Alternative Federal Budget 2004 Rebuilding The Foundations

Download or read book Alternative Federal Budget 2004: Rebuilding the Foundations written by and published by Canadian Centre Policy Alternatives. This book was released on 2004 with total page 82 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Kyoto protocol and promote a sophisticated, The AFB thus urges Paul Martin to base his environmentally sustainable economy; budget projections on independent assessments • rebuild and stabilize the funding for Cana- conducted by the Auditor-General, enhancing da's national cultural institutions; the transparency of federal budgets and hence • restore and enhance the fairness of the tax the public' [...] A full 44% of the "fiscal At the same time that it was repaying pub- dividend" enjoyed by the federal government lic debt, the federal government implemented in the five years after balancing its books has $100 billion in tax cuts over five years as the gone to debt reduction, with another 46% to key method of distributing and eliminating the tax cuts. [...] For years 2005 and beyond, we use the Economic and Fiscal Up- The Fiscal Outlook of the AFB date's estimates of real GDP growth.4 The interest rate is the final macroeconomic With these macroeconomic assumptions in variable that plays a decisive role in the federal place, the second step of the AFB process is to budget. [...] However, with the addi- a capital asset, the full expense of the asset is tional borrowing undertaken for CIFA, the not recorded in the year in which the purchase total stock of federally-guaranteed debt in- is made. [...] It is important to note, however, that the pected life of 40 years out of its program spend- federal debt burden, including the CIFA, falls ing budget, $125 million would show up in throughout the AFB forecast as a share of GDP program expenses for each of the 40 years of (from about 42% of GDP at present to 37.4% the expected life of the asset.