Budget Officer Yves Giroux cautioned taxpayers to beware of cynical or manipulative “Musical Ride” cuts to this year’s half-trillion dollar federal budget, Blacklock’s Reporter reported. Giroux was referencing the RCMP’s 1994 threat to cancel Musical Ride performances, a tradition established in 1887, after Ottawa demanded it reduce its spending budget by $32.7 million. The announcement prompted a public outcry and the Musical Ride was saved.“Spending cuts: Is there a risk these will make things worse when it comes to public service delivery?” Giroux said, addressing the Senate National Finance Committee. “It depends on how the spending reallocation or spending reduction exercise is conducted.”“If you tell departments to cut 5% or 10% and you let them do it, there is a chance some of them will do what we call the Musical Ride in reference to spending reductions of a few decades ago where the RCMP offered to cut the Musical Ride which was very popular to avoid cutting services or expenditures that were seen as inefficient,” testified Giroux.“That’s a well-known phenomenon within the public service, offering the Musical Ride,” said Giroux. “That is why you have to have clear parameters when you launch a spending review or spending cut exercise to ensure items that are of importance to the government of the day are not put on the chopping block unnecessarily to avoid bad outcomes.”“There are ways to improve or at least maintain services while reducing expenditures by looking at how things are done, for example, as opposed to ‘same old, same old’ and you just cut,” said Giroux. “Would spending cuts make service delivery worse? Not necessarily. It could lead to improvements in services.”The Trudeau Liberals have projected this year’s federal budget will total a record $519 billion, according to Blacklock’s. The federal budget has not been balanced since 2007 and the federal debt ceiling was raised 56% in 2021, from $1.168 trillion to $1.831 trillion, in Trudeau’s Borrowing Authority Act. According to Public Accounts, debt charges totaled $43.9 billion last year, and about 10 cents of every tax dollar are now used to pay interest on the federal debt.“I am really opposed to fiscal fearmongering,” Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland testified last May 16 at the House of Commons Finance Committee. “I think it’s important to put all numbers in context. Our debt service charges are absolutely handleable.”
Budget Officer Yves Giroux cautioned taxpayers to beware of cynical or manipulative “Musical Ride” cuts to this year’s half-trillion dollar federal budget, Blacklock’s Reporter reported. Giroux was referencing the RCMP’s 1994 threat to cancel Musical Ride performances, a tradition established in 1887, after Ottawa demanded it reduce its spending budget by $32.7 million. The announcement prompted a public outcry and the Musical Ride was saved.“Spending cuts: Is there a risk these will make things worse when it comes to public service delivery?” Giroux said, addressing the Senate National Finance Committee. “It depends on how the spending reallocation or spending reduction exercise is conducted.”“If you tell departments to cut 5% or 10% and you let them do it, there is a chance some of them will do what we call the Musical Ride in reference to spending reductions of a few decades ago where the RCMP offered to cut the Musical Ride which was very popular to avoid cutting services or expenditures that were seen as inefficient,” testified Giroux.“That’s a well-known phenomenon within the public service, offering the Musical Ride,” said Giroux. “That is why you have to have clear parameters when you launch a spending review or spending cut exercise to ensure items that are of importance to the government of the day are not put on the chopping block unnecessarily to avoid bad outcomes.”“There are ways to improve or at least maintain services while reducing expenditures by looking at how things are done, for example, as opposed to ‘same old, same old’ and you just cut,” said Giroux. “Would spending cuts make service delivery worse? Not necessarily. It could lead to improvements in services.”The Trudeau Liberals have projected this year’s federal budget will total a record $519 billion, according to Blacklock’s. The federal budget has not been balanced since 2007 and the federal debt ceiling was raised 56% in 2021, from $1.168 trillion to $1.831 trillion, in Trudeau’s Borrowing Authority Act. According to Public Accounts, debt charges totaled $43.9 billion last year, and about 10 cents of every tax dollar are now used to pay interest on the federal debt.“I am really opposed to fiscal fearmongering,” Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland testified last May 16 at the House of Commons Finance Committee. “I think it’s important to put all numbers in context. Our debt service charges are absolutely handleable.”
