As a follow-up to the review of the last ten federal budgets, FAFIA asked economist Armine Yalnizyan to provide a brief assement of the 2005 budget.

Full report [0] (.pdf) 20 pages

For those who require this document in a plain text format, please e-mail FAFIA at info@fafia-afai.org [1] to request a copy.

Excerpt from the document: ” Does this five-year roll-out of $49 billion in new spending measures and tax cuts benefit the women of Canada? Imperceptibly, is the short answer.

While some women will find a few more dollars in their wallets from this Budget’s changes to taxes and income supplements for the elderly, millions of women will see no monetary benefit at all, even in five years.This includes Canada’s poorest working-age women and their children, most of whom are already tax-exempt.If every dollar of the $5 billion five-year initiative for early learning and child care was channeled into the provision of regulated child care, 130,000 new spaces could be created across the country.(See page 4) While this would be a welcome development, the simple transfer of funds doesn’t guarantee such an outcome.Nor would this outcome fully address the need: There are already over 3 million children under 12 whose mothers are in the paid labour force, and only about 600,000 regulated child care spaces in this country.

Almost $10 billion has been made available for brand new initiatives such as green policy or a cities agenda.Budgetary measures also provide $14 billion over the next five years to redress or surpass past cuts in the areas of Defence, International Assistance and Regional Economic Development.But, aside from $1.5 billion for a trio of pilot projects for employment insurance, this Budget does nothing to reverse the retrenchment of state supports to individuals that took place a decade ago, despite the fiscal capacity made possible by eight back-to-back surpluses, and surpluses as far as the eye can see.

The federal government has virtually no response to the precarious conditions faced by millions of women and their families because of cutbacks triggered by federal actions. The cuts meant:less income support when unemployed; fewer options for training and upgrading; reduced access to safe and affordable housing; increasingly limited legal assistance or other forms of social assistance; and more rationed supports in the home and in the community for the care of young children, the disabled, the ill and the elderly.

This budget, along with its predecessor, largely ignores the poorest and most vulnerable women in Canada, and further delays needed progress towards a long-overdue nationally available program of early learning and child development.The effect of this Budget is negligible on most women’s daily lives, and virtually non-existent for millions of women, a remarkable fact given that it unleashes almost $49 billion in new tax and spending initiatives over the next 5 years.