Democracy Gone Astray

Democracy, being a human construct, needs to be thought of as directionality rather than an object. As such, to understand it requires not so much a description of existing structures and/or other related phenomena but a declaration of intentionality.
This blog aims at creating labeled lists of published infringements of such intentionality, of points in time where democracy strays from its intended directionality. In addition to outright infringements, this blog also collects important contemporary information and/or discussions that impact our socio-political landscape.

All the posts here were published in the electronic media – main-stream as well as fringe, and maintain links to the original texts.

[NOTE: Due to changes I haven't caught on time in the blogging software, all of the 'Original Article' links were nullified between September 11, 2012 and December 11, 2012. My apologies.]

Thursday, March 15, 2012

Budget won’t reveal details of PS cuts, Clement says

OTTAWA — Canada’s public servants still won’t know if they’re losing their jobs when the Conservative government unveils its deficit-reduction plan on budget day and may not find out their fate for months.

Treasury Board President Tony Clement acknowledged at the Commons’ government operations committee Wednesday that it may take months for the impact of the March 29 budget cuts to unfold within federal departments, where bureaucrats are braced for up to 30,000 job losses.

Clement said details will be revealed in stages as “accurate” information becomes available between budget day and next fall. He said some details will be provided in the budget and more will be released in the spring and fall when supplementary estimates are released and the two-stage budget implementation act is passed. He said some reductions may not take effect for three years.

“Look, we give details when we have the detail and when it is our responsibility to convey that detail to agents of Parliament and parliamentarians,” he told reporters after the meeting.

“When we make decisions and when (surplus) notices have gone to individuals … then we will convey that information and that will start with the budget and then spring (budget) implementation act, then the fall implementation act and then there is the next round of Estimates,” he said.


Clement said the details about the cuts will be unveiled in the same way the government released information about reductions from the strategic reviews departments have gone through since 2006. Details of those cuts emerged in dribs and drabs over the course of months.

Critics have argued that Canadians won’t know what programs and services they could be losing in the reductions until they are gone and the public servants are given pink slips.

Liberal MP John McCallum said this “slow oozing” of information over months erodes transparency and accountability and silences any debate at committees on what programs and services Canadians may be losing.

McCallum said he’s suspected this delay and “lack of transparency” around the reductions since Treasury Board recently ordered departments not to include details about the reductions in their annual planning and priorities reports to Parliament. These reports will also be delayed until May.

Clement said the budget has never included a “list of public servants by name and number” whose jobs will be eliminated.

But McCallum argued that the Liberal government gave full details of its $11-billion reductions on budget day when it conducted a similar spending review in 2005. The Liberals revealed 45,000 jobs would be eliminated before reductions were announced ahead of the 1995 budget.

But Clement questioned the accuracy of such forecasts.

“I think our way is a better way and we give the detail when it is in an accurate form,” he said.

McCallum questioned whether the government needed an extra seven or eight months because it still has not decided what it’s going to cut.

“It makes me think they haven’t completed the exercise. If they have, why not give the results?”

Clement said he’s concerned about the impact on anxious public servants who have been waiting for months to find out where the axe will fall, but he said the government has an obligation to taxpayers and the downsizing will be fair and “consistent with obligations to public servants and whatever collective agreements they have.”

Gary Corbett, president of the Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada, said departments are bracing for “blocks of job cuts” in the spring and fall rather than having to absorb them all at once.

He said the Conservatives’ approach drags out the waiting, but it also “buys time” for departments to manage cuts to ensure they keep the right mix of workers. He said managers need time to move people around, find them other jobs or retrain them to reduce the number of layoffs.

“It creates more anxiety in the workplace because people like to know and get on with their lives … but we don’t want to see the public service decimated at the same time as it’s downsized. We don’t want the best and brightest to go out the door,” said Corbett.

Original Article
Source: ottawa citizen
Author: Kathryn May

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