President's Message
In 1993, a profound change in Canadian government began: we started
restructuring our administrative systems to respond to the needs of Canadians.
It is with great pride that I submit to you Getting Government Right: Governing
for Canadians. It is both a status report and a description of the tools we are
using.
Getting Government Right marks a turning point in taking control of government
spending and transforming the structure of the Canadian public service and the
programs it offers citizens.
After four years of effort, we have succeeded in reducing the size of
government. We have approached 'getting government right' by linking performance
to results and accountability. Through our changes, we have reclaimed our fiscal
sovereignty enabling Canadians to choose the kind of society they want to build.
Program spending today reflects the interests of Canadians.
Program Review achieved its results in large part because of the dedication,
hard work, and determination of the Canadian public service. These women and men
continue to give their strong support for our work. They will always play the key
role in making the changes necessary to achieve excellence and deliver services of
superior and consistent quality to Canadians.
In today's global marketplace, the federal government must manage change and
emphasize efficiency in administration. Our collective challenge is to master new
ways of doing things while safeguarding the rights of Canadians.
We are creating a new culture in the Public Service. Getting Government Right
reflects our approach to government. Day by day, we are modernizing the structures
of government so that we will have an administration ready to meet the challenges
of the twenty-first century.
In the spirit of our ongoing quest for quality, I encourage your comments and
suggestions.
Hon. Marcel Massé,
The President of the Treasury Board
These Main Estimates represent a watershed in controlling government
expenditures and delivering modern, high-quality public services. Just four years
ago, it appeared to many that Canada's public finances were out of control. There
was widespread talk of a fiscal crisis that would call into question Canada's
ability to provide the services its citizens had come to expect. It was said that
Canada had become too expensive, that we could no longer afford the society that
our parents and grandparents had built.
By 1998-99, the
percentage of the gross domestic product needed to support all federal
government programs will be at its lowest level since 1949-50. |
By 1998-99, the percentage of the gross domestic product (GDP) needed to
support all federal government programs will be at its lowest level since
1949-50. While achieving this level will require determination to stay the
course set out in the last four Budgets, no new reductions are required.
After four years of arduous effort – of program review, redesign,
sacrifice and renewal –federal program expenditures (all federal
government expenditures except interest on the debt) will demand no more
than 11.9 per cent of GDP in 1998-99. The programs and services made
possible by these expenditures remain the envy of the world. We have
tightened and trimmed non-essential spending and dramatically increased
efficiency. We have proven that we can afford Canada.
In doing so, we have succeeded during a time of dramatic change, just as our
forebears did in 1949-50. The Public Accounts of that year show that years of
restraint had succeeded in reducing the war debt. These Accounts were the first to
include expenditures for federal services in Newfoundland and to show that the
defence budget was beginning to rise again because of the Cold War. The Accounts
show a mix of requirements very different from those of today: defence and
veterans affairs accounted for 31 per cent of program expenditures and social
services accounted for 24 per cent, while total transfers to provinces amounted to
only 5 per cent. Provinces and municipalities accounted for only 11 per cent of
all government expenditures in Canada in the immediate post-war period.
The Dominion Bureau of Statistics' Canada Year Book for 1949 outlines
the basic facts of a country of some 12.6 million inhabitants. For example, 75 per
cent of all immigrants came from the United Kingdom or the United States, and 26
per cent of the labour force worked in agriculture. With justifiable pride, the Year
Book notes that Canada's unemployment rate was just 1.5 per cent, even though
the economy had shifted from one based on war to one based on peace. Per-capita
gross national product (GNP) was some $1,063. In real terms, this represented an
improvement of over 50 per cent since the Depression. Inflation of over 11 per
cent was a nagging worry, in spite of continuing price controls. A complex
structure of wartime subsidies had been almost totally dismantled; the last
subsidies on the import of crude oil into the prairie provinces had been cancelled
two years earlier.
The 1997 Canada Year Book chronicles a country of nearly 30 million
people – a complex, rich, multicultural state whose major sources of immigration
are no longer the United Kingdom and the United States. Real per-capita GDP has
grown by over 180 per cent since 1949. The agricultural labour force, though still
a vital part of the national economy, now comprises less than 3 per cent of all
workers. Transfers to other levels of government now account for 19 per cent of
the federal government's program expenditures. The provincial and municipal share
of total government expenditures has increased to nearly 50 per cent, clearly
demonstrating the decentralization of government power in Canada. Of course, the
story of dramatic change to a more abundant, more sophisticated and, perhaps, more
chaotic lifestyle over the last 50 years is well known. It is, nevertheless,
worthwhile from time to time to step back and contemplate just how far-reaching,
and how rapid, the change has really been.
Nowhere has change been more dramatic than in the public sector. We have built
complex systems of social support, economic development promotion, health and
education, scientific research, cultural development and environmental management.
Many of these services are central to our conception of who we are as Canadians.
And, after a long period of expenditures too great for the economy to bear, we are
learning how to provide them within our means. We are learning that fiscal
prudence is compatible with the society our elders struggled to build.
We can clearly afford financial burdens no more onerous than those of a
generation ago. The expenditure plan represented by the 1997-98 Main Estimates is
sustainable. The complex, caring, modern society we have built, and the structure
of government programs and services that support it, are not at risk in this plan.
The additional burden of debt service is a real concern, but one we can manage in
a growing economy. We can take quiet satisfaction in having regained our fiscal
sovereignty.
Canada's public services are an essential part of the country's standard of
living, a standard that regularly places Canada at the top in international
comparisons. (The reforms of the past four years in federal program design and
delivery have controlled costs while maintaining the essential quality of those
services and redirecting them where they are most needed.) However, the sacrifices
that have been required cannot be trivialized. Subsidies that many businesses had
come to rely on have been dramatically reduced. The government now charges fees
for some services that were previously free. Cutbacks to services have affected
many clients of government programs. We will face more challenges in implementing
the specific measures of Program Review over the next two years, and in fulfilling
the new management philosophy inherent in it and in the Expenditure Management
System. Public Service employees, in particular, have been called on to rethink
fundamentally everything they do. The adjustment costs for Public Service
employees have been very real, but the government has treated employees affected
by downsizing fairly and equitably.
The vision on the other side of this watershed is of a country able to make its
own choices about the kind of society it wants to maintain. A country whose
national Public Service is the envy of the world. A country whose public programs
benefit from continuous improvement, professional management and responsive,
cooperative, citizen-centred delivery.
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