OTTAWA, ONTARIO--(Marketwired - Feb 11, 2014) - "With this Budget, the interests of Canadians have been sacrificed in favour of electoral considerations and an irrational obsession with balanced budgets. It keeps Canada on the wrong course and puts Canadians' health, environment and economic prosperity at risk. It is simply not possible for the government to 'put its fiscal house in order' when the foundations - the programs and services that Canadians depend on - are crumbling," says Debi Daviau, President and Chief Executive Officer of the Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada (PIPSC), Canada's largest union of public service professionals.
"This government certainly wins the gold medal when it comes to blatant self-interest," continues Daviau. "It's doing everything it can to position itself to win the next election when it should be doing everything possible to reverse the effects of its disastrous decisions from past budgets."
The Budget includes a number of unconvincing statements and dubious claims on the government's part, including:
-
"Investing in research and innovation" despite the absence of any reinvestments in public science at a time when over $2.6 billion is being drained from science-based departments and Canada is plummeting in international scientific rankings, a key indicator of economic competitiveness.
-
A "commitment to protecting the environment" that is completely out of sync with reality - critical environmental protection programs, regulatory oversight, and hundreds of related jobs have disappeared under Conservative stewardship.
-
Claiming "responsible resource development" at a time when federal libraries used by researchers to analyze and monitor the impact of resource development are being shut down across Canada, and their books burned or sent to landfill.
-
"We did not cut the programs Canadians rely on." Actually, such cuts occurred in the fields of consumer safety, transportation of dangerous goods, water safety, health protection, services to veterans, and health benefits for retirees, to name just a few.
"This Budget continues a long-term strategy of cutting back on public programs and services for ideological, and now electoral, reasons. This Budget is nothing for the government to be proud of. It will affect generations of Canadians. All that to win at the polls next time," concludes Daviau.
The Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada represents some 55,000 professionals and scientists across Canada's public sector.