Federal Budget 101

Alright - so I'm a little slow out of the gate, but I wanted to share a couple Federal-Budget 101 pages I saw and found pretty useful in explaining the recently revealed budget.  Click the picture to see the full page.

Above is the first page of an infographic from the Globe and Mail, and it has a few more graphics that explain a lot. For example, in the "departmental cuts" section we can see something that really freaked me out. Health care and national defense spending got a similar cut - just over 5% each. BUT. Health care's budget lost $309.9 million, while defense lost over a BILLION. With a B! Meaning - provinces get a little over 5.4 billion to pay for doctors and hospitals while the army gets almost 20 billion dolllars, more than three and a half times more... Excellent.

What I was disappointed not to see in the G&M highlights was how the budget affects Indigenous communities in Canada.

The Huffington Post was also on the ball and added pictures to their interpretation of the budget as well - click the picture to see their highlights, which do include the budget changes for Aboriginal education.

Among some of the high profile cuts/gains you may or may not have heard about

• Yes, they're getting rid of the penny. Costs more than one cent to make it, so they've scrapped it. My sister is not pleased.
• Katimavik is cut. As someone who believes firmly in getting youth involved in their communities, and providing opportunities for them to learn through travel, I am not impressed. Shows the Conservatives don't place a value on all the service these youth provide to their communities. And since communities program funding is also getting cut left right and center, not sure where the organizations that get help from Katimavik volunteers are going to get all those hours from. While I don't know the specifics of how Katimavik's money is being spent, I'mm sure they deserve at least a review of their expenditures, rather than being cut all together. I'm not opposed to more efficiency in these kinds of programs, I encourage it, but they weren't even given a chance to do so.
• CBC lost 10% of their funding. Not as bad as some had feared but not good.
• The Community Access Program (CAP or C@P) which provides free or low cost internet to Canadians through community centres, libraries and other access points has been cut abruptly, cutting off low income Canadians from things like job posting, tax information and forms and basic things like email. Only 54% of homes with an income of $30,000 or less have access to internet, yet the funding was still cut. 
• Canada is going to stop policing nutrition claims on food labels. Better start learning what all those ingredients really mean and stop believing claims of "low sodium, high fiber, low fat, organic..." (but really, those really should never have been our guiding lights when purchasing food.)
• Canada's budget for development assistance was cut drastically as well. An amount equal to CIDA's "basic education budget, immunization budget and the funding to fight tuberculosis" has been cut - a change from 2010, when the government capped the spending. Was that supposed to ease the people around the world into not expecting more help from the privileged nation of Canada? Well, now the cuts have come, a detriment not just to our reputation but to our ability to fight the causes and consequences of extreme poverty around the world.   
• And finally, in the gains column - a new national park in Toronto. Maybe next time the G20 comes to town, they won't have to build a fake lake...