How Ottawa Spends Your Tax Dollars

This book probes the politics, economics and management of public expenditure decisions and decision-making processes. It takes a close look at the national priorities that the Trudeau government set for the spending of federal tax dollars - and draws several disturbing conclusions about contemporary policies and priorities. How Ottawa Spends Your Tax Dollars provides in-depth, critical analysis of federal expenditure at a crucial time in the nation's development.

This is the eleventh edition of How Ottawa Spends .Like previous editions, it focusses on particular departments and policy initiatives of the federal government. This year's edition also deals with some of the internal management issues that have emerged as important in the government's quest for efficiency and productivity. Beyond evaluating past actions, the book is intended to offer informed comment on prospects for the future in the areas it explores. This is the second edition since the re-election of a Conservative majority government in November 1988. We now have an opportunity to assess the direction of the second Tory agenda. It seems important to start this assessment by asking some very basic questions: Is there a discernible government agenda? To what extent can we see similarities and differences in the direction of Conservative initiatives when we compare their first and second terms? What accounts for any similarities and differences that emerge? What are the implications of the direction of government initiatives? These questions are given broad treatment in the book's first chapter, which focusses largely on the February 1990 Budget and the federal Estimates for the 1990-91 fiscal year. That analysis is intended to set the stage for the more specific discussions of the federal agenda which follow.

No matter what the politicians say, it's the way a government decides to spend its money that reveals its true priorities. The authors discuss the underlying policy priorities-and contradictions-that these expenditure proposals reflect, and present some interesting insights about the direction in which the Trudeau government was then heading. The 1982 edition of How Ottawa Spends Your Tax Dollars focuses on the federal government's spending plans for economic development programs.

In How Ottawa Spends, some of the country's top political analysts get inside the byzantine world of federal decision-making, shedding light on the real priorities of the political parties. Among their findings: federal spending cuts do not necessarily "stick", because affected ministers are often given an offsetting package of funds for different purposes; while Ottawa has become the country's biggest advertiser (close to $60 million in 1982-83), it has increasing trouble discerning between information and propaganda; because they are afraid of losing their regional blocs of support, none of the federal parties is willing to behave like a truly national party. Published in 1983, How Ottawa Spends is an eye-opening look at federal spending priorities.