OTTAWA — The Bloc Quebecois is calling on the federal government to drastically shrink the civil service and to impose a special surtax on the income of the wealthiest one per cent of Canadians as a means to eliminate the deficit.The BQ, like the other opposition parties, said Monday that the plan sketched out by Finance Minister Jim Flaherty to eliminate Ottawa's deficit over the next five years involves keeping employment insurance premiums artificially high.
"This is a tax on working people and we're completely against it," said Bloc MP Jean-Yves Laforest, his party's finance critic.The BQ plans to make its deficit-fighting ideas a centrepiece of the two byelections underway in Quebec.Voters in the Quebec ridings of Hochelga and Montmagny-L'Islet-Kamouraska-Riviere-du-Loup go to the polls Nov. 9. (more)
The BQ said the federal government should drastically reduce the size of the federal civil service, replacing every three workers that retire over the next five years with just one worker. Reducing the federal payroll that way could eventually cut Ottawa's annual spending on its own workforce by billions each year. It also said Ottawa could chop the $3 billion it spends annually on "professional services," money paid to outside consultants for advice on everything from communications to policy decisions to temporary help.
Laforest also said Ottawa should do what U.S. President Barack Obama has done and ask the country's wealthiest citizens to pay a greater share in income tax to eliminate the deficit. The Bloc suggests those Canadians with a taxable income of $150,000 a year should pay an additional one per cent in income taxes. That measure, the BQ calculates, would affect about 450,000 Canadians and could net Ottawa an additional $1.5 billion a year.
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