The Canadian Taxpayers Federation is demanding Prime Minister Mark Carney slash spending as his government prepares to table its first budget this fall.“The Carney government’s first budget will be a failure if it spends even one dollar more than the Trudeau government spent last year,” said Franco Terrazzano, the CTF’s federal director. “After years of completely unrestrained spending, there’s room to cut spending everywhere in the budget.”Carney told reporters during a cabinet retreat in Toronto that the budget would attempt to balance austerity with new spending. “.The rate of increase of federal government spending in the last decade was over 7% year over year. That’s faster than the rate of growth of our economy,” he said.The federal government spent $539.5 billion last year, according to the Fall Economic Statement. Spending has jumped by more than 20% since 2015-16, even after adjusting for inflation and population growth. Interest on the debt alone cost taxpayers $54 billion last year — more than the federal government spent on health-care transfers to the provinces..The CTF is calling for immediate cuts in three areas: MP pay, which has steadily risen to as much as $419,600 for the prime minister; the federal bureaucracy, which has grown by 99,000 employees since 2016 while driving costs up 77%; and corporate subsidies, which cost taxpayers $11.2 billion in 2022, or more than $1,100 for a family of four.“Taxpayers can’t afford to pay more than $1 billion every week just to cover the interest payments on the government credit card,” Terrazzano said. “Carney needs to make government more affordable and that means cutting politician pay, shrinking the bureaucracy and eliminating corporate welfare.”
