How Ottawa Spends, 1996-97: Life Under the Knife

J.L. Granatstein is a professor of history at York University, the
co-author of the Dictionary of Canadian Military History and Empire to
Umpire: Canada and the World to the 1990s, and the author of The Good
Fight.

This volume, the most recent in a Carleton University Press series that
has been under way since 1983, is every bit as useful as its
predecessors—and that is very useful indeed. Life Under the Knife
looks at a host of departments and programs and examines their struggle
to survive in a constrained fiscal environment. We get analyses of
policy, spending, and budgets, and the disparate authors do their work
well if, inevitably, unevenly. Not all departments are covered each
year, but over several volumes, virtually every one is analyzed.

The study of the Department of National Defence, to single out only one
chapter in the current volume, looks at the huge budget (more than $10
billion a year) of a troubled ministry and demonstrates how it is
struggling to make do with fewer people and with expenditures that
continue to shrivel from inflation and cutbacks. Other chapters treat
Environment Canada, Public Works Canada, Industry Canada, public service
downsizing, and the Bank of Canada.

For anyone seriously interested in how the federal government manages
its/our money, this series is indispensable.