[SebC]

Originally Posted by Jacks

[The federal Conservatives will] be reducing spending a lot.

http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/...ry-radicalism/

The $5-billion to be cut out of departmental budgets, it boasts, is “less than 2.0 per cent” of program spending. To be sure, adjust for inflation and population growth, take into account previously announced savings, and this implies a 12% reduction in real spending per capita by fiscal 2017.

But a 12% reduction from what? From the all-time, never-before-seen, not-even-close record the Tories set in 2010, when they jacked up spending by $37-billion in a single year. Be under no illusion about this: the five years of “austerity” on which we are now embarked will be, after inflation, adjusting for population growth, the five biggest spending years in the history of the country — other than the last three.

All that the Tories are proposing to do is to roll back some of the increased spending that they themselves introduced. The public service from which the Tories pledge to trim 19,000 employees is the same one to which they added more than 30,000.