Expenditure Management: Conservative Style

Budget 2007 promised a new Expenditure Management System and provides a glimpse of what the Conservatives might have in mind.

The Budget Plan boldly “proposes to provide a 25-per-cent investment tax credit to businesses that create new child care spaces” (p. 124). However, it allocates no money for this “Investment Tax Credit for Child Care Spaces” (p. 374).

In its Budget Analysis, Code Blue for Child Care observed that, “the Conservatives are probably including this tax break knowing there will be no take-up.” Indeed, they are budgeting that there will be no take-up. It is clear that, in practice, the Conservatives have abandoned this tax-credit strategy.

I suppose that announcing measures without allocating funding for them is a creative way to cut costs.