The fog finally clears the job and services impact of federal austerity

Summary: Over the past four budgets, the federal government has implemented successive rounds of austerity-related cutbacks to the public service, ranging from the freezing of operating budgets to outright cuts within various departments. Throughout this period, several analysts, including the Parliamentary Budget Officer, the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, the Canadian Association of Professional Employees and the federal government itself, have tried to estimate the impacts of these cuts on the economy and employment. Unfortunately, projections by outside groups were necessary, since the federal government itself provided no disaggregated employment impacts of these cuts until November 2012, well after the budget had been passed. Although Budget 2012 did provide federal government employment impacts, it only included those from Budget 2012 and not the impacts of previous budgets. While a departmental breakdown of job losses was and the subsequent impact on services was not provided. However, there were assurances in Budget 2012 that the cuts would target the "back office" and avoid cuts to services.