A Quick Breakdown of Canada’s 2013 Budget

A curiously sinister portrait.

I was in the budget lock-up last Thursday, which meant surrendering my cell phone, internet access, and staying in a secured building for seven hours with a 433 page copy of the 2013 Economic Action Plan. As you can imagine, it was a total bummer that felt like rehab for WiFi addiction.

Aimed at trimming the budget deficit by 2015, Finance Minister Jim Flaherty rolled out a budget that’s been characterized as a dogged affirmation of passed Conservative spending programs and fiscal tendencies. In other words it’s the same old story in a different year. Although they don’t exactly slash and burn government departments (except for maybe, the military), the Conservatives barely spend: they increased total expenses by less than 1%, “the smallest increase in discretionary spending in nearly 20 years,” according to Flaherty.                                                                                                                           

He justified thriftiness by aiming to prepare Canada for the “inevitable” next economic downturn. Although that kind of fear mongering is getting a little tedious from Flaherty, given the defective economies of Italy, Spain, Ireland, Greece, and now Cyprus, it’s not the worst idea to factor in a potential European meltdown. Then again, critics will note the current $19-billion deficit is Conservative made. They inherited a $13-billion surplus from the Liberals in 2006, but that still doesn’t stop them from lecturing you like your dad about austerity.

Since you’re probably not interested in reading the Bible-sized budget, we decided to give you some of the more interesting points to spare you the headache:

• A $500-million Canada Jobs Grant program that aims to address the skills shortage and give 130,000 Canadians a year $15,000 to retrain; $5,000 of which will come from the federal government the rest from the provinces and employers. This has not gone over too well in Quebec, where anything being dictated by the feds is cause for defiance.
• $70 million over three years to create 5,000 more paid internships for recent post-secondary graduates, meaning you might have a chance at not working for free anymore.
• Part of the jobs theme is a controversial $241 million over five years for First Nations skills training for aboriginal youth. Critics like Thomas Mulcair, are calling it “workfare” and “paternalistic,” as it ties jobs training to income assistance programs. Manitoba Chief Derek Nepinak said it was “nothing short of coercion and racialized policy implementation,” especially since it fails to address education concerns on reserves many had hoped.
• $14-billion infrastructure fund over ten years, which is a no-brainer and practically stimulus money: infrastructure drives job creation and investment. $155 million of this will be spread across the next ten years for the improvement First Nations infrastructure as well.
• CIDA, Canada’s international aid agency was swallowed into Foreign Affairs. Apparently Harper had bloodlust to cut the international aid agency for years. Making it an arm of another department certainly doesn’t mean its eradication, but likely a scale-back in programming. Julian Fantino, CIDA head, implied the program wasn’t effective back in January because of a lack of success in Haiti. That was the first clue this department was set for retooling. CIDA is also the group that gave over $544,000 to an openly homophobic Christian organization to help out in Uganda.
• Elimination of import tariffs on things like hockey equipment, golf clubs, curling stones, batting cages, shooting clays, and baby clothes means the prices for those products will lower. It was aimed at equalizing commodity prices with US equivalents, but I’d say it was a gesture towards suburban voters. It wouldn’t be the first time the Conservatives used hockey to score political points.
• Incentives for the manufacturing sector will make it beneficial for companies to invest in new equipment. $200 million will be poured into Ontario for an “Advance Manufacturing Fund” and $92 million will end up supporting forestry over the next two years.
• Oh, but prepare to pay more for parking because commercial parking supplied by a hospital, university, college or municipality will now be subject to the Goods and Services Tax.
• It’s going to cost more to become a Canadian citizen with a proposal to raise fees associated with processing visa and citizenship applications.

On paper it doesn’t seem like the Conservative’s habitually bloody-axe has come down hard on government departments the same way it has in the past. Nor is the budget, at least on the surface, a total blunder in policy. The jobs plan is an applaudable, forward thinking plan to calibrate jobs to the labour market, which might help the legions of unemployed youth retrain for available positions and push us more towards a European apprenticeship system. Even then, it’s going to require the provinces to accept the burdensome dollars to make the initiative actually work.

But if the giant Conservative omnibus bills of the past are any indication, with their buried changes to environmental legislation or criminal sentencing, the Harper government hides the devil in the details. As some critics have noticed the numbers already don’t seem to add up for the 2013 budget, implying a potential veiling of unpopular changes that will rinse out once the budget bill passes through to parliament. And it wouldn’t be the first time: last year well after the 2012 budget MP’s found out Parks Canada and VIA Rail underwent serious service changes.

In the immediate the Conservatives might face the reinvigoration of their beloved Idle No More protests, as many native leaders like Nepinak felt the skills training fund for aboriginal youth to be racist and paternalistic.

Whatever the budget backlash becomes, you can bet the Conservatives will somehow accomplish the impossible: tempt Canadians to waste even more money on baby clothes and hockey sticks.

Follow Ben on Twitter: @BMakuch

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