The federal cabinet is making Saskatoon city council look like a pack of fiscal hawks.
We are going to see an economic update from Ottawa this week and one of its highlights will be a planned cut of $500 million in expenditures with almost half of that coming from a single department – the military.
Back when the Prime Minister shuffled his cabinet earlier this fall, he tasked his newly-minted Treasury Board minister with finding $15 billion in cuts. She notified all departments to have their proportionate share of the reduction identified by an early October deadline.
And now we have it….$15 billion in cuts requested, $500 million earmarked. In other words, they found in the neighborhood of three per cent of the objective and pretty much took it all from the defence department, which will no doubt further alienate our NATO partners who question our financial commitment to the international alliance.
And it means interest rates will remain high to lure investors to buy our bonds to pay for the deficit, regardless of what inflation levels do.
