Agriculture Canada waits for budget axe to fall

Western Producer staff

If there is one thing in shorter supply at Agriculture Canada these days than spare cash, it is optimistic smiles.

Within the department, there is an ominous feeling that Budget Day ’95 will be akin to the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre.

Instead of roses and flowers, many bureaucrats fear finance minister Paul Martin will be handing them “a pink slip and a pair of running shoes,” in former prime minister Brian Mulroney’s memorable phrase.

They appear to have good reason to be uneasy.

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Like all departments, Agriculture Canada expects to be hit with budget cuts as the finance minister tries to trim billions of dollars from 1995-96 spending plans.

The government has been under strong pressure from farm and industry groups to do most of the cutting at head office, rather than in money sent out to farmers and spent on programs that directly benefit farmers.

It is not necessarily that these departmental clients do not like the bureaucrats they deal with, or wish bad things for bureaucrats in general.

It is, simply, that the industry thinks it has suffered enough cutbacks in recent years. It is time to do some trimming at the centre.

Figures contained in the department’s 1994-95 budget for Agriculture Canada help explain the industry’s point.

In the past half decade, the Agriculture Canada budget has lost close to half a billion dollars, falling from $2.4 billion in 1990-91 to just over $2 billion in this fiscal year.

Compared to the extra-ordinary subsidy year of 1991-92, when Ottawa lavished $4.3 billion on the department, the budget has dropped by more than half.

Yet the departmental body count has had nowhere near a parallel shrinkage.

In 1992-93, Agriculture Canada had funding for the equivalent of 11,477 full-time employees.

In the current year ending March 31, the department has funding approval for the equivalent of 11,506 employees.

For all the talk of restraint and bureaucratic pruning during nine years of Conservative government, and for all the talk of rationalizing and ending duplication under the Liberals, little has happened at the Sir John Carling building in Ottawa and at department offices across the country.

The same number of employees are administering a budget that has fallen by at least 20 percent.

It is an aggravation for industry leaders who have seen their support levels fall while the civil service remains untouched.

Most have tales about proposals they have made to government to make delivery of services cheaper and more efficient, either to have them ignored – or worse, accepted without an accompanying reduction in bureaucrats.

It also is a burr under the saddle of Reform MPs who want to see the government shrink.

If Martin is serious about budget cutting, look for him to finally heed all those who are telling him, in effect: “Government, shrink thyself.”