Cuts to the Heritage Canada budget were made to “address the needs of real Canadians,” says a department official.
Veronique Bruneau, press secretary to federal minister Bev Oda, said $5 million was cut from the Status of Women Canada agency as administrative savings, while $4.6 million was removed from the Museums Assistance Program because it was deemed ineffective.
The two programs are part of $1 billion in cuts to be made over the next two years in 66 federal programs. The cuts announced Sept. 25 were called “examples of waste and duplication.” Meanwhile, the federal government has a budget surplus of $13.2 billion.
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Introduced in 1972, the museum program’s original $9 million budget has never been increased. Bruneau said the department will develop a new national museum policy as soon as possible. It is meeting with stakeholders but Bruneau could not say whether there will be special representation from small, rural museums, other than through their trade association.
In responding to why the federal government would make cuts when it has money, Bruneau said even if an individual has a full bank account, he doesn’t want to pay for things that are “not effective, not useful and not delivering services to the clientele.”
But community activist and University of Saskatchewan academic Shannon Storey said some of the cuts make no sense, especially to literacy support and women’s research. The $17.7 million cut means groups like Literacy Alberta will lose half its budget this year and aboriginal efforts will be slashed.
Storey said cuts to the status of women agency will limit studies, such as the one the National Farmers Union did on whether women were consulted when the agricultural policy framework was set up.
She said these research projects allowed academics to connect with grassroots community groups and look at their problems, including one examining immigrants and the rural economy.
Storey noted other cuts included the labour-business coalition that looked at resolving the shortage of skilled workers and the program that helped the average person take a charter of rights case to court, as well as last spring’s cut to AIDS information.
“The pattern (to the cuts) seems to have an ideological slant to it. You’re disadvantaging women who are illiterate, aboriginal or who have AIDS.”
Storey said these were not efficiency cuts but elimination of key needs.
