canadians. But by 2014-15 the move is to save $5.2 billion annually and that’s a good thing.
Despite passing its omnibus crime bill and Harper’s get-tough-on-crime stance, the budget cuts $195 million from the RCMP and $295 million from Corrections Canada by 2014-15.
CBC funding for its $1.1 billion budget will be cut by $115 million a year by 2014-15 but it will get a $60 million annual program top up.
The governor general will have to begin paying income tax. But his $137,939 salary will be increased to offset the income tax deduction.
Aboriginal Affairs will have its budget cut by $165 million, but the feds will spend $632 million over the next three years on First Nations education and water infrastructure on reserves.
It’s like this budget was made up by two diametrically opposed groups and Flaherty decided to give both sides something to talk about, like the penny debate that rages on.
