NUPGE says budget offers 1,000 Band-Aids but no cures

'This was a vote buying budget with no other theme and no other purpose.' - Larry Brown

Ottawa (21 March 2007) - Federal Finance Minister Jim Flaherty’s much-anticipated budget can best be described as "the budget of 1,000 Band-Aids and no cures," says the National Union of Public and General Employees (NUPGE).

"The Canada Mr. Flaherty lives in apparently has no real problems - except the need to get the Tories a majority," says Larry Brown, NUPGE's national secretary-treasurer.

"This was a vote buying budget with no other theme and no other purpose," he adds.

"Mr. Flaherty’s Canada has no serious environmental concerns, because the budget did virtually nothing to address environmental issues, except offer a few small items more notable for being attention getters than for the effect they will have on the environment," Brown says.

"The Conservative government does not believe there is a crisis of poverty within the aboriginal communities of this country. Having unilaterally cancelled the historic Kelowna Accord that would have seriously addressed the issue, the new budget from Canada’s New Government, hardly even notices the issue of aboriginal poverty.

"Apparently the Canada of Steven Harper does not have a growing inequality problem, where the wealthy are getting wealthier and the poor are getting poorer. The budget didn’t even address itself to this question, didn’t even propose any Band-Aid solutions.

"Certainly the Canada Mr. Flaherty sees from his office window has not lost over 250,000 manufacturing jobs, does not face the crisis of a hollowed out economy where all the good jobs outside of resource extraction have disappeared or are disappearing. If Mr. Flaherty saw that, he didn’t pay any attention, because his budget said nothing whatsoever about the issue," Brown argues.

"For those who believe that the election of a Conservative majority is the most pressing concern of the day, this was a good budget. For anyone else, this was a wasted opportunity to address the real issues."

The Canadian Labour Congress (CLC) has also issued an analysis of the budget from the perspective of the Canadian labour movement. It is available at the link below. NUPGE is one of the largest member unions in the three-million-member congress.