OTTAWA – Several thousand public service jobs at risk.
Hundreds of millions of dollars in spending cuts.
A sizable shift of programs and responsibilities from Ottawa to the provinces.
At Agriculture Canada head offices and on Parliament Hill, as in much of the rest of bureaucratic Ottawa, these are the types of dire predictions making the rounds as the capital awaits the federal budget.
A funereal mood of gloom has settled in as the clock ticks down toward the end-of-February deadline.
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The department, its employees and its programs are expected to be hit hard when finance minister Paul Martin unveils his plans to slash the federal deficit.
Art Eggelton of the treasury board has said Agriculture Canada will be one of the nine departments hardest hit in a budget expected to pave the way for tens of thousands of public service job losses and billions of dollars in spending cuts.
Details are carefully guarded secrets but there have been hints.
“I think this will be the most important budget for agriculture in a generation,” a senior agriculture official said last week.
Speculation that the budget will contain a one-time, $2-$3 billion buy-out fund for the Crow Benefit is given some credence by the fact that an elaborate post-budget sales and explanation campaign being planned by Agriculture Canada will include officials who have been working on Western Grain Transportation Act reform.
Reductions and cancellations
Some programs will be cancelled, say department sources.
Staff reductions are a sure thing.
“We looked intensely at every activity the department is engaged in,” said deputy agriculture minister Ray Protti. “It was a long, painstaking exercise and you will see some reductions.”
Larry Leng, president of the agricultural union within the Public Service Alliance of Canada, said he expects between 1,000 and 2,000 Agriculture Canada positions to be cut over the next two or three years.
“I think the biggest hit will be in research,” he said. “With those numbers, I just don’t know where else they could cut.”
If he is correct, it could mean more research being transferred to universities while some research stations are closed or reduced.
The department will be working with employees, both those let go and those retained, to ease the trauma and uncertainty of the cuts.
It will be for management “to work with all of our employees and to try to indicate to them that there is a sense and a meaning to the direction in which we are going and the absolute necessity of the sort of work that we do,” said Protti.
He said farmers are realizing that as the government is cut back, their expectations about what it can do for them also must be reduced.
