Alternative budgets

OTTAWA: The Alternative Federal Budget (AFB) project, coordinated by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, released its Economic and Fiscal Update today. The report, contrary to Minister Manley's warnings of a shrinking surplus, forecasts a combined surplus of $27.9 billion this year and next. It also notes the AFB's remarkably accurate record of forecasting federal surpluses over the last three years--$40 billion, compared with the actual cumulative surplus of $39.7 billion.

OTTAWA‹If the federal government fails to get back in the health care game with increased funding, and by using its legal and moral authority to prevent the growth of the private system, it will be undermining Medicare as a truly public health-care system. That is the conclusion of Canada Health Act? Or Canada Health Inaction?, a report released by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives on the eve of the federal cabinet retreat and next month¹s First Ministers¹ meeting on health care.

The federal government's projected budget surplus of $8 billion for the current fiscal year should be rolled into an innovative Kyoto Investment and Transition Fund instead of being used to reduce the federal debt. That's the key recommendation advanced in a technical paper prepared for the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives' forthcoming Alternative Federal Budget.

OTTAWA--Prime Minister Jean Chretien, during both the 1997 and 2000 federal election campaigns, promised that future "fiscal dividends" (the underlying budget surpluses resulting from economic growth and a shrinking debt burden) would be spent in a balanced "50:50" manner. Half would be re-invested in social priorities such as more funding for health care, education, and poverty reduction, and the other half would go jointly to tax cuts and debt reduction.