We’re about to get some definitive evidence of whether or not the Carney Liberals are different than the Trudeau Liberals.
Nearly a year ago, back when Justin Trudeau was still PM, he held an early fall retreat of his newly shuffled cabinet. One of the orders coming out of the event was for newly-minted Treasury Board head Anita Anand to find $15 billion in cost cutting.
A couple months later, sometime in October, after canvassing her cabinet colleagues for places to reduce expenditures she delivered a report that contained $400 million in cuts. Not only was it a failing grade – about three-percent of the target – just over half of that was from the military.
Now, the new PM has ordered his finance minister to trim 7.5-percent next year with deeper cuts in subsequent years to finance growing defence spending and so on.
The question now is will he actually hold his Cabinet to the target or is this a target to get headlines like Trudeau did with no real intent to see it through.
