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Chapter One

Cash crunch and consequences

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The big civil service unions knew it was just a matter of time. The first four years of Conservative rule had seen their membership ranks swell to unprecedented levels, with most of the growth in the National Capital Region.

By the time finance minister Jim Flaherty delivered his fifth budget on March 4, 2010, nearly 150,000 workers in Ottawa and Gatineau were on the federal payroll — up more than 40 per cent from when the Tories took office. Another 16,000 civil servants worked for provincial and municipal governments. Astonishingly, one in four workers across the region was now a government employee.

It was why the capital’s economy was so vulnerable when the Conservatives finally retrenched.

“We will take action to ensure the government lives within its means,” Flaherty declared that day in 2010, in announcing a three-year freeze on departmental budgets. This would be the catalyst for halting, then reversing, the growth of the public service.