The battle lines are already being drawn.
It took Canada roughly 150 years to put 250,000 people on the federal payroll. It took Justin Trudeau ten years to grow that number to 350,000.
A new report by the economists at ScotiaBank points out how he was the king of bureaucracy building, adding twice as many as his father and Brian Mulroney. Chretien and Martin, by the way, reduced it. But now Justin’s successor has decided the bloated federal bureaucracy is in need of a diet.
But Mark Carney’s order to trim federal expenditure by 7.5-percent next year and deeper in subsequent years is being met with resistance by those who will no doubt feel the cuts: civil servants.
Heads of various federal unions have already drawn lines in the sand, rejecting any suggestion that they should be the ones to feel the brunt of cuts. Trim programs and services instead, they argue, not people. In short, they are arguing that Canadians should go with less so they don’t have to change the way they do things – the old customer second philosophy.
