LIKE most finance ministers before him, Regina’s Ralph Goodale is receiving much contradictory advice as he writes his first budget, to be unveiled in the House of Commons March 23.
Cut spending and taxes, advise the business community and the Conservatives, as they try to appeal to the business tycoon and tax-cutting, deficit-slaying side of prime minister Paul Martin.
Not so fast, cry the social activists and the NDP. Cuts during nine years of Martin budgeting have created a gaping social deficit that must be addressed through more social spending.
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Send more money to health care and the provinces, scream the premiers.
Not so fast, say the economists who worry that Martin has raised too many expectations that Goodale will have to fulfill if he wants to keep his job.
The economy is sluggish and the gap between surplus and deficit has narrowed considerably. Err on the side of caution and conservatism, social deficit and sniveling leftists be damned!
What’s a boy from Wilcox, Sask., to do, thrust as he has been onto centre stage where his budget will become one of the key battlegrounds during the expected spring or summer election?
The clear signal from Goodale’s handlers is that this will be a “belt tightening” budget where new spending is focused on government (meaning Martin) priorities and spending cuts in some areas will be required.
Almost certainly, one of the rare jurisdictions that will receive more money is agriculture, both to meet a need and to try to reconnect the Liberals with the rural West. A pledge of half a billion dollars or more in “bridge” financing for farmers would not be surprising. Elsewhere, there will be little new cash to count and in many cases, cuts to be made.
All of which makes recent comments by the former head of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency all the more intriguing.
Ron Doering, now a food law lawyer and advocate in Ottawa, recently warned the government that it should not trim any more money from government food-sector regulators.
If anything, the folks who guard the safety of Canada’s food supply (CFIA) or approve new products to be used by farmers (the Pest Management Regulatory Agency and the Veterinary Drugs Bureau of Health Canada) should receive more funding.
Simply put, Doering argues that the food sector regulators are stretched to the limit, the process for approving new drugs or pest control products is too slow and cumbersome and there is no built-in understanding that sometimes, extra funding, resources and personnel must be found for crisis management, as in BSE.
Yet the new government is talking about further system-wide cuts to save money.
“A timely and effective regulatory system is critically important for the health and safety of Canadians and for the Canadian economy,” Doering wrote recently in a Canadian food industry magazine.
“But all along the food chain, at the federal and provincial levels, the regulatory systems are seriously stressed and struggling to provide the timely approvals the industry needs and the public deserves …This is no time for further cuts to the regulatory system.”
Amidst the clamour of competing voices trying to influence the first Martin/Goodale budget, did this sensible message get through?
