The federal Conservative government will unveil its spending and deficit-cutting plan March 29 when finance minister Jim Flaherty tables the 2012 budget in Parliament.
As part of a broad fiscal package, the budget will give farmers a glimpse of the impact that budget and departmental cuts will have on agricultural programs and services.
The same week, the government is expected to table in Parliament detailed spending plans for each department.
Flaherty’s decision of a March 29 budget day means a planned federal-provincial agriculture ministers’ meeting to discuss evolving details of the next five year Growing Forward framework scheduled for that day in Toronto will be postponed.
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The finance minister told reporters yesterday he is calling it the “jobs and growth budget.”
All departments have been told to prepare proposals on how they could cut both five and 10 percent from their budgets next year.
Flaherty has said the goal is to cut $4 to $8 billion from the budget.
He also signaled that some public service job cuts will be part of the deficit cutting.
While private sector jobs have been cut, the public service grew during the anti-recession stimulus spending of the past two years, said Flaherty.
“I think most Canadians view it as realistic that we have a balance and that we ask the public service to participate in the belt-tightening that the rest of the country has been doing.”
Public sector unions are on Parliament Hill today to protest expected job losses.
