The Conservative government has announced it will spend $20 million less on Agriculture Canada, as part of a $2 billion general cost-cutting announcement.
The largest reductions in budgeted spending for the department will be in a $10 million, two-year reduction of funds designed to help small provincially regulated slaughter plants in Ontario upgrade to federal inspection standards.
“This is due to efficiencies and earlier-than-anticipated progress,” said Conrad Bellehumeur, communications director for agriculture minister Chuck Strahl.
“There will be no reduction in staff or inspections as a result of this.”
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The next largest cut, $5 million to come during the 2006-07 and 2007-08 fiscal years, comes from what the government says is fewer farmers applying for funds from the Green Cover Canada program.
A decision to eliminate Canadian Food Inspection Agency weight calculations on products, described in the government announcement as “non-health and safety-related inspection activities,” will save $4 million over two years.
The government has also decided to abolish the Canadian Agricultural Research Council, which it says will save $1 million over two years.
The budget reductions reflect a list of non-essential planned expenditures submitted by Strahl as the government went through its search for budet cuts in all departments.
Spending on the Canadian Firearms Centre will be $6 million less than budgeted because of operational efficiencies.
Finance minister Jim Flaherty and treasury board president John Baird told a Sept. 25 news conference that by not going on an end-of-fiscal-year spending spree in March, government program spending for 2005-06 declined for the first time in nine years.
A $13.2 billion surplus recorded last year, mainly run up by the Liberal government and not spent by the Conservatives, was put against the national debt, reducing it to $481.5 billion March 31. The debt peaked at $562.9 billion March 31, 1997, and since then, debt servicing charges have fallen by billions of dollars each year.
The program review was aimed at finding savings in programs that the government considers redundant, bloated, not essential, underused or expendable.
Flaherty claimed the announced savings mean the government “has eliminated wasteful and ineffective programs.”
The health and foreign affairs departments were among the hardest hit in the cuts, although the government said it was saving Canadian taxpayers almost $47 million by having a smaller cabinet than the last Liberal government.
