The Liberal government tabled Canada’s first gender-based budget Feb. 27, gets mixed reviews from think tanks devoted to Christian social teaching.
While Citizens for Public Justice, a Christian social justice think tank, applauded the move as a “step forward,” CPJ’s executive director Joe Gunn said the “ambition wasn’t huge in this case.”
“There are many more things the government could do to make a gender-based budget really sing,” Gunn said.
One key element would be a universal daycare system, but CPJ’s budget analysis pointed out the $7.5 billion allotted over 11 years “is far from the universal access required to ensure that women with children face less barriers when returning to work.”
CPJ also criticized the budget for not putting a “down payment on a Canadian Poverty Reduction Strategy.”
“This was just not mentioned in the budget at all,” Gunn said. “There’s no question at all that the current government over-promises and under-delivers, so Canadians beware.”
Cardus, a think tank based on 2,000 years of Christian social teaching, however, questions whether the goals the budget sets out to achieve can be reached by government.
“I think this budget overestimates the power of government to make change,” said Brian Dijkema, program director with Cardus Work and Economics, noting some of the differences between men and women are genetic, or are based on cultural traditions developed over a 1,000 years.
“It claims to be after gender equality, but it takes a very macho approach,” Dijkema said. “‘We’re the ones who are going to lead on that and that’s how it’s going to get done.”
Andrea Mrozek, director of Cardus Family, said she believed the gender-based analysis is really a code to cover government goals of growing the GDP by getting more women into the workforce.
“They want the GDP to go up, so they’re going to use the power of the state to cajole more women into the workforce, basically allowed mothers fewer choices,” Mrozek said. “Low income women are going to suffer the most,” she said. “If you have money, you can make a choice.”
While GDP promotion is a “legitimate goal of government, I don’t like dressing it up in equality language.”
Mrozek said she would have no problem with daycare programs targeted to support single moms, but she’s glad no new money was announced towards a universal childcare system.
“With universal daycare you’re basically offering middle and upper class families a gift,” she said. The number of spaces will always be limited, and the higher income families usually get first in line, so “low income women can’t access the spaces.”
“Instead of reducing taxes and increasing child benefits to provide some genuine flexibility in women’s lives, Trudeau prefers to assign to women the role in which he thinks they belong: in the work force,” said REAL Women of Canada, a pro-life, pro-family women’s group, in a news release.
“Unfortunately, equality in the work place cannot compete with the inequity of nature which curiously allows only women to become pregnant, and never men.”
REAL Women pointed out having more women in the workforce also increases tax revenue for the government but based on the Liberals three budgets, none of that revenue will go to deficit or debt reduction.
The government’s projected budget deficit for 2018-19 is $18.1 billion, three times higher than the $6 billion the Liberals had promised in allowing modest deficits of $10 billion for two years; and $6 billion in the third year. It has blown its budget projections each of the last three budgets—also tripling the promised deficit to nearly $30 billion in 2016, and again in 2017.
“It’s a question of priorities,” said Gunn, who noted the government could look at cutting some of the $25.5 billion that will be spent on National Defence in 2018-19.
“Luckily our debt to GDP ratio (projected to be 30.1 per cent for 2018-19) is still falling. I think in 2019, everybody’s expecting an election budget, so that will probably not end the deficit at all,” Gunn said.
“It’s not fiscally responsible,” said Mrozek. “Families are going to end up paying for it eventually, perhaps generations down the road. There isn’t a country yet that hasn’t had to face the music on this.”
“One person’s debt is another person’s asset,” Dijkema said, noting government debt is held by private bondholders. “Those people want to get paid, and the more money that goes to servicing the debt, the less money there is for government programs.”
The triple-sized deficits, the failure to bring about electoral reform, or to bring back door-to-door mail delivery, form a pattern of making “massive promises” and “failing to deliver,” Dijkema said, which promotes “cynicism” among the public and “erodes trust” in public institutions.
“Canadians are not stupid,” he said. “They see what is said and done.”
Dijkema also challenged the Liberal government’s commitment to pay equity, which he stressed is different from equal pay for men and women doing the same jobs, which is a matter of justice.
“When you start talking about equal pay for work of equal value, you have to ask the question of who determines value,” he said.
“When the market determines value, it reflects the individual decisions of people. Having government determine the value of work in different industries traditionally dominated by women or by men “ignores the importance of the market,” he said. “It gives far too much power to the government.”
Both Cardus and CPJ applauded the expansion of the Working Income Tax Benefit, now renamed the Canada Workers Benefit. Dijkema noted the idea for this benefit has had all-party support and it is in these programs that cross partisan lines the budget does well.
The government recognizes it is inherently good for people to be working, so it is helping subsidize work by not clawing back welfare benefits, Dijkema said. “The government will give you money to top you up and help you over the welfare wall.”
Dijkema and Mrozek both objected to ideological packaging of the budget, something they both note did not start with this Liberal government.
“I don’t understand why the budget is a good-sized book,” said Mrozek. “Why can’t it just be a budget?”
Budgets are “supposed to be relatively dry and involves a lot of numbers. We have branded budgets that look a lot more like TV commercials,” Dijkema said.
Gunn gave high marks to the large amounts of spending on Indigenous peoples in addition to the $11.8 billion previously announced in 2016 and 2017. Included in this budget is $5 billion over five years to them “Indigenous children and families an equal chance at life;” $1.4 billion over six years to help First Nations Child and Family Services help at-risk families and children; and an additional $172.6 million to provide safe drinking water on reserves.
“Those are huge gaps in Canadian society,” Gunn said. “That is funding that has to be there.”
On the promised study of Pharmacare, Gunn said the churches have supported a drug program for 20 years, but how it will roll out remains to be seen. Canada Without Poverty (CWP), a coalition that CPJ belongs to, said the money is needed now.
“One in ten people in Canada cannot afford their prescribed medications,” said Liz Majic in a CWP news release. “While an advisory council on this policy area may be a step in the right direction, we already know it makes financial sense to invest in pharmacare and we need action, rather than more research.”
Another disappointment for CPJ, is the lack of any action in reducing greenhouse gas emissions, Gunn said. “We need to bite that bullet and move forward.”
Gunn noted an important part of the Canadian climate framework the Liberals announced in 2016 involved provinces paying a carbon tax. “This has not come into being,” Gunn said.
It was supposed to come into being in the beginning of this year, and now it’s postponed to the beginning of next year. The carbon tax will be a “revenue stream for the government,” he said. He noted the government is still providing $1.6 billion in subsidies to the fossil fuel industry.