Quote:
Originally Posted by Mean Mr. Mustard
What expenses? Without cliche terms like trim the fat or streamline services - how do you effectively propose to cut expenses? Cancel capital projects - personally I would rather borrow money to do so when the interest rate for doing so is as low as it is. It would be stupid to put projects on the back burner until the interest rates and the cost of doing business went up.
I really think that there are inefficiencies in the government and that they should be dealt with, however when people start saying things like cut expenses without offering any concrete strategies alarm bells go off in my head because there aren't that many government agencies that are rolling in a large amount of cash from my experiences.
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People can't offer examples because the government has a huge budget for things like infrastructure and yet no list of projects or system to determine which projects are needed. Anyone who has ever been involved in criticizing a government project has heard the rumours that criticism will cause the project to be delayed or cancelled. It is easy to say that you still want the South Calgary hospital or you still want the highway 63 expansion but there are thousands of other projects on the go and in the pipeline. In my area there are plans to twin the rest of highway 43 (started the other day), discussions of twinning highway 40 for 20 km or so. They are building new schools and a $600 million hospital. Projects like this are going on in every community and maybe some of them should be looked at. Unfortunately there is no way to look at what is on the go and what is coming up. They are just announced when it is convenient for the government.
The other major component of government spending is salaries, both the value of the salaries and the number of salaries on the books. I think that they need to do a better job negotiating with the different departments. So far they have taken a hard line against the doctors but in the past I don't recall them ever standing up to other groups and that has to start now.
I don't believe that the government can fix the problem with cuts alone but I really think that is where they should start. Instead, all the talk has been about taxes and debt. Even if they know that taxes will be needed and debt will be created they should still look at that last. How are they supposed to negotiate tough with a union when they just announced that they have found a way to raise all the money that they need to pay the unions what they want.